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Maim   Listen
noun
Maim  n.  (Written in law language maihem and mayhem)  
1.
The privation of the use of a limb or member of the body, by which one is rendered less able to defend himself or to annoy his adversary.
2.
The privation of any necessary part; a crippling; mutilation; injury; deprivation of something essential. See Mayhem. "Surely there is more cause to fear lest the want there of be a maim than the use of it a blemish." "A noble author esteems it to be a maim in history that the acts of Parliament should not be recited."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Maim" Quotes from Famous Books



... Height? Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting. Or have I heard you singing through my sleep? Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts Of what the ways of life will do to you To mould and maim you, and I have a power To bring these to expression that I knew not. Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown? I am falling, falling! Lift me: hold ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... speares all to slice. There might knight find his pere, There lost many his distrere:[13] There was quick in little thraw,[14] Many gentle knight yslaw: Many arme, many heved[15] Some from the body reaved: Many gentle lavedy[16] There lost quick her amy.[17] There was many maim yled,[18] Many fair pensel bebled:[19] There was swordes liklaking,[20] There was speares bathing, Both kinges there sans doute Be in dash'd with all ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... had to determine, some years ago, whether it is in order to allude to the Members as "infesting" the House. Had Milton been called upon for such a decision he would doubtless have ruled that the word is applicable only to Members whose deliberate intention is to maim or ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... there be implied a whole experience and a theory of life. An author who has begged the question and reposes in some narrow faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many of the sides of this various existence; for, his own life being maim, some of them are not admitted in his theory, and were only dimly and unwillingly recognised in his experience. Hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian religion; and hence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Never slumber'd, never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; 30 Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... ordered that one of his slaves should stay behind, and destroy and bury the lion; which he commanded to be done with the utmost caution, as Almurah had made a decree that if any subjects should wound, maim, or destroy any lion in his forests, the same should be put ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... and then dooms them to annihilation. The Feejees are also very much afraid of Samiulo, ruler of a subterranean world, who sits at the brink of a huge fiery cavern, into which he hurls the souls he dislikes. In the road to Ndengei stands an enormous giant, armed with an axe, who tries to maim and murder the passing souls. A powerful chief, whose gun was interred with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... with his own superstition, as a man trifles with the loaded gun that may kill him, or with the savage animal that may maim him for life. He mentioned the age (as he had reckoned it himself) of the woman in the black gown ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to destroy. All the painful, thousand years' gains of man in his upward climb through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and Cheese- Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... more. His words seemed to imply that neither he nor Rossi meant to do other than maim the journalist whom they regarded as de Courtois's dangerous helper; but he did not urge the plea. Perhaps he felt that when a Hungarian uses a knife, a trifling error in the matter of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither; you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself is partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... sanitation, and all this damned 'welfare'. Fancy a girl chained up for twelve hours every day to a thundering, whizzing, iron machine that never gets tired. The machine's just as fresh at six o'clock at night as it was at six o'clock in the morning, and just as anxious to maim her if she doesn't look out for herself—more anxious. The whole thing's still going on; they're at it now, this very minute. You're interested in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... with Monseigneur and Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne. At another time M. de Bourgogne put a cracker under her chair in the salon, where she was playing at piquet. As he was about to set fire to this cracker, some charitable soul warned him that it would maim her, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... the only way. It is the nature of the borer to maim or kill the tree; it is for the interest of the owner that the tree should live. The conflict is irrepressible, and the weakest must go to the wall. The borer evil can be reduced to a minimum by keeping the young trees banked three or four inches high with ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... would put forth that book mangled rather than full and perfect, for fear it should reprove them and their partners of their error. Call ye this trusting to antiquity, when ye rent in pieces, keep back, maim, and burn the ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... from him, but at the cost of a fearful maim. When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all necessary to him. He is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. If the principal, instead of being ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... principles was already familiar, moved, that the ministers should be ordered to attend the assembly, setting all other business aside. Others, alarmed by their own consciences, and, fearing a politic stroke, created phantoms of their own imagination. Persuaded, that Napoleon was marching troops, to maim and dissolve the national representation, they demanded with loud cries, that the national guard should be summoned, to protect the chamber. Others moved, that the command of this guard should be taken from the Emperor and General Durosnel, and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... went the Maxims; bang, bang went their field guns; up-um, up-um, up-um went their Mausers; crack, crack went our rifles. Imagine the above weapons and a few others, please, all firing, not so much to make themselves heard at the same time (they did that), but to destroy, kill and maim, and you can guess it was hard for a poor tired beggar to sleep. I was fagged out, and when we rested while our gunner friends had their innings, laid down in the blazing noon-day sun, and, with a stone for a pillow, half-dozed ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... the practices by which he has attempted to maim the Company's records, I shall state one more to your Lordships,—that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents, who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and ostensible agents who are not in ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... intervals were shorter, perhaps, owing to their simpler methods of attack." Selwyn laughed. "In their day, warfare being largely a personal or tribal affair, little time was necessary for preparation. With us the whole machinery of government is needed to murder and maim and devastate and ruin. Civilization and science and education have complicated pretty hopelessly the adjustments of disputes, the taking of territory, and the acceptance of opposing ideals. The biggest artillery and the best brains ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... from the public eye; Give him no opportunity to buy, Or to be bought; B——, though rich, was sold, And gave his body up to shame for gold. 620 Let it be bruited all about the town, That he is coarse, indelicate, and brown, An antidote to lust; his face deep scarr'd With the small-pox, his body maim'd and marr'd; Ate up with the king's evil, and his blood Tainted throughout, a thick and putrid flood, Where dwells Corruption, making him all o'er, From head to foot, a rank and running sore. Shouldst thou report him, as by Nature ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... assailant, and at the same time slashing open his left leg. The wounded man lay in the "bush" till he gathered strength to "dot and go one" homewards. Amongst these tribes the Diyat, or "blood-money," reaches eight hundred dollars; consequently men will maim, but carefully avoid killing, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... Paphnutius for instance, who was visited by such a seductress. What is the legend? To get rid of her he burns off his hand, whereupon she falls dead. He prays and she returns to life and becomes a nun. No, Messer Diavolo, I am not Paphnutius. I will not maim myself, nor do I want Carlotta to fall dead; and I cannot pray and effect a pietistic resurrection. I am simply a fool of a modern man tempted out of his wits, who scarce knows what it is ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... had been pushed upon the track by some one whose deliberate purpose it was to maim or murder him, but he could not save himself. He struck the paving, and the iron ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... wheresoe'er she pass'd. And now the battle join'd. Shield clash'd with shield[16] And spear with spear, conflicting corselets rang, Boss'd bucklers met, and tumult wild arose. Then, many a yell was heard, and many a shout 535 Loud intermix'd, the slayer o'er the maim'd Exulting, and the field was drench'd with blood. As when two winter torrents rolling down The mountains, shoot their floods through gulleys huge Into one gulf below, station'd remote 540 The shepherd in the uplands hears the roar; Such was the thunder of the mingling hosts. And first, Antilochus ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... with them, my lord of Winchester! These lusty leaders, Warwick and Lancaster, I charge you roundly, off with both their heads! Away! War. Farewell, vain world! Lan. Sweet Mortimer, farewell! Y. Mor. England, unkind to thy nobility, Groan for this grief! behold how thou art maim'd! K. Edw. Go, take that haughty Mortimer to the Tower; There see him safe bestow'd; and, for the rest, Do speedy execution on them all. Be gone! Y. Mor. What, Mortimer, can ragged stony walls Immure thy virtue that aspires to heaven? No, Edward, England's ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... the law to be this: That a sentinel shall not use more force or violence to prevent the escape of a prisoner than is necessary to effect that object, but if the prisoner, after being ordered to halt, continues his flight the sentinel may maim or even kill him, and it is his ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... I to be shut out when that woman is allowed to be there, with her husband probably hanging about the place all the time to see who else there is to shoot and maim?" ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... in Sound as in b bib v valve d did th this g gig z zin j jug z azure n nine r rare m maim w we ng hang ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... of such a tilt a knight unhorsed, or forced across the boundary, became a prisoner, and could fight no longer. The Spaniards, with great cunning, set themselves to maim the horses; and by these tactics, eleven of the French were soon dismounted. Two alone were left to carry on the contest, Bayard and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... out at arm's length between his thumb and forefinger, but his hand was trembling so that Fred had to be very careful for fear that he would hit the hand and thus maim him for life: but the bullet went square through the apple, and it ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish

... branded on the forehead with a red hot iron, "that the mark thereof may remain." If a white man met a slave, and demanded of him to show his ticket, and the slave refused, the law empowered the white man "to beat, maim, or assault; and if such Negro or slave" could not "be taken, to kill him," if he would not ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... what by nature they are meant to be, but what society makes them. The generous feelings and higher propensities of the soul are, as it were shrunk up, scared, violently wrenched, and amputated, to fit us for our intercourse in the world, something in the manner that beggars maim and mutilate their children to make them fit for their future situation ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... brethren being even members of the Volksraad and men who had played a prominent part in the Republic's history; while to the everlasting shame of them and their race, a number of other Boers entered at once into the English service and henceforth used their rifles to shoot at and maim their own fellow-countrymen. ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... power of the wretch who has disabled him for life—protecting the victim from the fury of his tormentor, by putting him into his hands! What but butchery by piecemeal can, under such circumstances, be expected from a man brutal enough at first to 'maim' and 'disable' him, and now exasperated by being obliged to pay his full value to the master, and to have, in addition, the daily care and expense of his maintenance. Since writing the above, we have seen the following judicial decision, in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... even of conscience. He added to a passionate love of mischief a cruel disposition and a violent, ungovernable temper. He had no sympathy with any thing that was good. His boyish pleasures were of the criminal and unfeeling cast. He would rob the nests of birds, and mangle and maim the young ones, that he might be diverted by their mother's cries. He would throw broken pieces of glass into the street, where the children passed barefooted, that they might hurt their feet. He would ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... instincts of fighting and killing are good qualities to possess? Has your trip around the world borne no good results? You have observed that your own species, like other savage beasts, quarrel, fight, maim and kill each other through selfish motives, and you have condemned them for it; now you would continue to do the very same thing yourself and think that I would consider it courageous. According to one of our ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... increase or decrease must be carefully observed by any government that designs to thrive; that is, their increase must be promoted by good conduct and wholesome laws, and if they have been decreased by war, or any other accident, the breach is to be made up as soon as possible, for it is a maim in the body politic affecting ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... their motives are, what are the data on which they form their opinions—so that to cut off the discussion of other personalities, on ethical grounds, is like any other stiff and Puritanical attempt to limit interests, to circumscribe experience, to maim life. The criticism, then, or the discussion, of other people is not so much a CAUSE of interest in life, as a SIGN of it; it is no more to be suppressed by codes or edicts than any other form of temperamental activity. It is no more necessary to justify the ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in decency as to use animals to fight fur our recreation instead of human bein's. Bulls hain't spozed to have immortal souls, and think how America pays two men made in the image of God so much an hour—high wages, too—to beat and pound and maim and kill each other for the amusement of a congregation of Christian men and wimmen, who set and applaud and howl with delight when a more cruel blow than common fells one on 'em to the earth. And then ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... which the spirit disavows. Pascal laid aside mathematics; Origen doctored his body with a knife; every day some one is thus mortifying his dearest interests and desires, and, in Christ's words, entering maim into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is to supersede the lesser and less harmonious affections by renunciation; and though by this ascetic path we may get to heaven, we cannot get thither a whole and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... very good," Bertram answered in his gentlest voice, "if he hires himself out indiscriminately to kill or maim whoever he's told to, irrespective even of the rights and wrongs of the private or public quarrel he happens to be employed upon? It's an appalling thing to take a fellow-creature's life, even if you're quite, quite sure it's just and necessary; but fancy contracting ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... But the greatest maim given to that general reception which the writings of our society have formerly received, next to the transitory state of all sublunary things, has been a superficial vein among many readers of the present age, who will by no means be persuaded to inspect beyond ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... intruder. For what saith the Scripture? 'When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but if one stronger than he cometh, he divideth the spoils.' Moreover it is written: 'His bishopric let another take.' Having solemnly sworn that I would not kill or blind or maim my enemy, or imprison him in a monastery, and the price of absolution from an oath in this corrupt age exceeding all reason and Christian moderation, I knew not how to take vengeance on him, until a sagacious counsellor ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store thou shalt fill each jar brim-full, by-and-by, dost thou think that then wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... "The mere contemplation of physical violence unmans that Frog. He'd about as soon have a beatin' as have a leg cut off with a case-knife. S'pose me and the Kid lure him to some lonely spot—some good yellin'-place—and set upon him with a coupla pick-handles. We'll make him confess or we'll maim and meller him till he backs out through his ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... how much foundation the press and the public had for this opinion. There had been no decisive disaster, if there had been no actual gain; and the main result had been to maim men and show that both sides would fight well enough to leave all ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... fore-arm, either crushing in the head or chest by sheer force of sinew, or else tearing open the body with its formidable claws; and so on the other hand he may, and often does, merely disfigure or maim the foe by a hurried stroke. Hence it is common to see men who have escaped the clutches of a grisly, but only at the cost of features marred beyond recognition, or a body rendered almost helpless for life. Almost every old resident of western Montana or northern Idaho has known ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... too I know—and wise it were If each could know the same— That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim. ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde

... Nigeria, seriously, deliberately, with a more or less unconscious insight into the secrets of Nature, offer up human sacrifices on their altars, and when some ignorant European intrudes and calls them "blood-thirsty" we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend the half, and sometimes more than the half, of our national incomes in sharpening to the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it is still a custom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy "Quite So." It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; but it stuck to him with such bur-like tenacity, and is so inseparable from my memory of him, that I ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... knights and nobles, Lament your late unthrift (your conscience speaks The causes of their blame); and wish you warned, As wisdom is the highest charity, No more to interfere, from private feeling, With heaven's stern laws, or maim the sovereign's wealth, To save superfluous ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... address of "O-yez! O-yez!" These words immediately arrested the ears of our adventurer; and, to his very great astonishment, he heard him thus proceed—"This is to give notice, that whereas some evil-disposed person, or persons, did wantonly cut and maim the parson's white mare, which was grazing in the church-yard last night, a reward of ten guineas will be given to any person who will discover the offender, or offenders, so that they may be brought to justice! God save the King!" ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... the Reader an account, Why the following Treatise is suffer'd to pass abroad so maim'd and imperfect, I must inform him that 'tis now long since, that to gratify an ingenious Gentleman, I set down some of the Reasons that kept me from fully acquiescing either in the Peripatetical, or in the Chymical Doctrine, of the Material ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... because he thought I was in danger," she mused. "And MacNair would have killed him. Oh, it is terrible," she moaned. "This wild, hard wilderness, where human life is cheap; where men hate, and kill, and maim, and break all the laws of God and man; it is all wrong! Brutal, and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... to wantonly torture or maim an enemy, whoever or whatever he may be, however great his crime. Not even the express command of a superior officer can justify such doings, because it is barbarity, pure and unmitigated. In war these things are morally ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... be served the same in the world to come," grumbles the old man, setting straight his cap, which had slipped on the back of his head from the jolt. "He'll maim all my cattle ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Don Jorge, I have a son a soldier and a sergeant in the Christino armies, sorely against his own inclination, poor fellow, for he likes not the military life, and I have been soliciting his discharge for years; indeed, I have counselled him to maim himself, in order that he might procure his liberty forthwith; so I said to this lad, Stay at home, my child, till your brother comes to take your place and prevent our bread being eaten by strangers, who would perhaps sell me and betray me; so my son staid at home as you see, Don Jorge, at ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... two reasons for it. The first—the one most often heard—was the story going round that he had been, and probably still was, out of his mind. No deadlier or crueler weapon can be used against a man than that same charge as to his sanity. It has been known to destroy, or seriously maim, brilliant and able men with no trace of any of the untrustworthy kinds of insanity. Where the man's own conduct gives color to the report, the attack is usually mortal. And Norman had acted the crazy man. The second reason was the hostility of Burroughs, reinforced by all the ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting, So they watch'd what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life, ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... a shrewd experienced party leader, that every available weapon of Parliamentary warfare would be used, as they were used, against his bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws, in order to strike it down by sheer defeat if possible, but if not, at least to maim and lop ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... them with the good food which God has made for them, will supply themselves with poison— indications of spiritual faculties, which it is as wicked to stunt or distort by mis-education as it is to maim our own limbs or stupefy our understanding. Our humanity is an awful and divine gift; our business is to educate it throughout—God alone must judge which part of it shall preponderate over the rest. But ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... he said. "Every Tough in the place is free to maim or kill any Jelly he sees, without fear of restraint or punishment. That should bring them ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... take an Apprentice, unless he be a perfect youth having no maim or defect that may render him uncapable of ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... understood, which is the present case. I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maim'd, when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few. How few are there who can read Chaucer so as to understand him perfectly! And if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure. 'Tis not for the use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these pains with him: let ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... had (and has) three ways of denying them. The first is to say nothing about them. It is the easiest way of telling a lie. The second is to say that they were the result of a vast conspiracy which the priests directed and the feeble acquiescence of the maim, the halt and the blind supported. The third (and for the moment most popular) is to give them modern journalistic names, sham Latin and Greek confused, which, it is hoped, will get rid of the miraculous character; notably do such ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... alteration, motion, or change; but all things immutable, unsubject to passion, blest with eternal continuance in a life of the highest perfection, and of that complete abundant sufficiency within itself which no possibility of want, maim, or ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... could pass, in scrubby country, and between the bogs was a sort of bridge of dry land. By these two avenues the English might assail the Scottish lines. These approaches Bruce is said to have rendered difficult by pitfalls, and even by caltrops to maim the horses. He determined to fight on foot, the wooded country being difficult for horsemen, and the foe being infinitely superior in cavalry. His army was arranged in four "battles," with Randolph to lead the vaward and watch ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... August, 1849. It was presided over by Chief Justice Goodrich, assisted by Judge Cooper, the term lasting one week. There were thirty-five cases on the calendar. The grand jury returned thirty indictments, one for assault with intent to maim, one for perjury, four for selling liquor to Indians, and four for keeping gambling houses. Only one of these indictments was tried at this term, and the accused, Mr. William D. Phillips, being a prominent member of the bar, and there being ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... than a negative merit, in being only able to do us more harm by their leaving us without notice, than they could do us good by remaining with us: For though the best of them could not support a play, the worst of them by their absence could maim it; as the loss of the least pin in a ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... at me still grinning. "Hurt? You're right I'm hurt, Inspector! Them goons tried to kill me. Let's see—assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to kill, assault with intent to maim, attempted murder, and—" He paused. "What ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the future spread out far away in misty horror and dread. What might not, become of her boy, with such a father's influence? was her first thought;—nay, who could tell but in some fury of drink he might kill or maim him? A chill of horror crept over Hitty at the thought,—and then, what had not she to dread? Oh, for some loophole of escape, some way to fly, some refuge for her baby's innocent life! No,—no,—no! She was his wife; she had married him; she had vowed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... introduced his first Home Rule Bill. Twelve months earlier, under guidance of Land League, Ireland was in a parlous state. Coercion Act in full force. Jails thronged with patriots convicted under its rigorous clauses. Still there were left at liberty enough to maim cattle and shoot at landlords. If Germany had happened to step in at that epoch it would have been a perilous time for England. The House of Commons after many years' hesitation has offered to bestow Home Rule upon Ireland and this is Ireland's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various

... no more," he declared. "You're past help, Clint. You've tasted blood. Go on, you poor mistaken hero, and maim yourself for life. I wash my ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... hails Shot and shell—link by link, out of hardship and pain, Toil, sickness, endurance, is forged the bronze chain Of those terrible siege-lines! No change to that toil Save the mine's sudden leap from the treacherous soil. Save the midnight attack, save the groans of the maim'd, And Death's daily obolus due, whether claim'd By man ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... not embittered Him. The "milk of human kindness" was still sweet. Nothing could sour our Lord, and convert His goodwill into malice, His serene beneficence into wild revenge. And how is it with me? Are my foes able to maim my spirit as well as my body? Do they win their end by making me a smaller man? Or am I magnanimous ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... from it. We acknowledge in sorrow that we have followed strange gods, and worshiped at the worldly altar of wealth and cleverness, and believed that these things were success in life. Now we have had before our eyes the spectacle of clever men using their cleverness to kill, maim and destroy innocent women and children; we have seen the wealth of one nation poured out like water to bring poverty and starvation to another nation, and so, through our tears, we have learned the lesson that it is not wealth or cleverness or skill or power ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... off, he had the power of restoring it; and when his head was cut off, he could take it up and replace it. When Astolpho encountered this magician, he was informed that his life lay in one particular hair; so instead of seeking to maim his adversary, Astolpho cut off the magic hair, and the magician fell lifeless at ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Democrats abuse the negro. I defended him, and they mobbed me for doing it. Oh, justice! [Loud laughter, applause, and hisses.] This is as if a man should commit an assault, maim and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being called in should begin to dress his wounds, and by and by a policeman should come and collar the surgeon and haul him off to prison on account of the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... S., the veterinary surgeon of Montenegro. We had not got more than fifty yards from the hotel when we were forced to beat a hasty and ignominious retreat. At Eastertide, which is one of the biggest feasts in the Greek Church, beggars, halt and maim, blind and tattered, pour into all the larger towns of the country. They come from Turkey, Albania, Bosnia, and Dalmatia—in fact, from everywhere within reach—and make a rich harvest, for the Montenegrin ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... shape was human. It had the head and shoulders of a man, and a torso that could twist with muscular purpose, and massive hands that could maul and maim. It threw the hapless man from it with a sudden convulsive contraction of its entire bulk. I had never seen a human being move in quite that way, but even as its violence flared its ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long

... if then the tyrants dare, Let them ride among you there, Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew— What they like, that ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... eruption the war has thrown up the sordid passions, the hidden reserves of destructive hate and cruelty in our common human soul. In war all things are permissible. To murder, to maim, to destroy, to deceive, to make hideous waste of fertile land, to cause weeping and wailing amongst the innocent—these are the necessities of warfare. They are the commonplace incidents of war. There are ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... to admit as members women, slaves, persons not free-born, and persons having any maim, defect, or imperfection in their bodies; or, at least, the principles of Masonry forbid the admission of all such persons. (Masonic Constitutions, published by authority of the Grand Lodge of Ohio, ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher

... certified that, as some benevolent minds have tried to infer, our dumb fellow-creatures would share a future existence, in which it is to be hoped we should neither beat, starve, nor maim them, our ambition for a future life would cease to be "lofty!" This is a notion of loftiness which may pair off with Dr. Whewell's celebrated observation, that Bentham's moral theory is low because it includes justice and mercy ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... adjusted the plank over the chasm in such a way that his victim would be pitched down upon the sharp rocks beneath, the instant he stepped upon it. The fall would not kill him—it would only bruise and maim him. Levi was beneath the rocky precipice, and ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... instruments of travelling. I have, however, an hour-glass, which embraces four hours in the time of emptying, and which I found useful in Ghadames, but make no use of it en route. I consider the objects of my tour moral, a random effort to maim, or kill, or cripple the Monster Slavery, a small rough stone picked up casually from the burnt and arid face of The Desert, but with dauntless hand thrown at this Titanian fabric of crime and wickedness. However, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... it strange that love like thine and mine 'Twixt two in state so sunder'd should be bred, That he who did all worths in him combine, Birth, beauty, wit, wealth, me thus honoured, Me, the poor motley, maim'd by Fortune's spite, Sear'd and o'erworn with tyranny of time, Whose wit was but the wit to learn to write When thou, my Muse, inspir'dst my pupil rhyme. Thou wert the wide world's pride, but I his scorn; His pattern thou, I his poor toy and tool; Whence therefore ...
— Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost • Gregory Thornton

... for dividends. Starve and freeze and maim for dividends. Drive parents to suicide, and sons and daughters to crime and prostitution—for dividends. Not fair competition, in which the stronger and better would survive, but cheating and swindling, lying and pilfering and bribing, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... his own aphorism; and says, "It is certainly to be feared that, if this pruning of our words of all the superfluous letters, as they are called, should be much farther indulged, we shall quickly antiquate our most respectable authors, and irreparably maim our ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... individual revolt and individual perfection. I showed them that sin with its curiosities widened the horizons of life. Prejudices and prohibitions are mere walls to imprison the soul. Indulgence may hurt the body, Frank, but nothing except suffering hurts the spirit; it is self-denial and abstinence that maim and deform ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... golden-winged to bear a message: "Go thy way, fleet Iris, turn them back, neither suffer them to face me; for in no happy wise shall we join in combat. For thus will I declare, and even so shall the fulfilment be; I will maim their fleet horses in the chariot, and them will I hurl out from the car, and will break in pieces the chariot; neither within the courses of ten years shall they heal them of the wounds the thunderbolt shall tear; that the bright-eyed one may know the end when she striveth against her father. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... I said yesterday, that we haven't maimed him at all. He had his own reasons for going into his hole, and he never would have come out again if you hadn't goaded him. Now he's out, and we'll have to step around pretty lively, I can tell you, or he'll maim us." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill



Words linked to "Maim" :   cripple, maimer, wound, lame, mar



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