"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a long journey," said he, "from Plymouth rock to Norfolk Bay. Between the two points we find the changes that nearly three centuries have brought. In that time the old order has changed. We no longer burn witches or torture slaves. And to-day we neither spread our cloaks on the mud for ladies to walk over nor treat them to the ducking-stool. It is the age of common sense, adjustment, and proportion. All of us—ladies, gentlemen, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... pavement. Then, jostling their prisoners between them, hurrying them on, and smiling triumphantly at the crowd still massed around them, encouraging them almost to repeat the attempt of that young fellow so drastically punished, and so to torture their prisoners, and yet keeping the most valiant of these angry individuals at arm's length, the two men of law dragged ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the prince, as Strozzi's bucentoro shot ahead, and the red-silk curtains, falling heavily down, shut out the fearful tableau that had been prepared to torture and exasperate him. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... to decide what is cruel and what is unusual? * * * Each officer may define cruelty according to his own temper, and if it is not usual, he will make it usual. Corporal punishment, imprisonment, the gag, the ball and chain, and the almost insupportable forms of torture invented for military punishment lie within the range of choice. The sentence of a commission is not to be executed without being approved by the commander, if it affects life or liberty, and a sentence of death must be approved by the President. This applies to cases in which there has been ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... public hearing before Aurelian, so that from one of our own side he, with all the nobility of Rome, might hear the truth in Christ, and then judge whether to believe so was hurtful to the state, or deserving of torture and death.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... you get the condition of the world as it is to-day. And that you cannot trust a God whose "love" will paralyse the hand by which you have to earn a living, or snatch your baby from your breast—to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having led you to see otherwise—that you cannot trust a God like that must be more or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He cannot practise futilities ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... yet day. Fierce was the pain of my wound, But I saw it was death to stir, For fifty paces away Their trenches were. In torture I prayed for the dark And the stealthy step of my friend Who, stanch to the very end, Would creep to the danger zone And offer his life as a ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... of king William. Thirty persons were imprisoned for being concerned in these riots. One Bournois, a schoolmaster, who affirmed that king George had no right to the crown, was tried and scourged through the city, with such severity that in a few days he expired in the utmost torture. A frivolous incident served to increase the popular ferment. The shirts allowed to the first regiment of guards, commanded by the duke of Marlborough, were so coarse that the soldiers could hardly be persuaded to wear them. Some were thrown into the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... inflicted on his victim. It is an application by society of the principle of "jus talionis." Such a definition of punishment does not harmonise with the facts. We cannot punish the slanderer by slandering him in turn; and in punishing the murderer, it is impossible to torture him in the same way as he has probably tortured his victim. According to the theory of retribution, punishment becomes an end in itself; it is quite unrelated to the benefits it may confer on the person who is punished, or on the community which ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... the quality of these discharges, or from whatever cause, the interior surface of the bowels feels intolerably hot, as though excoriated, and it seems as if boiling water or aqua fortis running through the intestines would scarce torture one more than these stools. In fact, all the internal surfaces of the body are in this same burning, raw-feeling state. The brain, too, is in a highly excited, irritable condition; the head sometimes aching and throbbing, as though it must burst into fragments, and ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... glow of youth God yet himself declared; And early death, in loving truth The young beheld, and dared— Anguish and torture patient bore To prove they ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... of this my torture, quickly, there; My madam, with the everlasting voice: The bells, in time of pestilence, ne'er made Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion! The Cock-pit comes not near it. All my house, But now, steam'd like a bath with her thick breath. A lawyer could not have been heard; nor scarce ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... factor of distance from human calculations. A fortnight is a long time in modern life. It is also a long time in modern war—especially at the beginning. To be without news for a fortnight at any time is annoying. To be without news for a fortnight now is a torture. And this voyage lasts more than a fortnight! At the very outset of our enterprise we are compelled to practise Mr. Morley's ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... authority for their infernal deeds. Far into the eighteenth century in England, the clergy dragged innocent women into the courts as witches, and learned judges pronounced on them the sentence of torture and death. The chapter on witchcraft in Lecky's History of Rationalism, contains the most heartrending facts in human history. It is unsafe to put unquestioned confidence in all the vagaries of mortal man. While women were tortured, drowned ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... / "Pass we into the hall, For so the Huns shall fondly / deem we are perished all Amid the mickle torture / we suffer at their hand. Natheless shall they behold us / boun for fight before ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... like a wild beast, and I believe would have killed him, but the other Indians took him off. They seemed greatly amused at the fight; but said they were only saving us for their squaws to torture, ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... that man having advanced forward, came near the throne and kissed the foot of it, and poured forth my praise and eulogy, and said, "O king of kings, if the order for execution had not been issued in my case, I would have borne every torture, and would not have disclosed my story; but life is dear above every [consideration]; no one of his own accord jumps into a well; to preserve life, then, is right; and the abandoning of what is right is contrary to the mandates ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... she did not respect herself any more than the world respected her, but I believe thought in her heart that she was a poor-spirited, despicable little creature, whose luck in life was only too good for her merits. O you poor women! O you poor secret martyrs and victims, whose life is a torture, who are stretched on racks in your bedrooms, and who lay your heads down on the block daily at the drawing-room table; every man who watches your pains, or peers into those dark places where the torture is administered to you, must pity you—and—and thank God that he has a beard. I recollect seeing, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the penalty of their parents' sins; and there's one thing that may soften your anger a little, Letty: Eva's not right; she's not quite responsible. There are cases where motherhood, that should be a joy, brings nothing but mental torture and perversion of instinct. Try and remember that, if it helps you any. I'll drop in every two or three hours and I'll write David to come at once. He must take his share of ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... happened that little Mr. Bouncer - like his sister - was subject to uncontrollable fits of laughter at improper seasons. For the last half-hour he had suffered severely from the torture of suppressed mirth, and now, as he saw Mr. Verdant Green's climax of fright at the anticipated branding, human nature could not longer bear up against an explosion of merriment, and Mr. Bouncer burst into shouts of laughter, and, with convulsive sobs, flung himself upon the nearest seat. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... greeting produced the most violent effect my nature had so far experienced. The bitter separation of my mother's death I had thought the measure of all anguish. Now an agony at separation from my Divine Mother was an indescribable torture of the spirit. I fell moaning ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Sharp grief may torture many a heart, But its pangs are hid with wond'rous art; Breasts may harbor hate, envy or guile, But all is concealed 'neath the studied smile; And carelessly gay is each well-trained face, As the dancers flash past with ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... his body. It would begin as he lay in bed—counting interminably to get himself to sleep—between his knees and ankles, and thence slowly spread to every part of him, creeping upward, from loin to shoulder, in a gradual wave of torture that was not pain, yet infinitely worse. A dry, pringling aura as of billions of minute electric shocks crept upward over his flesh, till it reached his head, where it seemed to culminate in a white flash, which he ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... wrote Chettle, "she was alwayes so inclined to equitie that if she left Justice in any part, it was in shewing pittie; as in one generall punishment of murder it appeared; where-as before time there was extraordinary torture, as hanging wilfull murderers alive in chains; she having compassion like a true Shepheardesse of their soules, though they were often erring and utterly infected flock, said their death satisfied for death; and life for life was all that could be demanded; and affirming more, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... for work, I will compare it to an attack of herpes. I scratch myself while I cry. It is both a pleasure and a torture at the same time. And I am doing nothing that I want to! For one does not choose one's subjects, they force themselves on one. Shall I ever find mine? Will an idea fall from Heaven suitable to my temperament? ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... he had done his condisciples in the Latin school, by which means, he came to be taken notice of in the college by the professors and students. And at the same time that he made proficiency in the liberal sciences, he advanced remarkably in religion. The abstruse depths of philosophy, which are the torture of slow engines and weak capacities, he dived into without any trouble or pain. And notwithstanding his surprising attainments and improvements, his great acumen and ready apprehension of things, whereby he was able to do more in one hour, than others in some ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... no hurry a-tall," gloated the tramp, enjoying the torture of this helpless captive who had walked into his hands. "I ain't goin' to hurt you none—only make sure that you don't wander off an' hurt yourself while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be damagin' yoreself; you're valuable property. Trimm, now, I'll tell ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... contrast with his natural hand-writing before he was put upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, a very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do with the plot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily have said anything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made confessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavy upon him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... do nought for me, then?" he asked in hopeless accents. "Must I feel for ever as Herod the King felt, when he had destroyed the holy innocents? I am not worse than others—why should they torture me?" ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... just arrived at that stage of his operations which required him to torture me almost beyond my powers of endurance by grinding the two broken bone-ends together to get them in proper position, when we felt a violent concussion, accompanied by a loud explosion on deck, speedily followed by vociferous cheering; and the next moment down trundled that young scamp Smellie, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... as these, Oldbuck, unconscious of the torture he was giving, compelled Lovel to give him a share of his attention,as a skilful angler, by means of his line, maintains an influence over the most frantic movements ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... The Bird was out. He gave orders for himself not to be disturbed, and he went to bed; but in vain he tried to sleep. What rack exceeds the torture of an excited brain and an exhausted body? His hands and feet were like ice, his brow like fire; his ears rung with supernatural roaring; a nausea had seized upon him, and death he would have welcomed. In vain, in vain he courted repose; in vain, in vain he had ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the machine, and sank limply into the shaded corner of the seat. Six hours of this—it would be torture; and there would be one long night of walking to reach water; another day of waiting for night—without food—and again a long, staggering walk before they reached a ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... History. The operator unrolls before us the long panorama of wars and plots and bribes and murders: his pictures speak, but he himself seldom interjects a word. Sometimes the lack of comment seems almost brutal, but what need to darken the torture-chamber in the House ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... regarded as an incubus and a curse. From what has been said this will be recognized as one of the perversions derived from the alliance of Gnosticism with Christianity. A result of this grafting in of heathen doctrines was an abundant growth of hermit practises, by which men sought to weaken, torture, and subdue their bodies, that their spirits or "souls" might gain greater freedom. Many who adopted this unnatural view of human existence retired to the solitude of the desert, and there spent their time in practises of stern self-denial and in acts ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... some of her friends in England, was torn to pieces with red-hot pincers in a fruitless attempt to make him confess who the persons were in England for whom the letters were intended. But he bore the torture to the end, and died without betraying ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... take in what they said to each other, though I was dimly conscious that they were discussing the election. I learned afterward that McMeekin promised to be present at my meeting on the 21st in order to hear Lalage speak. I suppose that the amount of torture he inflicted on me induced a mood of joyous intoxication in which he would have promised anything. I lay in bed and did my best, by breathing hard, to shoot germs from my lungs across the room at Titherington ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... Jamie! This awful speech had hardly left his innocent lips when Will and Geordie swept him out of the room like a whirlwind, and the howls of that hapless boy were heard from the torture hall, where being shut into the skeleton case was one of the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Pensionary of the Magistrates of Rotterdam, and at present a prisoner before the Commissaries appointed by the States General to try him, has acknowledged without being put to the torture. ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... a servant at your will, But an instrument of torture if 'tis not used with skill. Beauty before her mirror studies its use with care, And deigns, perchance, to choose it an ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... south-east. But Pashai seems to me the reading to which all texts tend, whilst it is clearly expressed in the G. T. (Pasciai), and it is contrary to all my experience of the interpretation of Marco Polo to attempt to torture the name in the way which has been common with commentators professed and occasional. But dropping this name for a moment, let us see to what the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... others who stood in need of him, so that it was hard to tell, whether his nature had more in it of pride or of servility. As to his unequal distribution of punishments, as, for example, that upon slight grounds he would put to the torture, and again would bear patiently with the greatest wrongs; would readily forgive and be reconciled after the most heinous acts of enmity, and yet would visit small and inconsiderable offenses with death, and confiscation of goods; one might ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... easy as he could by the strenuous exertion of the great strength still left in his arms and his sound leg. But at last the bandages that bound his broken leg had chafed in two on the rough ledges; and even his iron nerve had not long been able to withstand the torture of the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... was precious, he continued to read the diary till he came to an entry which excited his deep interest: "Poor Allan Garland was captured to-day by the Yankees; and I suppose they will torture and starve the poor fellow, as they have the rest of our boys who have fallen into their hands. We shall never meet again. He was a good fellow. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... the deep affliction of his friends, or the tears of his wife and children, although he knew but too well the grievous torments which were prepared for him.(684) And indeed, the moment his enemies saw him returned without having obtained the exchange of prisoners, they put him to every kind of torture their barbarous cruelty could invent. They imprisoned him for a long time in a dismal dungeon, whence (after cutting off his eye-lids) they drew him at once into the sun, when its beams darted the strongest heat. They ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... returned the child to the eager arms of the mother there came a sudden terror into the eyes of both the Dakotas. They feared lest it was Double-Face come in a new guise to torture them. The rabbit understood their fear and said: "I am Manstin, the kind-hearted,—Manstin, the noted huntsman. I am your friend. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... seemed ages of this inconceivable torture, Lionel was immensely relieved to find the keeper, after a careful survey from the top of a mound to which he had crawled, motion with his hand to him to come up to his side. This he did with the greatest circumspection, scarcely raising his ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... to that. No true son of the church would ever broach such a doctrine. Only fancy, signori, the number of imaginary fires, tongues, and other instruments of torture that would become necessary to carry on punishment under such a system! To be consistent, even the devils ought to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... having his victim on the ground before him, takes up his instrument of torture. This consists of a small piece of stick with sharp bones of birds or fishes attached to it. Having previously sketched with a piece of charcoal the pattern intended to be tattooed, he dips the points ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... a thing that we choose. Falling in love has been often regarded as the supreme adventure, the supreme romantic accident. In so much as there is in it something outside ourselves, something of a sort of merry fatalism, this is very true. Love does take us and transfigure and torture us. It does break our hearts with an unbearable beauty, like the unbearable beauty of music. But in so far as we have certainly something to do with the matter; in so far as we are in some sense prepared to fall ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of imprisonment, the cruelty, neglect, inadequate food and garments, her torture and indescribable sufferings, the insults of the crowd and the newspapers, her heroic death, all belong to history. "The first crime of the Revolution was the death of the king, but the most frightful was the death of the queen." ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... given on Sunday last. The hospitable master has fresh wonders in store for his friends in the new year; for, not content with treating his next-door critic after the manner that Portuguese sailors treat the Apostle Judas at Easter-tide, he is said to have perfected a new instrument of torture. This invention is of the nature of a camera obscura, whereby, by a crafty "arrangement" of reflectors, he promises to display in his own studio, to his friends, "'Arry at the White House," under all the appropriate circumstances that ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... back into his seat with a groan. "Good heavens, Maria, how you torture me! I see enough as it is—I see too much ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... there are many to whom the sight of suffering causes genuine pleasure, and in whom the passion to kill or torture is as strong as any other passion. Witness the number of boys who assemble around a sheep or pig when it is about to be killed, and who watch the struggle of the dying brute with hearts beating fast with pleasure, and eyes ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... bleeding all over. Each time that a lash fell on his wounded skin it felt as if a dagger had been stuck into my chest; but I knew Orientals too well to show any pity for the man, as this would have only involved a more severe punishment for him. So I looked on at his torture as one would upon a thing of everyday occurrence. The Lamas nearer to me shook their fists under my nose, and explained that my turn would come next, whereupon I smiled and repeated the usual "Nikutza, nikutza" ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... mistake, like many another; unlike many, she had found it out early. She was going to marry a man to whom she had no love to give; and she knew now that the life she must thenceforth lead would be daily torture. Almost the worse because she had for Mr. Masters so deep a respect and so true an appreciation. And he loved her; of that there was no question; the whole affection of the best man she had ever known was bestowed upon her, and in his hopes he saw doubtless a future when she would have ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... driven into the earthen floor. The children now profited by the examples of their parents, and amused themselves by placing live coals and red-hot ashes on the naked bodies of the prisoners, who, bound fast, and covered with wounds and bruises which made every movement a torture, were sometimes unable to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... enough in all conscience! Being short-handed at Bermuda, we had shipped a wretched little cabin-boy of Portuguese extraction, who was a native of Demerara, and glad to work his passage there, and the mate's systematic ill-treatment of this poor lad was not less of a torture to us than to Pedro himself, so agonizing was it to see, and not dare to interfere; all we could do was to aid him to the best of ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the workers became automatic. The teams had to be removed because the horses had become unmanageable under the torture of the heat. When any one spoke it was in a hoarse whisper because of a swollen larynx. Mechanically they dug, shoveled, grubbed, handkerchiefs over their faces to protect from the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... and grand dukes when there were massacres of mobs in Moscow, bloody Sundays in St. Petersburg, pogroms in Riga, floggings of men and girls in many prisons, and when free speech, liberal ideas, and democratic uprisings had been smashed by Cossack knout and by the torture of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... patience, and of torture," murmured Fredersdorf. "Four weeks to search for this black ram without a single white hair; it will be difficult ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... will straight give themselves up into your hands, make 'em and cut 'em out what religion ye please: there be delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream. What need they torture their heads with that which others have taken so strictly and so unalterably into their own purveying? These are the fruits which a dull ease and cessation of our knowledge will bring forth among the people. ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... government concealed even from the Venetians the decrepitude of the state. The government was an aristocratic sovereignty, founded on the corruption of the people and treachery, for the master sinew of the government was espionage; its prestige, mystery; its power, the torture. It lived on terror and voluptuousness; its police was a system of secret confession, of each against the other. Its cells, termed the Piombi or Leads, and which were entered at night by the Bridge ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the pleasure of the majority by urging the necessity for physical torture to wring the government's secrets from the prisoner. King, half famished, half crazed by thirst, had been listening to the fierce argument through the thin door that separated the rooms. He heard the sudden, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the escaped criminal. I have compassion for thee and mean to rescue thee. Take this sum of money; give me thy dress; and flee from the town; for if thou remainest in it till the morning thou wilt be subjected to torture and wilt lose thy life.'" The servant acted as he was bid, and brought the garments to his mistress. When it was morning she said to her husband, "I know you have long wished to eat sweetmeats, and I shall ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... haltingly, as though it had been many years since he had used it, he begged them to take him with them away from this awful country. Once on board the Marjorie W. the stranger told his rescuers a pitiful tale of privation, hardships, and torture, extending over a period of ten years. How he happened to have come to Africa he did not tell them, leaving them to assume he had forgotten the incidents of his life prior to the frightful ordeals that had wrecked him mentally and physically. He ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... despite twelve months in the tomb, looked as it had looked in life, was carried to the dungeon—in the Middle Ages a torture-room; no cry uttered there can reach the outer world—and was submitted to the ancient process for slaying a vampire. From that hour no supernatural visitant has ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... practice making perfect, for Wainwright had done little else since his kindergarten days than to think up trials for those who would not bow to his peevish will. He seemed to be gifted in finding out exactly what would be the finest kind of torture for any given soul who happened to be his victim. He had the mind of Nero and the spirit of a mean little beast. The wonder, the great miracle was, that he had not in some way discovered that Ruth had been visiting the ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... woolen wheel, being taken very strangely out of an house at Salem Village, was used by a spectre as an instrument of torture to a sufferer, not being discernible to the standers by until it was by the said sufferer snatched out of the spectre's hand, and then it did immediately appear to the persons present to be really the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... one instance at Gualeguay, in the Argentine territory, he found himself in the power of one Leonardo Millan, a type of Spanish South American brutality, by whom he was savagely struck in the face with a horsewhip, submitted to several hours' rack and torture, and thrown into a dungeon in which his sufferings were soothed by the ministration of that "angel of charity," a woman, by name ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-out his heart,—as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection all converted into indignation: an implacable indignation; slow, equable, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... some relative," Swann went on. "That would be bad enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn't have a cousin who is a silly old fool. And if that should be so, I swear there's no known or unknown form of torture I wouldn't undergo to get the old fool to introduce me to the man who composed the sonata; starting with the torture of the old fool's company, which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... beginning. Ah! what a long time ago that seems! As a child I was cruel. Most boys are cruel, I think. My school companions were a merciless set—merciless to one another, to their masters when they had a chance, to animals, to birds. The desire to torture was in nearly all of them. They loved to bully, and if they bullied only mildly, it was from fear, not from love. They did not wish their boomerang to return and slay them. If a boy were deformed, they twitted him. If ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... as a physician might after injecting a medicine. Arsdale stared back at him in dumb terror. Donaldson could almost see the gruesome pictures which danced witch-like through his disordered brain. He did n't enjoy the torture, but he must know just how much he had upon ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... have us for legislators!" These professions of faith, as we see, are not at all democratic; the sect uses the populace as revolution fodder [chair a revolution], as prime material for brigandage, after which it seizes the gold and abandons generations to torture. It is veritably the code ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... near the Cat; whereupon she seized him and taking him in her claws, began to bite him and shake him and take him in her mouth and lift him up and cast him down and run after him and cranch him and torture him.[FN63] The Mouse cried out for help, beseeching deliverance of Allah and began to upbraid the Cat, saying, "Where is the covenant thou madest with me and where are the oaths thou swarest to me? Is this my reward from thee? I brought thee ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... (1) Praying Her Majesty, our Gracious Queen, to make an end to the burning of homes and the ill-treatment of helpless women and children; if not, that they may be murdered at once, rather than die slowly by hunger and torture; (2) a petition in which it be urged that the war should be ended, and the Republics allowed to retain their independence; and finally, a pledge that those who do not wish to sign these petitions will no longer be supported by us in ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... on her beam ends, righted slowly. We knew the whale must be as good as dead, but we had no thought for him then. The smashing of the Scarboro might mean torture and death to every man of her crew. We were out of the track of general steamship routes, and far, far from land. If the bark sank, we ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... the rest halts becoming more and more frequent, and with no break in the monotony of mud and islands. As evening approached they stopped and prepared for the night. Higgins now was all but a wreck. His weight was beginning to tell upon him and his thirst had become torture. With his knife Payne cut armfuls of branches from the nearest island and piled them high upon the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... fighting bull walrus; enormously swollen, corrugated with bloats and wrinkles, blotched, bumpy, and bloody, as disgusting as it was painful. All too closely it simulated the ravages of some frightful disease, and for a night or two the torture of this itching fire kept me from sleeping. Three days, fortunately, ended the black fly reign, and left us with a deeper sympathy for the poor Egyptians who on account of their own or some other bodies' sins were the ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not go to sleep. He did not even go to bed. He spent the livelong night, as he had spent too many lately, in nervously pacing to and fro within this hushed chamber; or seated with his arms on the table, and the aching head resting on the clasped hands. And again those wild visions came to torture him—the product of a sick heart and a bewildered brain; only now there was a new element introduced. This mad project of Hamish's at which he would have laughed in a saner mood, began to intertwist itself with all these passionate longings ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... shop all was still, and in the darkness the different shafts and wheels looked very curious and threatening, so much so that it only wanted a little imagination for one to think that this was some terrible torture chamber, the door at the end leading into the place where the water torment was administered, for the curious musical dripping and plashing sounded very thrilling and strange in the solemnity ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... at full work—hissing, boiling, bubbling, scalding, roasting, frying, scorching, blazing, burning, but ever-consuming hell, sir, I say, in full operation—the whole dark and penal machinery in full play—open it up—there they are—the yell, the scream, the blasphemy, the shout, the torture, the laughter of despair—with the pleasing consciousness that all this is to be eternal; hark ye, sir, open me up a view of this aforesaid spectacle upon the very brow of perdition, and having allowed me time ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... where she used to sit, the roses she had picked the morning before; and, afterward, in the drawing-room, the piano with her music upon the rack—the hundred and one little reminders that were like so many poisoned needles to aggravate my suffering and to remind me of the torture of the days to come. She had bade me forget her. Forget! I might forget when I was dead, but not before. If I could only die then and there it would ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... cannot be imagined by one who has not felt it, grew upon me. I wanted light. The absence of it was torture! Light—to vivify the stifling air, which died as this man was dying—as I ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... very little while Mr. Brumley and Lady Beach-Mandarin had almost persuaded each other that Sir Isaac was applying physical torture to his proudly silent wife, and Mr. Brumley was no longer dreaming and glancing at but steadily facing the possibility of a pure-minded and handsomely done elopement to "free" Lady Harman, that would be followed ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... whose peculiar rasping cry we hear in the grass or young corn in the spring of the year, is easily called to the gun by rubbing one notched bone over another, or, better still, using that peculiar instrument of torture worked at fairs, and called a "scratchback"—the same which, in the palmy days of Greenwich or Charlton fairs, was retailed to the cry of "All the fun of the fair for ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the mails]. He said that since the return of Archbishop Pardo from banishment many arrests were made: of the auditors, to whom they attributed a pasquinade which had been posted; of negroes and Indians, servants and slaves, who were put to the torture, in order that they might say what suited the convenience [of the authorities]; and of ecclesiastics. Also, that a pasquinade had been published, in which was represented the king, stretched upon the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... deeply. A new torture came from it now. Did she love me—or Tarrano? I remembered the gentleness of the man with her. His dignity, his power—his undoubted genius. And who, what was I? A mere news-gatherer. A man of no force, and little personality. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... their glittering discs, and all but immeasurable distances are wholly unapproachable? Nor hardly less beyond our grasp is the commencement of organic existences. We do pride ourselves on recent advances to the sources of entity; we tear up the dead, we torture the living, and sedulously chronicle every beat of the heart and vibration of the brain to slake an insatiable curiosity, yet how unsatisfactory our reach towards the hidden springs of life—how limited our attainments, when the creation of a single blade ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... prisoners by signs and gestures, and from many a small-grated window, at an immense height, handkerchiefs were seen to wave in recognition of those below. These signals seemed to excite neither watchfulness nor prevention; indeed, they needed none, and perhaps the very suspense they excited was a torture that pleased the inhuman jailers. Whatever the reason, the custom was tolerated, and was apparently enjoyed at that moment by several of the turnkeys, who sat at the windows, much amused at the efforts made ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... a martyrdom of physical degradation quite unspeakable, and sickening even to think of for a moment, darkness, torture, utter despair, and then freedom and human tears, and this astounding roar of triumph, sympathy, and welcome! It was no wonder the scene unmanned him. The wonder was that he had not sunk into an unquestioning animalism—a mere brute state of ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Adams, in the role of sought-after, was feverish. Lately escaped from the agony and long torture of the white cold, where for hours Nature had kept the little school-teacher's vision locked in and turned upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine introspections she had gone. Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of finding ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... and twisted his body into an extensive variety of eel-like positions; thereby giving Mr. Bumble to understand that, from the violent and sanguinary onset of Oliver Twist, he had sustained severe internal injury and damage, from which he was at that moment suffering the acutest torture. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... more groans, which presently began to thrill her with an unspeakable terror. What made him do that? What had befallen him? Was he dying, and she alone with him, there in the strange forest? The thought was torture, and, nerving herself to the task, she laid her hand upon him, though her repugnance to the act was a fresh torment. It had always been one of the girl's peculiarities that she could not bear to touch any ailing thing. She would wait upon people who were ill most cheerfully, even eagerly, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... can to get away, Or you'll become the Giant's prey; He's gone to fetch his brother, who Will kill and likewise torture you." ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... attend the prayer-meeting—certainly not that of his choice; and instances are known, where the master has intruded upon the slave's secret audience with heaven, to teach him by the lash, or some other instrument of torture, that he would allow "no other ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... most of the time in summer. I suppose that's why I like to sit here. Her eyes would be dreamy and far-away until Alec would flash his welcome. How that used to torture me! But now I like to remember it. And her pretty soft foreign voice and little white hands. She died after she had lived here a year. They buried her and her baby in the graveyard of that little chapel over the harbour where the bell rings every evening. She used to like sitting ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... come back to where we started from," went on Dave. "There is a difference between being a white man's slave and being an Indian captive. The whites don't kill their slaves or torture them." ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... sometimes at dinner, drinking his beer, and slapping the table with his hand. 'You think, maybe, you're as silent as a sheep, so you must be all right.... Oh, no! You'll please look at me like a sheep too!' My position became a torture, insufferable,... my heart was growing bitter. Something dangerous began more and more frequently to stir within it. I passed nights without sleep and without a light, thinking, thinking incessantly; and in the darkness without and the gloom within, a fearful determination began to shape itself. ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... torture! How he racks and tears me! Death! Shall I own my shame or wittingly let him go and whore my wife? No, that's insupportable. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... watering, and I saw that it was actually necessary to give them a day's rest before I ventured with them into the frightful sandhills which I could see intervened between us and the distant ridges. Truly the hours I spent in this hideous gorge were hours of torture; the sun roasted us, for there was no shade whatever to creep into; the rocks and stones were so heated that we could neither touch, nor sit upon them, and the ants were more tormenting than ever. I almost ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... council fire and decide how to torture her," said Malcolm, when the captive was securely tied. But the fire was out and they had no matches. The lot fell on Malcolm to run up to the ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Our inner happiness is measured out to us by an incorruptible Judge and the mere endeavour to corrupt him still further reduces the sum of the final, veritable happiness he lets fall into the shining scale. It is lamentable enough that a Rogron should be able to torture a helpless child, and darken the few hours of life the chance of the world had given; but injustice there would be only if his wickedness procured him the inner happiness and peace, the elevation of thought and habit, that long years spent in love and meditation had procured for Spinoza and Marcus ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... may curse thee, torture thee, kill thee; yet can all these things not prevent thee from keeping at all times thy thoughts pure, considerate, sober, and just. If one should stand beside a limpid stream and cease not to revile it, would the spring stop pouring forth its refreshing waters? Nay, if such an one should even cast ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and a good deal of shuddering undergraduate life flitting about the place—luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them. You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded, for the viva voce schools are open to the public. But one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit Minos, Rhadamanthus & Co., ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... it so, Sir, for this feeling is quite as universal as the other, and so strong, that men have not only been willing to render life miserable, but even to endure death itself, with all the aggravation of torture, to smooth their way in that ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... my accursed starres that boade this ill, And those mis-fortunes to my princely loue, Reuenge thee Pompey, on this wicked brat, And end my woes by ending of my life, 400 Pom. What meanes my loue to aggrauate my griefe, And torture my enough tormented Soule, With greater greuance then Pharsalian losse? Thy rented hayre doth rent my heart in twayne, And these fayr Seas, that raine downe showers of tears, Do melt my soule in liqued streames of sorrow. If that in AEgipt any daunger bee, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... spite of a more hallowed feeling, I lifted the creeper and was about to peer into the darkness, when a sudden noise within made me jump back with affright. It was the most horrible and excruciating shriek I had ever heard in my life. If anyone by a refinement of cruelty were to compound a torture for the ears, I do not think he could produce anything half so ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... too late to throw any light on its origin. With a little ingenuity, one might, perhaps, torture some such notion out of certain fantastic sentences of Plato. In the Symposium (par. 192), however, God is represented as putting obstacles in the way of the union of fitting lovers, in consequence ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... exactly what I have said to you, and when she learns that you already know as much as I do, she may—unless, indeed, she wishes to torture me. If she won't, perhaps at least you can persuade her to come to me for a moment. Try, dear ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... lands, though what was beyond it I do not know. And yet—terrible, terrible, terrible!—I tell you that those black walls and that black water were more fearsome to look on than any churchyard vault grim with bones, or a torture-pit where victims quiver out their souls midst shrieks and groanings. And yet I could see nothing of which to be afraid, and hear nothing save that soughing of invisible wings whereof I have spoken. An empty chair, a pool of water, some walls and doors, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... from being altogether without just claims to its possession. Like most men who reason more than they feel, the Huron was not addicted to the indulgence of the more ferocious passions of his people: he had been commonly found on the side of mercy, in all the scenes of vindictive torture and revenge that had occurred in his tribe since his own attainment to power. On the present occasion, he was reluctant to proceed to extremities, although the provocation was so great. Still it exceeded his ingenuity ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the torture of uncertainty to the calm of settled grief, had still a sacred duty to live for. She had not forgotten her husband's dream. She went to the cardinal-archbishop to beg the consecration of a little burial-plot at the foot of the greatest of the beeches of Azan. That wise and ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... very unfair means were used to compel the prisoners, committed on account of the Popish Plot, to make disclosures, and that several of them were privately put to the torture. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Washington, he has left no record of them. His immense fortitude was doomed to severer trials in the future; yet perhaps this miserable morning was the darkest of his life. He was deeply moved by sights of suffering; and all around him were wounded men borne along in torture, and weary men staggering under the living load. His pride was humbled, and his young ambition seemed blasted in the bud. It was the fourth of July. He could not foresee that he was to make that day forever glorious to a new-born nation hailing ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... tries to keep his human consignment in good health, whilst, through revolutionary fanaticism, the crew of the Aix vessel detests its cargo of "black-frocks" and would gladly send them to the bottom.—According to this system, which, up to Thermidor 9, grows worse and worse, imprisonment becomes a torture, oftentimes mortal, slower and more painful than the guillotine, and to such an extent that, to escape it, Champfort opens his veins and Condorcet swallows poison.[4121]The third expedient consists ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... doctrines, in which his understanding might become confused; it was a simple question of honour betwixt man and man, friend and friend. He had the power to betray a vast number of men who had trusted him, and nothing would induce him to do it, not even the threat of torture and death. He trusted to be able to endure both, ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from Malamocco,[52:2] fourteen years old at most, "white and quiet as an apparition," with "hair like sea-moss"; her name is Phene, which, as Lutwyche explains, means sea-eagle. . . . "How magnificently pale"—and how Jules gazes on her! To Gottlieb that gaze of the young, rapturous husband is torture. "Pity—pity!" he exclaims—but he alone of them all is moved to this: Schramm, ever ready with his theories of mysticism and beauty and the immortal idealism of the soul, is unconcerned with practice—theories and his pipe bound all for Schramm; while Lutwyche ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... to stay in court and watch the torture of that unhappy man. I've dined with him times out of number; I've stayed at his house; I've ridden his horses. Oh, ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... reach, including fire, steel and powder. And I most solemnly swear, in the presence aforesaid, of the visible and invisible worlds, that I will faithfully keep the secrets of the Order, and of all the members of the same that shall be intrusted with me, and no torture of body or mind shall extort them from me. And I hereby bind myself, in the same solemn manner, and in the same presence, that I will defend the members of the Order in all circumstances and places, us ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... of the victims' children or wives, whose agony was thus begun before their own turn came. Men and women and infants were burned alive. Chinese executioners were specially hired to inflict the awful torture of the "thousand slices."[281] Officers had their limbs broken and were left for hours in agonies. Many victims are credibly reported to have been buried alive. History, from its earliest dawn down to the present day, has recorded nothing so profoundly ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... part as yet was one of sufferance: to look handsome, languid with the excess of her burden of beauty; to smile slowly, to keep her eyes on her lap. Pure passivity all this, under which the miserable soul could torture in secret. As she often had a back-ache, it was easy to wilt among her cushions; as she was always mute before flattery, to smile was as simple as to frown and meant no more; as she was ashamed of herself and her husband, she could hardly hope ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... thought; "what is it to me? I gave it all up long ago.— And yet—that dear little girl—those eyes—a Morrison every inch of her! There can be no mistake, but it is all a mystery how she happened to come here. How weak I am! why should it torture me so? Oh, Jack, Jack!" She hid her face in ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... whistles as he reefs the sail, Blithe is the smith as the blows fall like hail From his huge hammer, and the stithy rings. Work is the sole and sovereign balm that brings Peace to the torpid soul when doubts assail, And sickening pleasures are of no avail To lull the torture of affliction's stings. Give me the work I love, the work I feel God in His Heaven has willed that I should do, And you may offer the whole commonweal, Lands, mansions, jewels, gold, and temples too, Vainly ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Christian ancestors a few centuries ago if looked at from an ethical or practical point of view. At the worst, the Hawaiian sacrificed the enemy he took in battle on the altar of his gods; the Christian put to death with exquisite torture those who disagreed with him in points of doctrine. And when it comes to morals, have not the heathen time and again demonstrated their ability to give lessons in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... spring trusses in all their variations. We long ago found just why they all fail to hold or relieve rupture— just why they usually cause the wearer untold torture. ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... that, having been sent with sixpence to pay a debt, he had lost the money. The poor little fellow was in a state of mind which in a grave man would be called the anguish of despair; he must have been crying for a long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if under torture, his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such misery as only the vilest criminal should be made to suffer. And it was because he had ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... like wine, across the still lagoon, The colours of the sunset stream. Spectral in heaven as climbs the frail veiled moon So climbs my dream. Out of the heart's eternal torture fire No eastern phoenix risen— Only the naked soul, spent with desire, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... have liked to refuse, for he suddenly recalled—oh! the torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts were ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... threats were used towards him of a nature which his joint Milesian and American nature could not stand. He was told of dreadful things which could be done to him. Though as yet he could not be turned out of the House, for the state of the young session had not as yet admitted of that new mode of torture, still, he could be named. "Let him name me. My name is Mr. O'Mahony." And Mr. O'Mahony was not a man who could be happy when he was quarrelling with all around him. He was soon worked into a violent ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... from his eyes, and before departing for the pastures he went to see his mother Zebiba, and to talk with her concerning Ibla. "Ibla?" said his mother—"but a moment ago she was here beside me, and said to me, 'Comfort the heart of Antar, and tell him from me, that even should my father torture me to death in trying to change my mind, I would not desire nor ask for other husband ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... was torture to Young King Brady, and there wasn't a minute he did not have his watch in his hand and kept counting the ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... infinite torment of flies, Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field, Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be healed; Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful, pitiless knife— Torture and trouble in vain-for it never could save us a life. Valor of delicate women who tended the hospital bed; Horror of women in travail among the dying and dead; Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief, Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... active and mighty cause of the dreadful faith and fear with which the Middle Age contemplated the future life was the innumerable and frightful woes, crimes, tyrannies, instruments of torture, engines of persecution, insane superstitions, which then existed, making its actual life a hell. The wretchedness and cruelty of the present world were enough to generate frightful beliefs and cast appalling shadows over the future. If the earth ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the consistency of paste, with some small pieces of raw meat thrown into it"!! The Brothers spent part of the afternoon in the mutual good offices of picking the pandanus thorns out of each others feet and legs, the blackboys following their example. These thorns were a constant source of small torture to the party. The necessity of trying the ground in advance of the cattle prevented them wearing boots, and thus feet and legs were left without any protection, and exposed them day after day to the same annoyance. Another horse, "Creamy," ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... was still glaring in the cloudless sky when he came back to his senses; and the torture of that thirst which comes after heavy drinking was upon him. He got to his feet. The pony had gone. Afterward the searchers tracked the animal to the Sulphur Springs ranch, where it had come with the boots hanging ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... beginning—which never was—she has been building up only to tear down again. She has been fabricating pretty toys and trinkets, that cost her many a thousand years to forge, only to break them in pieces for her sport. With infinite painstaking she has manufactured man only to torture him with mean miseries in the embryonic stages of his race, and in his higher development to madden him with intellectual puzzles. Thus it will be unto the end—which never shall be. For there is neither beginning nor end to her unvarying cycles. Whether the secular optimist ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... all three we find the same ghastly pallor, the same sleeplessness which compelled them to rise, and pace their rooms at night, the same incessant suspicion; the same inordinate thirst for cruelty and torture. He took a very early opportunity to disembarrass himself of his benefactors, Macro and Ennia, and of his rival, the young Tiberius. The rest of his reign was a series of brutal extravagances. We have lost the portion of those matchless ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar |
