"Extort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... French King at Lyons, "to entreat him to explain the cause of these affronts, and to advise him, as a good master, how he had better act." [20] But this somewhat servile proceeding produced no adequate result, as his envoy received only ambiguous answers, and all he could accomplish was to extort a promise from Henri III that on his return to Paris he would discuss the affair with the Queen-mother and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... it was time for the flattery. As if I couldn't extort that from any man. It's the A B C of our education. But the truth about one's self—the unpalatable, bitter truth—there's a sting of unexpected ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... to rob; poll, to exact, to extort. 'The church is pilled and polled by its own flocks.'—South, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with a profound respect for a man who can fight in himself so great a fight, and win so great a victory. It is the sturdy peasant blood which he derived from his mother that enables him to wrestle thus mightily with the Lord, and extort at last the tardy blessing; for we are assured in the last pages of the book that he makes a marriage, which is a further step toward health and virtue. We are not assured that he conquers happiness either for himself or for his wife; and there is not a syllable to betray that he cherishes ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... property, and then admitted them with unblushing equanimity. His delays were so tantalizing that they might well have revived unpleasant memories of the famous X. Y. Z. negotiations, in which he tried in vain to extort bribe-money from the American negotiators [Footnote: Jefferson was guilty of much weak and undignified conduct during these negotiations, but of nothing weaker and more petty than his attempt to flatter Talleyrand by pretending that the Americans disbelieved ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... issue, but so clearly a minor issue that to break up a great country upon it would have gone beyond the limit of solemn frivolity, and Calhoun must be taken to have been forging an implement with which his own section of the States could claim and extort concessions from the Union. A protective tariff had been passed in 1828. The Southern States, which would have to pay the protective duties but did not profit by them, disliked it. Calhoun and others took the intelligible but too refined point, that the powers of Congress under the Constitution ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... combustibles a wooden tower, I took it by stratagem, and found within it a mass of alum, which, if a great hurry had not been observed by us among the enemy in the attempt to conceal it, would have escaped our notice. I never scrupled to extort the truth from my prisoners; but my instruments were purple robes and plate, and the only wheel in my armoury destined to such purposes was the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the knot. The Synod of Basil conceded the whole sacrament to the Bohemians, on condition that they would acknowledge that it may, with propriety, be taken and received in one kind only. This confession they also wish to extort from us. Eckius says he contends for this point, merely because the people cannot be retained in the discharge of duty, unless we also release their consciences in regard to the sacrament (that is, unless the reformers would admit, that its reception in one kind was also allowable). We therefore ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... alarm. "No," said, "I will not extort your reasons. It is a shame of me. Your bare will ought to be law in this house; and what reasons could reconcile me to losing you so suddenly? You are the joy of our eyes, the delight of our ears, the idol of all our hearts. You will leave us, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... loving? Was it not enough that you should descend to mark down each incautious look—to chronicle every heedless word—to draw dark deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father's friend—to lie in wait—to hang with a foe's malignity upon the unbendings of familiar intercourse—to extort anger from gentleness itself, that you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given his noble heart, will receive it only to play the eavesdropper to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... share of the spoil would have enabled him to live at home as an opulent gentleman. With the rapacity Kidd had the cruelty of his odious calling. He burned houses; he massacred peasantry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked cutlasses in order to extort information about their concealed hoards. One of his crew, whom he had called a dog, was provoked into exclaiming, in an agony of remorse, "Yes, I am a dog; but it is you that have made me so." Kidd, in a fury, struck the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... time they speculated about the strange secrets which lay locked up in that little miniature, and wished they could devise some means to extort them. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of Heaven are so severe as those for mercies abused; and no instrumentality employed in their infliction is so dreadful as the wrath of man. No spasms are like the spasms of expiring liberty, and no wailing such as her convulsions extort. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... George Dargan, Chief Constable, Letterkenny District. Private and confidential.—It is, for many reasons, expedient that the convict Donogan, on a proper understanding that he will not return to Ireland, should be suffered to escape. If you are, therefore, in a position to extort a pledge from him to this extent—and it should be explicit and beyond all cavil—you will, taking due care not to compromise your authority in your office, aid him to leave the country, even to the extent ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... street be as though they had never been. He had been brutally attacked, and had thought it best to say nothing on the subject. He would not allow his secret, such as it was, to be wormed out of him. Scarborough was endeavoring to extort from him that which he had resolved to conceal; and he determined at last that he would not become a puppet in his hands. "I don't see why you should care a straw about it," ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... meaning by a Scripture example. When Balak, the king of Moab, undertook to extort a curse upon Israel, from Balaam, the latter did not say no; but only said, the Lord would not permit him to do what was required. He left neither to Balak nor to his messengers, any reason to conclude that his virtue was invulnerable. On ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... not own such a worship, but sendeth a man to the idols he serveth, Psal. lxvi. 18; Ezek. xiv. 9, 4. Do you not often pray to God against a corruption, when your heart cleaveth unto it, and what your mouth saith, your heart contradicteth? Light and conscience often extort a confession of beloved sins, while the temper of the heart hath this language, Lord, grant not my request. And therefore, if there be a prayer for pardon of guilt, yet there is no thorough resolution to quit the sin; and as ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and Northwest, with at least $250,000,000 added thereto, and cui bono? Fifteen devastated provinces! not to be brought into harmony with their conquerors, but to be held for generations by heavy garrisons at an expense quadruple the net duties or taxes, which it would be possible to extort from them, followed by ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... rape are very often made. The motive may be to extort blackmail, revenge, or mere delusion. On examining such cases bruises are seldom found, but scratches which the woman has made on the front of her body may be discovered, and the local injuries to the generative organs are slight, if present ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... disapprobation. After this he is borne to the market-place, where he again proclaims his displeasure as before; and removes to different parts of the town, until he thinks all the town are informed of the man's behaviour; and after endeavouring to extort a fine from the party, which he sometimes does, all repair to a public-house, to regale themselves at his expense. Unless the delinquent can ill afford it, they take his "goods and chattels," if he will not surrender his money. The origin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... little the night before; her mind was in an eddy of emotions. It seemed dreadful that Carnac should fight his own father, repeating what Fabian had done in another way. Yet at the bottom of her heart there was a secret joy. Some native revolt in her had joy in the thought that the son might extort a price for her long ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... well to give Mr. Washington his proper title. A small question, apparently, this of the form of address, especially to a lover of facts, and yet it was in reality of genuine importance. To the world Washington represented the young republic, and he was determined to extort from England the first acknowledgment of independence by compelling her to recognize the Americans as belligerents and not rebels. Washington cared as little for vain shows as any man who ever lived, but he had the highest sense of personal dignity, and of the dignity of his cause ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... clear about the position and duties of a chorus-girl, but it certainly had the air of being a last desperate resort. There sprang from that a vague hope that perhaps she might extort a capitulation from her father by a threat to seek that position, and then with overwhelming clearness it came to her that whatever happened she would never be able to tell her father about her debt. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... They were still followed by their armed retainers, and had almost unlimited jurisdiction in their respective governments. Even the higher clergy gloried in feudal inequalities, and were selected from the noble classes. The people were not powerful enough to make combinations and extort their rights, unless they followed the standards of military chieftains, arrayed perhaps against the crown and against the parliaments. We see no popular, independent political movements; even the people, like all classes above them, were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... spittle, the hyaena bile, The maw of shark, the tear of crocodile, Whate'er high station, undetermined yet, Awaits thee in the longing Cabinet,— Whether thou seat thee in the room of Peel, Or from Lord Prig extort the Privy Seal, Or our Field-marshal-Treasurer fix on thee, A legal admiral, to rule the sea, Or Chancery-suits, beneath thy well known reign, Turn to their nap of fifty years again; (Already L—, prescient of his fate, Yields ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... large or much too small. It is too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... paltry arts, and scorns parade: Nature through her is by reflection shown, Whilst Gay once more knows Polly for his own. Talk not to me of diffidence and fear— I see it all, but must forgive it here; Defects like these, which modest terrors cause, From Impudence itself extort applause. 710 Candour and Reason still take Virtue's part; We love e'en foibles in so good a heart. Let Tommy Arne[56],—with usual pomp of style, Whose chief, whose only merit's to compile; Who, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of these great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame who extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more completely, though undesignedly, colored ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the other hand, increased their wealth by "farming" the public revenues; i.e. the state would let out to them, for a stipulated sum, the privilege of collecting all import and other duties. These, in turn (called in later times Publicans), would extort all they could from the tax-payers, thus enriching themselves unlawfully. So the hard times, the oppression of the tax-gatherer, and the unjust law about debt, made the condition ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... trying to extort a confession from Sarah, the most active agents of the Pi-Bast police, and with them every Phoenician under the leadership of Hiram, were hunting the Greek Lykon ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... the Soldan to assist him with their councils and to carry his orders into execution. The Mameluke government is exceedingly oppressive to the merchants and even to the other Mahometan inhabitants of Damascus. When the Soldan thinks fit to extort a sum of money from any of the nobles or merchants, he gives two letters to the governor of the castle, in one of which is contained a list of such as he thinks proper to be invited into the castle, and in the other is set down what sum the Soldan is pleased to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... crossed the tropic, the sailors made ready a tub on deck to baptize the passengers, after the villanous practice of the time; but La Salle refused to permit it, to the disappointment and wrath of all the crew, who had expected to extort a bountiful ransom, in money and liquor, from their victims. There was an incessant chafing between the two commanders; and when at length, after a long and wretched voyage, they reached St. Domingo, Beaujeu showed clearly that he was, to say the least, utterly indifferent to the interests ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... thus distributed should, and would, suffice to maintain all the paupers of the Jews; but the inefficiency of the administration permits them to devote their entire time in successfully preventing one charitable institution from arriving at the knowledge of what they receive from another, and to extort from private sources as ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... such a thing. Surely he did not mean to drown her if she refused to promise. Charlie was going to London in a few days; he would be away for three or four months. Heaven only knows what would happen in that time. She didn't see what right Frank had to bully her—to extort promises from her by night on the edge of a dangerous lock. But a promise wasn't much, and a promise given in such circumstances was not a ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... admiring the preparations, had stood a silent spectator of their progress. He obeyed; and it was not until he found his neckcloth removed, and hat thrown aside, that he took the alarm. But he had so often resorted to a similar expedient to extort information, or plunder, that he by no means felt the terror an unpracticed man would have suffered, at these ominous movements. The rope was adjusted to his neck with the same coolness that formed the characteristic of the whole movement, and a fragment of board being laid ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... nobles now combined to extort from the king some of the despotic feudal privileges which existed in the twelfth century. They thought that in this hour of reverse Henry would be glad to purchase their powerful support by surrendering many of the prerogatives ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week (as the girl appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to infringe a little on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This week, as it happened, Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore herself in her high office as to extort the admiration of ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... in 1284, Kolomna in 1318, and Tver in 1327. But the oppression was greater when the dukes of Moscow farmed this tax, not only from their own subjects, but also from neighboring dukedoms. They were absolutely pitiless in collecting from the poor people as much as they could extort, and this was the disgraceful foundation of their wealth and power. The poll-tax, thereafter, was always a favorite source of ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... tells him she has so great a Confidence in his Virtue and Love, that she will refuse him nothing, tho' it would be a very bold Venture for a Maid, to trust her self with a passionate young Man, in silence of Night: and tho' she did not extort a Vow from him to secure her, she expected he would have a care of her Honour. He swore to her, his Love was too religious for so base an Attempt. There needed not many Vows to confirm her Faith; and it was agreed on ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... character, who by some means was implicated in the conspiracy, deserves to be mentioned as an instance of female fortitude. She was condemned to the torture, but the united force of racks, stripes and fire, could not extort a word from her. The next day she was conducted in a chair to be tortured afresh, (for her limbs were so mangled and disjointed, that she could not stand,) she hung herself with her girdle to the top of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... instruments of torture are mentioned, one for compressing the ankle-bones, and the other for squeezing the fingers, to be used if necessary to extort a confession in charges of robbery and homicide, confession being regarded as essential to the completion of the record. The application, however, of these tortures is fenced round in such a way as to impose great responsibility upon the presiding magistrate; ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... it fell out otherwise. For some pirates had sailed from the southern seas, and, hearing of the building of this monastery, their chief thought to find much gold belonging to the lord of the castle and to the master builders, or else, if he surprised and carried them off, to extort from them a mighty ransom. He did not yet know northern courage and northern weapons; but he soon gained that knowledge. Having landed in the creek under the black rocks, he made his way through a by-path up to the building, surrounded ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... two or three times the wages that are paid by the inhabitants, who, in most places, have made it a rule never to take a domestic that has once lived in an English family; the consequence is that those engaged by the English are of the worst description, a sort of pariahs among the community, who extort and cheat their employers without mercy. If not permitted so to do, they leave them at a minutes warning; and you cannot go to any foreign colony of English people without listening to very justified tirades of the villany of the servants. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... personally visited almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the legislation of ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... tramp is a much-abused person, and I have no doubt that he often deserves what is said of him, but, in spite of that, his life is often so hard that he might extort at the least a little sympathy—and something to eat. All Americans are too ready to confound two distinct classes of tramps—those who take the road to look for work, and those (the larger number, I confess) who look for work and pray to heaven that they may never find ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... could command that old-time manner of unclouded ease. He would stifle every surmise, deny every rumor if rumor blew about, of the blow he had received. A few days, and Storri would be himself again. As for immediate money, Storri would extort that from Mr. Harley, who, in his dull-head ignorance or worse, had been the author of his losses. Who first spoke of Northern Consolidated? Who suggested the "bear" raid? Was it not Mr. Harley? The affair had been his; the loss should be his; Mr. Harley must repay, or face ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... a liar, Captain Lamine, and only wants to extort money for his services," interjected the brute. "Leave him to me, sir; I'll find a way to refresh his memory of Key West that will open the bottom of the gulf to his eyes as clearly as the pathway to his piratical hut on the sand key! To the helm, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... relief two methods of action which hitherto we had been hazily seeking to combine, seesawing between one and the other, each of us influenced at different times by different motives. One was to rely on independent research; the other to extort the secret from Dollmann direct, by craft or threats. The moral of to-day was to abandon the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... treacherous spy who, residing in the Canadas, came, for the mere consideration of gold, to sell political information to the enemies of the country that gave him asylum and protection. I added that his visit to me was to extort money, under a threat of publishing our consanguinity, and that dread of his (my lover's) partiality being decreased by the disclosure, had induced me to throw my arms, in the earnestness of entreaty upon his neck, and implore his secrecy; promising to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the curtain has fallen. And, as in "Fedora," Duse comes into the play resolved to do what the author has not done. Does she deliberately choose the plays most obviously not written for her in order to extort a triumph out of her enemies? Once more she acts consciously, openly, making every moment of an unreal thing real, by concentrating herself upon every moment as if it were the only one. The result is a performance miraculous in detail, and, if detail were everything, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... infant, cast off his father, and only claims him in order to keep a disgraceful, ruinous secret hanging over his life for ever, in order to extort money." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that at least one half of Richardot's noble wrath was feigned. The commissioners would probably renounce the title and the seven seals, but in so doing would drive a hard bargain. For an empty phrase and a pennyworth of wax they would extort a heavy price. And this was what occurred. The commissioners agreed to write for fresh instructions to Brussels. A reply came in due time from the archdukes, in which they signified their willingness to abandon the title of sovereigns over ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hate it three, ten times more—not because many of us have been tortured in the detective departments, which are just chambers of horror, beaten almost to death, beaten with whips of ox-hide and of rubber in order to extort a confession or to make us betray a comrade. Yes, we hate them for that too. But we thieves, all of us who have been in prison, have a mad passion for freedom. Therefore we despise our gaolers with all the hatred that a human heart can feel. I will speak for myself. I have been tortured three times ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever. How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about 'devil's seats,' 'death's heads,' and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... more it vexes me," said he. "It is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to such shifts to extort praise or deprecate censure, ... and all without my wish, and contrary to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... remained in the gristle—hardly more than a sentiment. But the sentiment was a seed, the promise and potency of kindlier times. With the close of the long struggle other questions arose; got the people's ears; fixed the attention of the leaders. Scant notice could emancipation extort from men who had to repair the ravages of an exhausting war, reconstruct shattered fortunes, restore civil society in parts tumbling into ruinous disorder. The instinct of self-preservation was altogether too masterful ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... vapoury limbo. I have the key to this land of dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts I shall extort nobler cadences, nobler rhythms, for men to live by, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... march down the river. The people continued to be hospitable, with some few exceptions. Knowing our need of their articles, some of them would extort from us an extravagant price. We chose to live mostly on bread and butter and milk, having but little relish for meat, and supposing it not to be healthy ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... man appeared in the woods, and said something strange—but it's all right now." This was the only account I ever gave of the adventure. It was surmised that I had met a gipsy, who probably hoped to extort money from me. My father made inquiries in every direction, and gave notice that he should prosecute any rogues and vagabonds found trespassing on ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... enough to go out into the hall to question him; but no information of value was gained by the man's answers. He declared that the gentleman had hired him at twelve o'clock, hoping by this means to extort pay for five hours' driving, which, joined to the liberal gratuity he could not fail to obtain, would remunerate him handsomely for his day's work. Living is dear, it should be remembered, and a fellow makes ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... framed a deep concerted plan. She played a charitable part; but in such a way, that it always reached my ears. She played a pious, modest, reserved part, in order to excite my curiosity. And at last, to-day she plays the prude. She refuses my forgiveness, in hopes by this generous device, to extort ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... no punishment; the major's powers were, therefore, limited to the cat and the gallows. And as the first gallows had been built to carry only eight passengers, his daily death sentences were also limited to that number. For twenty years torture was used to extort confession— even women were flogged if they refused to give evidence, and an order of the Governor was held to be equal to law. Major ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Laughton seemed restored to the cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernon had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him, and far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial itself imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary; but his senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his success with the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... town where their son was born, and throve in it from the start. He could remember his mother helping his father make the sausage and head-cheese and pickle the pigs' feet, which they took turns in selling at as great a price as they could extort from the townspeople. She was a good and tender mother, and when her little Yawcup, as the boys called Jacob in mimicry after her, had grown to the school-going age, she taught him to fight the Americans, who stoned him when he came out of his gate, and mobbed his home-coming; and mocked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pushed the papers hurriedly into a drawer. As he did so, I guessed what had been his mysterious occupation, for he seemed to have covered quires of paper with the closest writing. Ah, Charley, you're a lucky fellow to be able to extort such long letters from our dear father. You know how difficult he finds it to write even the shortest note, and you remember his old favourite expression, "I would rather skin a wild buffalo bull alive than write a long letter." He deserves ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... from my hotel to the station. I said to myself that I would do something that would surprise him, and I gave him his fee and nearly a franc over; but it was I who was surprised, for he ran after me into the station, as I supposed, to extort more. He was holding out a franc toward me, and I asked the guide who was bothering me to take him to Pompeii (where there are swarms of guides always on the grounds) what the matter was. "It is false," he explained, and this ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... hold this happy course, we drew more from the colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism ever could extort from them. We did this abundantly in the last war; it has never been once denied; and what reason have we to imagine that the colonies would not have proceeded in supplying government as liberally, if you had not stepped in and hindered them from contributing, by interrupting ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fine, as Poet Dryden says, you do walk hand in hand with sheer Madness, all the way,—who is by no means pleasant company! You look fixedly into Madness, and her undiscovered, boundless, bottomless Night-empire; that you may extort new Wisdom out of it, as an Eurydice from Tartarus. The higher the Wisdom, the closer was its neighbourhood and kindred with mere Insanity; literally so;—and thou wilt, with a speechless feeling, observe how highest Wisdom, struggling up into this world, has oftentimes carried such tinctures ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... vigorous action which John had taken after the warnings received on the eve of the Welsh campaign had put an end to the disposition to revolt, and had left him again all powerful. He had even been able to extort from the clergy formal letters stating that the sums he had forced them to pay were voluntarily granted him. But he had been made to understand on how weak a foundation his power rested. He must have known that Philip Augustus had for some time ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... Mr. Browning's fate to divide the reading world into two hostile camps. There are no lukewarm friends on his side; and from those who have never acquired a taste for the strong wine of his muse, it is sometimes difficult to extort recognition of the vigor, the insight, the tenderness, and the variety of intellectual sympathy which characterize the man, even, if we make abstraction of the poet. An industrious and enthusiastic society ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... is what I said: the atrocity of the action carries you beyond contempt, and hence my sincerity. I wished you to know to what a degree I excelled in my art, to extort from you the admission that I was at least original in my abasement, to rank me in your mind on the line of the great good-for-noughts, and to hail ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... no second course—they left the table. Joel Barton made a fresh attempt to extort a small sum from his wife, but was met with an inflexible refusal. Mrs. Barton proved deaf alike to entreaties and threats. She was a strong, resolute woman, and not ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... subject Ram Lal to an investigation that would, at least, extort a confession as to his ability to allude to the episode ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... physicists of our days, Helmholtz, has said of him, "He did not try to translate nature into abstract conceptions, but takes it as a complete work of art, which must reveal its contents spontaneously to an intelligent observer." Goethe never became a thorough experimentalist; he did not want "to extort the secret from nature by pumps and retorts." He waited patiently for a voluntary revelation, i.e., until he could surprise that secret by an intuitive glance; for it was his conviction that if ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... over the royal mind: but his tardy assent did not allay the indignation which his opposition had kindled, and his subsequent repentance for that assent closed the door to forgiveness. Henry had flattered himself with the hope that he should be able to extort the approbation of the "customs" either from the gratitude of Alexander, whom he had assisted in his necessities, or from the fears of that Pontiff, lest a refusal might add England to the nations which acknowledged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... and I held out my hand with a look of appeal that somehow touched her, for she gave me hers at once, and even eagerly. I held it for a while in mine, and gazed into her eyes. It was she who first tore her hand away, and, forgetting all about her request and the promise she had sought to extort, ran at the top of her speed, and without turning, till she was out of sight. And then I knew that I loved her, and thought in my glad heart that she—she herself—was not indifferent to my suit. Many a time she has denied it in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the safety of Clotelle, while she felt glad that Jerome had escaped. In vain did they try to extort from the girl the whereabouts of the man whose escape she had effected. She was not aware that he had fled on a steamer, and ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... "general application" made some time before, and received naturally the general answer that France herself was being put to enormous expenses, which were aiding the States as efficiently as a direct loan of money could do. The most he could extort was the king's guaranty for the payment of the interest on $3,000,000, provided that sum could be raised in Holland. The embarrassing fact was that the plea of poverty advanced by the French government was perfectly valid. Turgot said so, and no man knew better than Turgot. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the Christian community, but though apostates rarely speak well of the society to which they formerly belonged, he could find out nothing. He then applied torture to two female-slaves, deaconesses, to extort from them the truth. After all, he could learn only that the {74} Christians were in the habit of meeting together on a certain day; that they then united in a hymn of praise to their God, Christ; and that ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... said Percival, sitting up, and regarding his visitor with contemptuous disgust, "don't go bringing Miss Murray's name into this business, for, if you do, I'll call a policeman and give you in charge for trying to extort money on false pretences, and you may thank your priest's dress, or whatever it is, that I don't kick you out of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Zeus pantokrat'or], seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Cause, save unwillingly what I squeeze out of Cantberg.' The youth permitted himself his first smile. 'When he deals with that bourgeois at the telephone, I always egg him on to stand out for more and more, and my profit is half the extra roubles we extort. But as for myself, my life, of course, is at the disposal ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... no Christian might practice. Undoubtedly their occupation had much to do in causing their unpopularity. The kings permitted them to make loans, often at a most exorbitant rate; Philip Augustus allowed them to exact forty-six per cent, but reserved the right to extort their gains from them when the royal treasury was empty. In England the usual rate was a penny a pound ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... face never, showed the least consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in conversation with me to my expectations; but here, again, he showed no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted—and even did extort, though I don't know how—those references out ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Prosody," said the Colonel, complacently, leading her forth; he hadn't near done his recital of the morning's field-day, which required that delicate tact and judicious prompting to extort from him that, though not really Brigadier on the occasion, his opinion and authority had actually directed ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... I never believed him so utterly devoid of principle; but he then laid bare his heart, hoping to make me a convert to its baseness. He exulted in the power we should obtain over this sensual prelate, and the sums which by these means we might extort. He looked with transport forward, to the opening which this would afford for projects still much deeper. The vices of the great, with which he might thus become intimate, afforded a field ample as his own vice ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... army.] The citizen was lost in the professional, and patriotism was superseded by the personal attachment of soldiers of fortune, who knew no will but that of their favourite commander or their own selfishness. Their general could reward them with money, and extort land for them from the State; and when Marius after Vercellae gave the franchise to two Italian cohorts, saying that he could not hear the laws in the din of arms, he was giving to what was becoming a standing army ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... uniformly weak. Through three hundred years the kings were elected by the Rigsrad, or senate, and the conditions of their tenure were such as to preclude both the independence of action and the accumulation of resources which is essential to absolutism. As early as 1282 the nobles were able to extort from the crown a haandfaestning, or charter, and almost every sovereign after that date was compelled, once at least during his reign, to make a grant of chartered privileges. To the Danehof, or national assembly, fell at times a (p. 555) goodly ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. When we speak of Nature in this manner we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. The charming landscape which I saw this morning ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... extort tribute from the Andrians, he said, "I bring with me two powerful gods—Persuasion and Force." "And on our side," was the answer, "are two deities not less ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... evidence of Dick Shand was quite conclusive,—if credible. It was open, of course, to strong doubt, in that it could not be sifted by cross-examination. Alone, it certainly would not have sufficed to extort a pardon from any Secretary of State,—as any Secretary of State would have been alive to the fact that Dick might have been suborned. Dick's life had not been such that his single word would have been regarded as certainly true. But in corroboration it was worth much. And ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... regular and symmetrical detail offers a suspicion of mere mechanism, yet it is no less evident that after longer study the charms of this exquisite structure tell with a lasting power. Too subtle to extort admiration at first, it bewitches a student of architecture who notes the scholarly reticence of its detail, the masterly way in which, as a rule, the construction is legitimately ornamented and the decoration made an integral part ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... believing—that there are towns in India, somewhere between Cape Comorin and the Himalayas, wherein everything is butcha,—that is, "a little chap"; where inhabitants and inhabited are alike in the estate of urchins; where little Brahmins extort little offerings from little dupes at the foot of little altars, and ring little bells, and blow little horns, and pound little gongs, and mutter little rigmaroles before stupid little Krishnas and Sivas and Vishnus, doing their little wooden best to look ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... vexed by the insolence of this Jewish dog, that I was not, as he imagined, a beggar: that I had the means of paying him my just debt, but that I hoped he would not extort from me all that exorbitant interest which none but a Jew could exact. He smiled, and answered that if a Turk loved opium better than money this was no fault of his; that he had supplied me with what I loved best in the world, and that I ought not to complain when ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... earthy-minded brother all the joys and sorrows he had found in the Glen, but now that it seemed compulsory he found keen pleasure in playing the part of the crafty guide. With unnecessary caution he first led in a wrong direction, then trying, but failing, to extort another promise of secrecy, he turned at an angle, pointed to a distant tree, saying with all the meaning he could put into it: "Ten paces beyond that tree is a trail that shall lead us into the secret valley." After sundry other ceremonies of the sort, they were near the inway, when ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... her meddling, and was sometimes tyrannical. When it was obvious that he had taken an improper line he blamed his agent; but perhaps the worst was he seldom knew when he was wrong. Then the agent's main object was to extort as much money from the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... and villages for knocking an Englishman on the head are so common a part of our Imperial routine that the last dozen of them has not called forth as much pity as can be counted on by any lady criminal. The judicial use of torture to extort confession is supposed to be a relic of darker ages; but whilst these pages are being written an English judge has sentenced a forger to twenty years penal servitude with an open declaration that the sentence will be carried out in full unless he confesses where ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... fire indeed, and Mina Zabriska occupied a position rich in importance, prolific of pleasure. Others, such as Iver and Miss S., might meet Mr Gainsborough as he took timid rambles; they could extort little beyond a dazed civility. Others again, such as Janie Iver and Bob Broadley, might comfort themselves with the possession of a secret and the conviction that they too could produce a fair sensation when the appropriate (and respectable) ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... volubility sprung upon Mrs. Cox in pumping fashion failed to extort from her anything but good-humoured smiles and laughs. If I have not taken the trouble to describe this beloved Mrs. Cox to you before this, it is because I fear you will say the picture is Unreal, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... intended to extort a declaration from the House in favour of Free Trade, and describing the Corn Law Repeal as "a just, wise, and beneficial measure," was naturally distasteful to the Ministers. Their amour-propre was saved by Lord Palmerston's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the quaint and often in the pithy manner, which renders the southern buffoon so much superior to his duller competitor of the north, and uttering a wild jumble of wholesome truths, loose morality, and witty inuendoes, the latter of which never failed to extort roars of laughter from all but those who happened to be their ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... for her own happiness. One kiss from him would be payment for it all. But all his love, all his sweetness, all his truth, all his eloquence should avail nothing with her towards overcoming that spirit of self-sacrifice by which she was dominated. Though he should extort from her all her secret, that would be her strength. Though she should have to tell him of her failing health,—her certainly failing health,—though even that should be necessary, she certainly would not be won from her purpose. It might be sweet, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... dissatisfied, all the Netherlanders were dissatisfied—and not entirely without reason—that the English, with whom the republic was on terms not only of friendship but of alliance, should burn their ships on the high seas, plunder their merchants, and torture their sea-captains in order to extort information as to the most precious portions of their cargoes. Sharp language against such malpractices was considered but proof of democratic vulgarity. Yet it would be hard to maintain that Martin Frobisher, Mansfield, Grenfell, and the rest of the sea-kings, with all their dash and daring ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... still under thirty, surveys the whole world, continent by continent, island by island, race by race, faith by faith, kingdom by kingdom, tabulating his results with an accuracy, and following them up with a logical power of generalisation which would extort the admiration of the learned ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... on the mountains upon a question of cheeses and goats, which the former claimed as annually due to the monastery; it appeared that prior to the British occupation they had been able by threats to extort this demand, but the shepherds had now determined to free themselves from all payments beyond those which the law compelled, and they resisted the priestly authority, before which they had hitherto remained as slaves. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... "that would be just as true of any other compromise. I mean like going and living in a flat and letting me do the housework—any of the things we've talked about. I can say I am going away, don't you see, but I couldn't say I'd go away—unless ... I couldn't use that threat to extort things from you without killing our whole life dead. Can't ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... pleasing to Marlborough, who grieved to see the poor people suffering from their master's ambition. The Elector shed tears when he heard of these devastations, and offered large sums to prevent military execution on the land. "The forces of England," replied the duke, "are not come into Bavaria to extort money, but to bring its prince to reason and moderation. It is in the power of the Elector to end the matter at once by coming to a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the temple of Coricancha. Indignant at the concealment of their treasures, they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture, and endeavored to extort from them a confession of their hiding-places.39 They invaded the repose of the sepulchres, in which the Peruvians often deposited their valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its dead. No place was left unexplored by the rapacious Conquerors, and they occasionally stumbled on a mine ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the editorial roosters, "that when you tip the hat-check girl she gets the tip? She doesn't. It goes to a man who rents from the restaurant the privilege of bullying you out of a dime or a quarter. The girl holds you up, because if she doesn't extort fifteen dollars a week, she loses her job and her own munificent wages of seven dollars. The 'Clarion' takes pleasure in announcing a series of portraits of the high-minded pirates of finance whom you support in luxury, when you 'give up' to the check-girl. Our first portrait, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that time formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... of the individual? Winding himself up with twopenny-worth of cheese! Pleading for the additional penny for the waitress, whose personal charms and obliging disposition must be considered to extort the amount! And above all, unable to conceive any motive, except aversion to trouble, for disliking to carry "his chop" upon a skewer through the streets of London. How every line revels in the recollection of having dined, and speaks how seldom! while the well-buttered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it. When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... is for ever excluded, the victim lay extended upon the rack, until death itself became a welcome relief; and upon its walls were arranged, in dreadful order, all the infernal instruments of torture, by which the cruelty of man endeavoured to extort from the wretched prisoners a confession of crimes, perhaps never committed, and of conspiracies, existing only in the guilty imaginations of their oppressors. A little court within the precincts of the building was pointed ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... in detail, this old man was a self-worshipper. Like all idolaters he was blind to the defects of his earthly god, and if a gleam of unpleasant self knowledge would occasionally force itself upon his notice, the conviction only rendered him more urgent to extort homage from others. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... She herself had never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother, or her husband. When at last her father had let drop some words leading her to believe that that was the fact, she tried desperately to extort the promise from Edward. She encountered an unexpected obstinacy. Edward was perfectly willing that the girls should be Catholic; the boys must be Anglican. I don't understand the bearing of these things in English society. Indeed, Englishmen seem to me to be a little mad in ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... meekness. But Beatrix's nature was different to that tender parent's; she seemed to accept her grief and to defy it; nor would she allow it (I believe not even in private and in her own chamber) to extort from her the confession of even a tear of humiliation or a cry of pain. Friends and children of our race, who come after me, in which way will you bear your trials? I know one that prays God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye all-seeing ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the relief obtained in the session preceding the last; that, to convince both of the impropriety of their peaceable conduct, opposition, by making demands in the name of Ireland, pointed out what she might extort from Great Britain; that the facility with which relief was (formerly) granted, instead of satisfying opposition, was calculated to create new demands; these demands, as they interfered with the commerce of Great Britain, were certain of being opposed,—a circumstance which could ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brother, followed the fortunes of the Marquis of Exeter, and was 'a great sufferer for his inviolable fidelity to his noble master.' So firm was his devotion that even torture failed to extort from him a confession that the Marquis and 'the Lady Elizabeth' had been involved in Wyatt's conspiracy. His 'invincible resolution' asserted their innocence, even on the rack, and Queen Elizabeth later recognized this splendid loyalty by making him 'one ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Still, the fellow, although in some respects to be pitied, was obviously a dangerous rascal, embittered and robbed of all scruples by injustice. There was something malignant in his face that testified against him; but, worse than all, he had come there resolved to extort money as the price of his connivance ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... with them for a few years at least. But from Denmark, and Sweden, and Russia, there is not much to be gained. In the mean while, wherever his iron yoke is fixed, the spirits of the people are broken; and it is in vain to attempt to extort money which they do not possess, and cannot procure. Their bodies he may command, but their bodies he cannot move without the inspiration of wealth, somewhere or other; by wealth I mean superfluous produce, something arising from the labour of the inhabitants of countries beyond what ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... from $2 to $1.50 per pound, and butter from $3.50 to $3.25; potatoes are $16 per bushel. And yet they say there is no scarcity in the country. Such supplies are hoarded and hidden to extort high prices from the destitute. An intelligent gentleman from North Carolina told me, to-day, that food was never more abundant in his State; nevertheless, the extortioners are demanding ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... time by the will of man, but men spake as if they were inspired by the Holy Ghost:" to the same effect did the Chaldeans answer king Nebuchadonazar on the interpretation of his dream, which he wished to extort from them. "There is not," say they, "a man upon earth who can, O king, satisfactorily answer your question; let no king therefore, however great or potent, make a similar request to any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean; for it is a rare thing that the king requireth, and there is none other ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... although they read very well in newspapers, and serve to entertain mankind with vague ideas of the progress of freedom, are generally the essence of an intense egotism, and amount to nothing more than cunning devices to subvert what little of liberty their subjects may be likely to extort from them by the maintenance of their rights. I do not say that Alexander II. is governed by these motives, but, having no faith in kings or despots of any kind, however good they may be, I can see no reason why he should prove any better ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the recent death of his father, had been put in possession of a splendid fortune, the proposition allured her father, who wrote him a complaisant answer, with an invitation to his house.—He then strove to extort a promise from Melissa, that she would break off all connexion with you, see you no more, and admit the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... same rate he sets on himself; and upon all signs of contempt or undervaluing naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which among them that have no common power to keep them quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other), to extort a greater value from his contemners by damage, and from others by the example.... Hereby it is manifest, that during the time that men live without a power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.... In such ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... meaning, for he was a lofty and original thinker. He was colossal and magnanimous both as man and writer. Carlyle says of him: 'His intellect is keen, impetuous, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest materials, and extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humor he sports with the highest and lowest; he can play at bowls with the Sun and Moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams; we sail with him through the boundless Abyss; and the secrets of Space, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... order to receive the pardon which was promised by the King. But no such confession was made. All the prisoners denied the charges brought against them. Then the usual mediaeval expedient was resorted to, and torture was used to extort acknowledgments of guilt. The unhappy Templars in Paris were handed over to the tender mercies of the tormentors with the usual results. One hundred and forty were subjected to trial ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ladder against the wall, and held it steady while her companions descended. She felt in good spirits, for she had enjoyed the fun of keeping them imprisoned, and had been able by guile to extort a promise which her strongest protests had hitherto ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... well pleased that Guatimotzin had concealed much treasure, as he expected to procure the whole for himself. It was then proposed in the army, that Guatimotzin and the prince of Tacuba, his most confidential counsellor, should be put to the torture, to extort confession of where the treasure was secreted; this horrid act was certainly greatly against the inclination of Cortes, yet he was forced to leave the unfortunate king and the lord of Tacuba at the disposal of those avaricious wretches, who alleged that our general ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... seemed to expect that I must always concur in what he said. At times however I was obliged to dissent from his sayings, and then would follow a little controversy. Those controversies were never very profitable, in consequence of his constant desire to force his own opinions on me, and to extort from me assent to his whimsical and foolish observations. Yet he still continued to force ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... womanhood and desiring to effect a reform, mistook the sources of the evil, and, rushing to the opposite extreme, demanded power, which as a privilege they already possessed, but as a right could not extort. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Roderigo. My father was that Sebastian ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... knocker; it was Helena who, delighted to have anything happen, ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr. Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age. She could behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the poems of Emerson, and ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... sacrificed in favour of the Zemindars, who were thus at once constituted great landed proprietors and absolute masters of a host of poor tenants, with power to punish at discretion those who were so unfortunate as not to be able to pay a rent the amount of which had no limit but that of the power to extort it. It was the middleman system of Ireland transplanted to India; but the results were at first unfavourable to the Zemindars, as the rents, for which they themselves were responsible to the government, were ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... lying. How do all these people live? That is a mystery. But they do live, and they live well. They have, or at least seem to have, money; and they shine, they intrigue, they conspire, they make believe, and they extort. So that I verily believe all this high-life society, by dint of helping one another, of pushing and crowding in, will, in the end, be master of all. You may say that I am not in the crowd. Very true. I willingly shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and who earn their living ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... mean to try and extort a confession from Laleli herself? How in the world do you mean to do it? It is a case of ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Beljame has shown us how the milieu was created in which, with no subvention, whether from a patron, a theatre, a political paymaster, a prosperous newspaper or a fashionable subscription-list, an independent writer of the mid-eighteenth century, provided that he was competent, could begin to extort something more than a bare subsistence from the reluctant coffers of the London booksellers. For the purpose of such a demonstration no better illustration could possibly be found, I think, than the career ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... horsemen, to co-operate with them in an effort to expel Daisy from Gedingooma; for until Daisy should be vanquished or humbled they considered that they could neither return to their native towns nor live in security in any of the neighbouring kingdoms. With a view to extort money from these people by means of this treaty, Ali despatched his son to Jarra, and prepared to follow him in the course of a few days. This was an opportunity of too great consequence to me to be neglected. I immediately ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... of undoubted fidelity who in this way extort from their feeling husbands cashmere shawls, diamonds, the payment of their debts, or the rent of a box at the theatre; but almost always vapors are employed as ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... pamphlet with success, called, A Letter to a Friend in the Country, occasioned by a Report that there is a Design still forming by the late Directors of the South-Sea Company, their Agents and Associates, to issue the Receipts of the 3d and 4th Subscriptions at 1000 l. per Cent. and to extort about 10 Millions more from the miserable People of Great Britain; with some Observations on the present State of Affairs both at Home and Abroad. In the same year he published A Letter to Mr. Law upon his Arrival in Great ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... plundered Hamburg and the whole of Northern Germany," said the emperor, shrugging his shoulders. "And does not Bonaparte demand any money this time? Will he content himself with provinces, fortresses, and contributions in kind? Will he extort no ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Francois, you know full well: not even your unkind desertion could affect that love, which was unchangeable. I dared all for your sake; my brothers, my father, could not extort the secret from me, and their suspicions although directed towards you, could never be confirmed. I bore the offspring of my guilt in solitary anguish, afterwards loaded with reproaches when I needed comfort and consolation, and stunned with imprecations ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... that he had bought the country, and issued grants therefor. Tom held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia repudiated Henderson. Keen-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and tract upon tract from the State, and crossed the mountains to extort. Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the shameless, thronged day after day by the homeless and the needy, jostling, quarrelling, beseeching. Even as I looked upon this strife a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he meant to extort or wheedle it from his consort's keeping, but he had implicit faith in his own ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... failed to elicit a confession from those who professed the most entire accord with the teachings of Rome. In the absence of overt acts, it was difficult to reach the secret thoughts of the sectary. Trained experts were needed whose sole business it should be to unearth the offenders, and extort ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... responsibility ends. Your daughter's life rests literally in your hands; for unless you consent to furnish the money to pay for a surgical operation, which may restore her health, she will certainly die. I am indulging in no exaggeration to extort alms. In this letter is the certificate of a distinguished physician, corroborating my statement. If you, the author of her being, prefer to hasten her death, then your choice of an awful revenge must be settled between your hardened conscience and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... disinterested lover, but a friend, an angel of consolation, the equal of man in character, and his superior in the virtues of the heart and soul. It was not till then that she was seen to have those qualities which extort veneration, and call out the deepest sympathy, whenever life is divested of its demoralizing egotisms. The original beatitudes of the Garden of Eden returned, and man awoke from the deep sleep of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... strode desperately toward the stage, staring at its polished boards as if to extort their secret, he discerned the shining pipes of the monster mechanical organ that Balakian municipal pride had imported and installed there. Pobloff was a man of fertile invention: the organ might serve his ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... The Piper, who the Pythian Measure plays, In fear of a hard matter learnt the lays: But if to desp'rate verse I would apply, What needs instruction? 'tis enough to cry; "I can write Poems, to strike wonder blind! Plague take the hindmost! Why leave me behind? Or why extort a truth, so mean and low, That what I have ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... should be left for the pretence of misapprehension, and if modesty merely had been the obstacle, such questions would not have been wanting; but we considered, that, if the disclosure were productive of pain or disgrace, it was inhuman to extort it. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... police shall take you up. This is a plant—a plot to extort money by threats. I shall telephone for the police [he goes resolutely to the ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... cleverest thing I ever did in my life," Mr. Shaw is reported to have said to his American interviewer, "was to force my friendship on Webb, to extort his, and keep it." Mr. Sidney Webb was then, as now, the constructive encyclopaedist, the man who, wherever he went, "knew more than anybody present." "The truth of the matter is that Webb and I are very useful to each other. We are in perfect contrast, each supplying the deficiency ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... renown!—for thou art not a place of yesterday:—long before the Roses red and white battled in fair England, thou didst exist—a place of throng and bustle—place of gold and silver, perfumes and fine linen. Centuries ago thou couldst extort the praises even of the fiercest foes of England. Fierce bards of Wales, sworn foes of England, sang thy praises centuries ago; and even the fiercest of them all, Red Julius himself, wild Glendower's bard, had a word of praise for London's 'Cheape,' for so ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow |
