"Torturer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word. I come, besides, direct from the torture-chamber. After I had escaped from my torturer I was standing in a damp, narrow, totally dark passage. By groping along I reached a descending staircase; I slowly walked on and only stopped when I felt the moisture under my feet. But what could I do? I cautiously groped ahead, and soon ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... embraced me because I claimed acquaintance with the El Dorado bar in Buenos Ayres. From that instant I was lost. Like St. Augustine on the gridiron, no sooner was I nicely toasted on one side than I was turned on to the other. That grinning penny-a-liner, Peters, too, helped as assistant torturer. Wait till he asks me for a 'pointer' in this or any other case. He sold me a pup to-day, but I'll land him with ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... we to make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the medieval torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise, tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of describing ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... of the Turkish Government. And what had been done, and was daily being done, could be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. Plunder and murder were bad enough, but these were almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the torturer. And the victims were defenceless men, women and children—Armenians, one of the oldest Christian civilized races, and one of the most pacific, industrious and intelligent races ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... dogs of war, Let slip on unresisting innocence? Why suffereth He that thus a rival mar His cherished work—through devastated fields Borne on triumphant in ensanguined car?— Him, who with power to rescue, tamely yields His helpless charge to persecuting hate, Nor His own offspring from the torturer shields, But sits aloof, callously obdurate, While but the will is lacking to redeem,— Him, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... wailed, screamed with laughter, howled the loving petition in a dozen keys of mockery, while Hedrick writhed and Lolita clung. Enriched by a new and great experience, the torturer trotted on, leaving ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... This avenging God, rancorous torturer who burns his creatures in a slow fire! When they tell me that God made himself a man, I prefer to recognize a man who made himself a god.—Alfred ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... houseless, dirty, ignorant, all that is to him as natural as that he should have a skin. But for us, for the most of us, civilization has bred desires which she forbids us to satisfy, and so is not merely a niggard but a torturer also. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than you or I!—What is that great bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.—For you to drink,—said the torturer to the little woman.—She could not think that it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The torturer knew ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... tone of voice; "the truth and nothing else? Well, Waerli, if you must know . . . how I grieve to hurt you . . ." Waerli's heart sank, the tears came into his eyes. "But since it must be the truth, and nothing else," continued the torturer, "well Fritz . . . ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... most horrible agony that Jimmie had ever dreamed of. His voice rose to a shriek: "Wait! Wait! Listen!" The torturer would relax the pressure and say: "The names?" And when Jimmie did not give the names, he would press harder yet. Jimmie writhed convulsively, but the other two men held him as in a vice. He pleaded, he sobbed and moaned; but the walls ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... over the horrors are only beginning. First, your whole face is cooked for several minutes in relays of towels steeped in boiling water. Then a long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally with the torturer's naked hand. The sequence of these essences varies in different "parlours," but one especially loathsome hell-brew, known as "witchhazel" is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds have to be elaborately doctored with stinging chemicals; your hair, which has been hopelessly ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... far more than his fair share of a recently arrived batch of heretics had been allotted to him. During the midday break for refreshments his dreamy assistant had allowed the furnace to go out, bringing upon the torturer's own head a severe censure for the consequent delay. In the afternoon, glancing occasionally through the narrow window, he was mortified to see that the promising rain-clouds, which might yet have saved his cabbages, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... relations of Ireland with England have been, for so many centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim with his torturer." ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, in last hope frustrated, I so far ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... down, the garbage of the pit, Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife, The Sin still blithe on earth that sent ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... groves of calm, Beyond the city, but below the caves, Lodged such as hold the body foe to soul, And flesh a beast which men must chain and tame With bitter pains, till sense of pain is killed, And tortured nerves vex torturer no more— Yogis and Brahmacharis, Bhikshus, all— A gaunt and mournful band, dwelling apart. Some day and night had stood with lifted arms, Till—drained of blood and withered by disease Their slowly-wasting joints and ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... He will have ink about him, of course. With this remedy, then, let's change our complexions, from hair to toe-nails! Then, in the guise of Ethiopian slaves, we shall be ready at hand to wait upon you, light-hearted as having escaped the torturer, and, with our altered complexions, we can impose upon our enemies!" "Yes, indeed," sneered Giton, "and be sure and circumcise us, too, so we will be taken for Jews, pierce our ears so we will look like Arabs, chalk our faces so that Gaul will take us for her own sons; ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... torturer's whip with patience, but he rebelled against the stones, and struggled in his fetters till the old pillory- wheel creaked on its timbers. Then, as he could accomplish nothing by his struggles, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... callous and hairy shoulders laid bare. During this gayety, a man in the livery of the city, short of stature and robust of mien, mounted the platform and placed himself near the victim. His name speedily circulated among the spectators. It was Master Pierrat Torterue, official torturer ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a prison first, as a residence after the death of Augustus, might be made habitable even now. Exceedingly interesting are the old-time torture chambers and the subterranean living rooms of the "sworn torturer" and the dogs, ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... stubborn piece of goods. Reminds me of you at times. If he'd ever get rid of that scowl of his, he'd be even more like you. He warms to Ricky, but you'd think I was a Chinese torturer the way he acts when I go in." There was a shade of irritation ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... torturer been Cochise, there might have been no room for hope. But Slade was a white man. He might prefer gold to the lust of torture. The death of his victim would mean the loss of the ransom money. Lennon's tense nerves and rigid muscles relaxed. He allowed his upward—and ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... rack apart, The cords released their cruel clasp, The pincers, with their teeth of fire, Fell broken from the torturer's grasp. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Church of Saint Michel, near Rouen. Four other ecclesiastics follow them—John Roquier, Peter Bouchier, John Bonnet, John de Lenozoles; but none of these men's testimony is of any interest. The evidence of no less a person than the torturer is called next. He is named—to give him his titles in full—'Honnete homme Mauger Lessarmentrer, clerc non marier, appariteur de la cour archiepiscopalle de Rouen.' The name of the chief torturer of the good city of ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... every question she would confess nothing, we caused her to be taken by two officers and led from the prison to the torture chamber, where the torturer was in attendance; there, after cutting off her hair, he made her sit on a small stool, undressed her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling of the aforesaid chamber, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... house, and I stood watching her until she was hidden behind the old man's "stockade." Torturer she was, sometimes with her dignity, but worse with her whimsical, childish ways, when she seemed to dance on the outer edge of my life, daring me to catch her in my arms. But was it not my size that made her feel like a child? It must have ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... scaffold—thou upon a down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... pictorial conception. No one, however, who looked upon his suffering martyrs, could suppose for a moment that he honoured their martyrdom. They were but the vehicles for his hate of humanity. He was the torturer, and ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... mother, and driven by dire necessity, had discovered too late the mistakes she had been involuntarily led into by her excessive love. Still, the worthy daughter of her mother, her heart ached at the thought of worrying Wenceslas; she loved her dear poet too much to become his torturer; and she could foresee the hour when beggary awaited her, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... rather, by withdrawing from God's service, he, by God's just permission, fell under the devil's servitude on account of the offense perpetrated. But as to the penalty, man was chiefly bound to God as his sovereign judge, and to the devil as his torturer, according to Matt. 5:25: "Lest perhaps the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer"—that is, "to the relentless avenging angel," as Chrysostom says (Hom. xi). Consequently, although, after deceiving man, the devil, so far ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas |
