"Brute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed!" replied the squire; "for the sorry brute stumbled at nearly every third step, and at last tumbling down in real earnest, threw me sprawling headlong into the mud; and then favoured me with a sight of his heels, with the prospect of a couple of miles before me to hobble ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... for certain, since, though men who took an actual part in the expedition's engagements have said that they were so (the Chechintze is a vicious brute, and never gives in), I myself know but little of the affair, since I spent my whole time in the reserve, and never once did my company advance to the assault. No, it merely lay about on the sand, and fired at long range. In fact, nothing ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... necessity,—bread; yet whatever else was taken, which I had it not in my power to take, was ascribed to me. I was the filching cat, the ravenous dog, the dumb brute, who must bear all; for if I endeavoured to exculpate myself, I was silenced, without any enquiries being made, with 'Hold your tongue, you never tell truth.' Even the very air I breathed was tainted with scorn; for I was sent to the neighbouring shops ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... you did, and that's what give me courage. Oh, Kiddo, you've got to love me a little—I've never been loved by a human soul in all my life. The first thing I remember was hidin' under a stoop from a brute who beat me every night. I ran away and slept in barrels and crawled into coal shutes till I was big enough to earn a livin' sellin' papers. For years I never knew what it meant to have enough to eat. I just scratched and fought my way through the streets like a little hungry wolf till I ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... long journey from Graaf Reinet, this brute had been the cause of more trouble than all the other dogs of the pack. It had shown a strong disinclination to endure hunger, thirst, or the fatigues of the journey; and had often exhibited a desire to ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... horses across the eyes; he went back and struck them on the tender spots beneath the flanks, and the horses squirmed and stumbled, and fell to their knees again, as if they begged for mercy—Three times I tried to get at that brute, and every time I was pushed back by the railing mob who wanted no interference. I had no gun; I was helpless; I stood there with a penknife in my hands and cursed and swore to high Heaven at that barbaric beast. Then ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife or sister or mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... revolver with a sigh. "I guess you're right," he admitted, "but, I declare, it makes me mad the way that big brute is leering up ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... brute, Bethany,' said Danton apologetically; 'but, honestly, speaking for myself, simply as a man of the world, it's a big risk to be taking on—what shall we call it?—on mere intuition. Personally, and even in a court of ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Sacken arrived on the heights of Montmartre in 1814 (pardon me, gentlemen, for recalling a day unfortunate for France), Sacken (a rough brute), remarked, 'Now we will set Paris alight!' —'Take very good care that you don't,' said Blucher. 'France will die of that, nothing else can kill her,' and he waved his hand over the glowing, seething city, that lay like a huge canker ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... with half closed eyes and clenched teeth. Brute! Fool! To have come to her on such an errand. She felt a hysterical desire to strike him, to burst out crying, to blurt out the whole miserable truth. The effort to maintain her self-control was ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman, laying down the leather-cap and the tied-up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment. "Eh, my goodness, what's come o' the brute's tail? Lovyding! just see, it's clean gane! Losh keep me! that's awfu'! Div ye keep rotten-fa's about your premises, Maister Wauch? See, a bonny business as ever happened in ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... human beings had ever set their feet before the Europeans, and especially the English, explored those coasts. In several parts the natives were without any means of conveyance across even a narrow arm of the sea, and thus the brute creation were left in a long and undisturbed possession of many of the isles which lie near the main land. In the more barren and miserable of these the bird called the sooty petrel, and the seal, are the principal animals to be found, whilst in those that are somewhat ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... tenderness and respect. In every country, however, the nation at large gained greatly by the revolution, which came on insensibly, at least without any violent shock to the fabric of society, and which, by securing internal tranquillity and the ascendency of law over brute force, gave ample scope for those intellectual pursuits, that withdraw mankind from sensual indulgence, and too exclusive devotion to the animal ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... willing. They fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother. That was the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... about friendship to the captives of her bow and spear. She knows she can always get what she wants. A girl like that MUST have an arrogance of mind. And she is not a young saint. She is one of the women born with THE LOOK in her eyes. I own I should not like to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who really went mad over her—and counted her ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in this horrid snow, I've watched for hours out of my window, (that fellow Hawthorne has taken to reading, and sports oak against me till luncheon time,) and I hav'n't seen a moving creature. I began to fancy myself up in the Great St Bernard among the monks; and when that brute of yours came up and howled at my door the other day, I almost expected to find him carrying a frozen child on his back, and got out the cherry brandy to be ready for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... three times before Yussuf's confusion would allow him to answer; and the chief of the beeldars gave him a push in the ribs, and looking in his face, did not recognise him; he however supposed that he had been lately substituted by one of the other chiefs. "Answer the caliph, you great brute," said he to Yussuf, giving him another dig in the ribs with the handle of his poniard; but Yussuf's tongue was glued to his mouth with fear, and he stood trembling without giving any answer. The caliph again repeated, "What is your name, your father's name, and the amount of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the bear in the body, doing just what his shot at the buffalo had done some time before. It thoroughly angered him, without inflicting anything like a serious wound. With a growl of fury the brute made straight for him. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... their disputes with one another, were of no avail against these rude invaders, whose strong arm easily broke through the subtile webs of policy which entangled the movements of less formidable adversaries. It was the triumph of brute force over civilization,—one of the most humiliating lessons by which Providence has seen fit to rebuke the pride ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... took for its basis the hypothesis, put forward by the late Mr J.J. Atkinson, in Primal Law, of the origin of exogamy. His starting-point was mankind in the brute stage. At the point in the evolution of the human race at which Mr Atkinson takes up his tale, man, or rather Eoanthropos, was, according to his conjecture, organised, if that term can be applied to the grouping of the lower animals, in bodies consisting of one adult male, an attendant horde of ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... she had ever appeared. From this moment then, let the name of trust be a by-word for the profligate to scoff at! Let the epithet of friend be a mildew to the chaste and uncorrupted ear! Let mutual confidence be banished from the earth, and men, more savage than the brute, devour each other! ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... believe this view of him is universal among our troops in South Africa. It makes my blood boil to hear such a man called a brigand and a brute by civilian writers at home, who take as a text the reports of these solitary incidents, incomplete and one-sided as they are, and ignore—if, indeed, they know of it—the mass of testimony in ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... carved generally to decorate tombs, and those in bronze which were the household gods. It would be impossible for the general visitor to examine this collection in detail, but he may notice the chief deities with the extraordinary jumble of human and brute life which they present. First of all the visitor will remark, in the first division of the first case, a sandstone figure, seven inches high, seated upon a throne with lotus sceptres, and attendant deities; this is Amenra, the Jupiter of the Egyptians; and in the same ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... sprinkle on the earth below Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City! and thy sons I leave behind, A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; Brute things, who shut their ears when ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pre-existing emotions. When, for example, we find that very few of the lower animals show any love of accumulation, and that this feeling is absent in infancy—when we see that an infant in arms exhibits anger, fear, wonder, while yet it manifests no desire of permanent possession, and that a brute which has no acquisitiveness can nevertheless feel attachment, jealousy, love of approbation; we may suspect that the feeling which property satisfies is compounded out of simpler and deeper feelings. We may conclude that as, when a dog hides a bone, there must exist in him ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... she aggravatingly answered. "You have not kep' your hands off me yet to be let begin now. Anybody but a brute 'ud comfort a poor woman in her distress. You'll be sorry for it when I'm gone off to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Her husband had taken her in his arms, and had interrupted her words with blustering exclamations of self-reproach and self-condemnation. He was a brute, he cried, a senseless, selfish ass, who had no right to such a wife, who was not worth a single one of the tears that by now were trembling on ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... a tardy refugee straggled by the wayside, and before I reached the bakery I could hear the plaintive howls of my little brute. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... disgust and rage. "Oh, you little brute!" he shouted, and with what seemed a single gesture he flung off his coat and the low shoes he wore, and ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... though! Such an attentive, kind, and self-denying lover, as her "old man," as she called him in sport, had been, would never change into a morose brute, who could suffer his wife to climb over an awkward stile without help, and scold ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... him] Oh you are a brute. It's a lie: nobody ever saw the sign of liquor on me. [She goes back to her chair ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... a light for my pipe. I haven't had a smoke since the day we were captured. That blamed redskin took my tobacco. It's lucky I had some in my other pack. I'd like to meet him again; also Silvertip and that brute Girty." ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... as a matter of principle and for the sake of the community—a moral hero; on the other, though he was president of several charitable organizations and at least one orphan asylum he was execrated as a heartless brute, an oppressor of the poor, an octopus, a soulless capitalist who fattened on the innocent and helpless and who—Mr. Hepplewhite was a bachelor—probably if the truth could be known lived a life of horrid depravity ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... was forbidden to cycle, her thoughts harked back to her old plan of a "box on wheels." She had never been reconciled to a hammock. "I feel a brute in it, it seems so selfish to be lying there, while four boys sweat like beasts of burden. To push a little carriage is like skilled labour and no degradation." She, therefore, wrote to Miss Adam, whom she called the "joint-pastor" of her people, to send out a catalogue of "these things." ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... called so; Nay, more, a noble one—at least, in Venice: But since he hath forgotten that I am one, And treats me like a brute, the brute may turn— 'Tis ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... returned Mrs. Tallboys, "that man has used brute force to cramp woman's intellect and energy so long, that she has learnt to acquiesce in her position, and to abstain from exerting herself, so that it is only where she is partially emancipated, as in my own country, that any idea of her powers ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "What a perfect brute," said Carrie, while 'Lena and Anna drew nearer to Mabel, the one telling her "she would not care," and the other silently pressing the little hand which instinctively sought hers, as if ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... asleep George and Francoeur crept into the lower hall in search of weapons. Lances, swords, dirks, broadswords, hunting-knives and daggers glittered under the time-stained rafters—everything necessary to kill both man and brute. A complete suit of armour stood upright under each beam in an attitude as resolute and proud as if it were still filled with the soul of the brave man it had once decked for mighty adventures. The gauntlet grasped the lance in its ten iron fingers, while the shield rested against the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... imagination, most delicate taste, and sweetest feeling would have dreamed of representing a faun under this guise; and, if you brood over it long enough, all the pleasantness of sylvan life, and all the genial and happy characteristics of the brute creation, seem to be mixed in him with humanity—trees, grass, flowers, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man." This passage shows how much my father was wont to trust to first impressions, and even more on the moral than on the material side. He recognized ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... at this moment hated his friend the baronet with almost a deadly hatred; that he, rough brute as he was—for he was a rough brute—that he should speak in such language of the angel who gave to that home in Greshamsbury so many of the joys of Paradise—that he should speak of her as in some degree his own, that he should inquire doubtingly as to her attributes and her virtues. And then ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... the direction of the winds, storms, the flight of birds, the barking of dogs, the movements of snakes and serpents, peculiar marks on the bodies of children, of adults and animals, monstrosities among mankind or the brute creation, the meeting with certain persons or animals, the rustling of leaves, the change of seasons, the lustre of precious stones, all attracted man's attention. Whatever he saw might portend something to him, in fact did portend something; hence the one great aim and ideal of his ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... prosperity increased, their almost illiterate teachers gave place to a better class; and many of my Georgia readers will remember as among these the old Irish preachers, Cummings, and that remarkable brute, Daniel Duffee. He was an Irishman of the Pat Freney stripe, and I fancy there are many, with gray heads and wrinkled fronts, who can look upon the cicatrices resulting from his merciless blows, and remember that Milesian malignity of face, with its toad-like nose, with the same vividness ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the lowering look of one in whom brute instinct was sovereign for the time,—a look that makes the noblest countenance base. He was but a man,—a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life had few joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no home, no love. What future would this ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... of fearful import now, though uttered in all pureness and truth, as to a man who owned her whole heart! Love him!—that was not the dread; love was as much her life as her breath was; she knew no interval of loving for the brute fiend who mocked her with the name of husband; no change or chance could alienate her divine tenderness,—even as the pitiful blue sky above hangs stainless over reeking battle-fields and pest-smitten cities, piercing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... intended to relieve dangerous pressure within the steam-chest of human expansion and progress. But the South is determined to keep the Negro down however great may be his effort to rise. He is to be kept down by brute force if he cannot be kept down in any other way, below the social and industrial and political level of the lowest and most worthless of the whites, because he is black and because they ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... answer. "One may draw distinctions, even in that regard, but I do wish for an opportunity to discuss our quarrel without an appeal to brute force." ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... said the deacon, shocked. "Pigs are only brute animals. They have no souls. Would you be willing to give up your immortal soul for the sake of bein' idle, ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round—against the stream of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... said Elmer, "I'd say the answer to the riddle lay between the two things you mention, Lil Artha. Hen is crazed almost, but it is with fear. He finds himself in the power of a brute who is using him for his own purposes. How it's been done, of course, we can only guess, but the boy believes he has been forced to rob his guardian, and that a posse is searching right now for ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... coals of fire on my head. He gives me the place always, in regard to his son, of an intimate friend; which I never was, and God knows I never claimed to be! He took it for granted, somehow,—perhaps because of my letters at first, though any brute would have done as much at a time like that! Afterwards I would have set him right, but I was afraid of thrusting back the friendly imputation in his face. He credits me with having been this and that of a godsend to his son, when as a ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... animal; but his dog, following in the rear, gained quickly on the struggling horse, and the alligator, true to his well-known taste, loosed his hold upon the man, and catching the dog in his strong jaws, dragged the poor brute to ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... be. Nay, the very exhalations of the lungs are purer, as is obvious from the breath. That of a vegetable-eater is perfectly sweet, while that of a flesh-eater is often as offensive as the smell of a charnel-house. This distinction is discernible even among the brute animals. Those which feed on grass, grain, etc., have a breath incomparably sweeter than those which prey on animals. Compare the camel, and horse, and cow, and sheep, and rabbit, with the tiger (if you choose to approach him), the wolf, the dog, the cat, and the hawk. One ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... West Riding, or heavy woollen district, said was, what a most extraordinary thing it was that the son and daughter of that brute Clay should be so refined when their father was such a rough, uncouth man! The Clay family was one of the many instances in Yorkshire of the mill-hand who rose from being a labourer to be the owner of a large mill and enormous wealth, and who gave to his children the education he had never ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... humane feeling which should have kept him from buying and selling human beings and parting kindred—which should have made it impossible for him to have permitted the lashing, beating and lacerating of his slaves, much more the hiring of an irresponsible brute, by the year, to perform this barbarous service for him. The McGees were charitable—as they interpreted the word—were always ready to contribute to educational and missionary funds, while denying, under the ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... no possibility of getting the landing net to the water, and no opportunity of travelling the grayling up or down stream to a convenient place. I had to make the best of the position, and the best was the employment of brute force. Hauling up a 1/2-lb. fish bodily a distance of several feet, when the said fish is held only by a tiny golden palmer on the finest gut, is not a likely manoeuvre. The grayling behaved well ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... it all in, pitied, wondered, and were indignant, with all their hearts; indeed Charlie was once heard to wish he could only get that horrid old witch near the horse-pond; and when Kate talked of her Diana face, he declared that he should get the old brute of a cat into the field, and set all the boys to ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Roman element was promoted by the government through colonization and Latinizing with all vigour and at the most various points of the empire. The principle, which originated no doubt from a bad combination of formal law and brute force, but was inevitably necessary in order to freedom in dealing with the nations destined to destruction—that all the soil in the provinces not ceded by special act of the government to communities or private persons was the property of the state, and the holder of it for the time being ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three, knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... transition from the feudal forms to those which it has assumed in modern times; when the superior strength of the great vassals was circumvented by the superior policy of the reigning princes. It was the dawn of the triumph of intellect over the brute force, which had hitherto controlled the movements of nations, as of individuals. The same policy which these monarchs had pursued in their own domestic relations, they introduced into those with foreign states, when, at the close of the fifteenth ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... of you, and help me pull out this young howling brute.—Hold your tongue, sir, or ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... to Armand's lips. The warm Latin blood in him rebelled against this intolerable situation, the man's sneers in the face of Marguerite's anguish. But her restraining, gentle hand had already pressed his. What was the use of protesting, of insulting this brute, who cared nothing for the misery which he had caused so long as he ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... six centuries ago; and no power of genius, no miracle of will, can avail to revive it. Innocent III. was the last true Pope. He was the last who endeavored to make the supremacy of the moral law of the epoch over the brute force of the temporal governments—of the spirit over matter, of God ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... vainly trying to get a horse attached to a S.A.A. limber out of the ditch. It was a pitch-black night, and they were bravely endeavouring to do it without catching a glimpse of the horse. I gave them the benefit of my lamp until they had got the brute out. Two more bodies of stragglers I directed, and then pushed on rapidly to St Waast, where I found all the other motor-cyclists safe except Johnson. Two had come on carts, having been ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... reproached with wishing to turn brute force against socialism. He ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he has plainly said:—"The war which we must make against socialism must be one which is compatible with the ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... should be insincere if I did not confess that on that one occasion I was rather pleased with myself, although the very moment I stood opposite the huge, hulking, beer-sodden brute (who had looked so formidable from afar) I felt, with a not unpleasant sense of relief, that he did not stand a chance. He was only big, and even ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... gambled in small sums either. "So as I expect you won't," he continued, "I will tell you. She is the daughter of Maurice Grey, a brother of old Colonel Grey of Hentingdon, whom everybody knew, and she has been the widow of an unspeakable brute for over a year. She was an immaculate wife, and devoted daughter before that. The possibilities of her temperament ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... preditum; But for my soul I cannot credit 'em. And must in spite of them maintain, That man and all his ways are vain: And that this boasted lord of nature Is both a weak and erring creature. That instinct is a surer guide Than reason, boasting mortals' pride; And that brute beasts are far before 'em, Deus est anima brutorum. Who ever knew an honest brute At law his neighbour prosecute. Bring action for assault and battery, Or friend beguile with lies and flattery? O'er plains they ramble unconfin'd. ...
— English Satires • Various
... Quarter-Master's Wife,"—Quarter-Master willing, it is probable, to get rid of such an article gratis, much more on terms of profit. "Walrave had begged for him the Title of Hofrath from King Friedrich,"—which, though it was but a clipping of ribbon contemptible to Friedrich, and the brute of an Engineer had excellent talents in his business, I rather wish Friedrich had refused in this instance. But he did not; "he answered in gibing tone, 'I grant you the Hofrath Title for your Quarter-Master; thinking it but fit that a General's'—What shall we call her? ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... broken by their flight. Their flanks were smoking and smelt of burnt hair. The pigs, the sheep and the chickens were all tearing along mingled with the cats and the dogs. All the domestic animals were returning to a brute existence, fleeing from civilized man. Shots were heard and hellish ha-ha's. The soldiers outside of the village were making themselves merry in this hunt for fugitives. Their guns were aimed at ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... time I had fairly recovered my wits—small wonder if that amazing scene had stunned them—and I knew what I wanted. As the brute that had been carrying me turned to go I caught his arm. He hesitated, and I could feel his eyes on me, for we ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... their arts by means of Repertories and superstitious Calendars, where are represented under their proper names all the Naguals of stars, elements, birds, fishes, brute beasts and dumb animals; with a vain note of days and months, so that they can announce which corresponds to the day of birth of the infant. This is preceded by some diabolical ceremonies, after which they designate the field or other spot, ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... had Luther departed than strife began its distracting work. War, political as well as theological, followed in the wake of his death. From the grave of the fallen hero a double specter began to loom up. Pope and Emperor now joined hands to crush Protestantism by brute force as they had planned long ago. The result was the Smalcald War. The secret enemies which Lutheranism harbored within its own bosom began boldly to raise their heads. Revealing their true colors and coming out in the open with their pernicious errors, they caused ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... be killed," he growled. Then he touched the man with the toe of his right foot. "Get up, you brute," ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... tolerable. But we have only to imagine our present society, with its current quantity of golden rule, thrown into the chaos where government has ceased to govern, where the political majority has lost all its power, but where the majority of brute strength awakes to find itself with no laws to molest or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... developed not from the ape, but away from it. He never was anything but potential man. "No single instance has yet been adduced of the transformation of one animal species into another, either by natural or artificial selection; much less has it been demonstrated that the body of the brute has ever been developed into that of the man. The links that should bind man to the monkey have not been found. Not a single one can be shown. None have been found that stood nearer the monkey than the ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... in the enjoyment of all their senses. Besides, we were compelled to talk in strange company, if not from good breeding, to prove our breed, as the gift of speech is often our principal, if not sole, distinction from the rest of the brute animals. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to them both; which, having one name, is the genus of the other two: v.g. there is nothing that can be left out of the idea of white and red to make them agree in one common appearance, and so have one general name; as RATIONALITY being left out of the complex idea of man, makes it agree with brute in the more general idea and name of animal. And therefore when, to avoid unpleasant enumerations, men would comprehend both white and red, and several other such simple ideas, under one general name, they have been fain to ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... upon Clematis with angry bellowings and imaginary missiles. "You disgusting brute!" he ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... "Brute dotted me one there," he explained casually as he saw Anstice's glance fall on the bandage. "Thought at first he'd broken a bone, but he hadn't. It was only a flesh wound, and Mrs. Wood did it up in the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... see about getting Jocko rigged out properly in a decent sailor's suit so that he may get accustomed to the clothing before we come to the cold latitudes. I daresay my marine, who is a smart fellow, can manage to cut down a guernsey frock and a pair of canvas or serge trousers to fit the brute: I will give an order on the paymaster for them at once and Smith can set to work on them without delay;" and he bustled out of his cabin to ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... I could have got hold of him. I made nothing by running that dog—nothing whatever. People, instead of admiring me for nursing him back to life, called me a fool, and said that if I didn't drown the brute they would. He spoilt my character utterly—I mean my character at this period. It is difficult to pose as a young man with a heart of gold, when discovered in the middle of the road throwing stones at your own dog. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... and indeed existed long before him, for many of the essential processes of reasoning are exerted by the higher order of brutes as completely and effectively as by ourselves. We see in many of the brute creation the exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which we ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went striding by me, and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... goatherd. After nine days' absence without leave, "Paiji" reappeared, with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted waist, showing an admirable skeleton, and making the most frantic demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had affected all our spirits: we thought that the hyenas and the ravens had seen the last of it; and it ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the killing power of the gun in my hand, and at the crack of the rifle the huge brute settled forward with hardly a quiver not ten feet from the kids upon which he was about to spring. A second shot was not necessary but was fired as a matter of precaution as the tiger had fallen behind rank grass, ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... enormous hands with immensely long nails, skin the color of mahogany, feet as hard as if made of horn, such was the miserable creature who yet had a claim to be called a man. But it might justly be asked if there were yet a soul in this body, or if the brute instinct alone ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... but cupidity, will fall, in a short time, into complete destruction, and, being incapable of a Republican government, because it casts aside the government of God himself, will rush headlong into the government of the brute: the government of the strongest, the despotism of the sword, the divinity of the cannon,—that last resort of anarchy, which is at once the remedy and the death of nations ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... am not hurt!" cried the man called Harrison; "but hang him, I believe he has killed my horse, and the horse had well nigh killed me, for he reared and went over with me at the shot:—get up, brute, get up!" and he kicked the horse in the side to make him rise. Up started the beast upon his feet in a moment, trembling in every limb, but still apparently not much hurt; and upon examination it proved that the ball had struck him in the fleshy part of the shoulder, producing ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... against action in publick speaking[608]. 'Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument. If you speak to a dog, you use action; you hold up your hand thus, because he is a brute; and in proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will have the less influence upon them.' MRS. THRALE. 'What then, Sir, becomes of Demosthenes's saying? "Action, action, action!"' JOHNSON. 'Demosthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of brutes; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... way. Toby, who was an impudent little dog, had managed to incur the enmity of a vicious half-breed mastiff, which lived on a farm some distance out of Eastport. The brute was known to have killed several smaller dogs; so whenever he passed the Barnes' gate, and snarled his threats at Toby, Toby would content himself with a scornful ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... and its title, but I remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system. Human perfection, the writer said, means ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask for bare brute strength. Wars will cease, machines will do all our heavy work, man will become more and more a mere director of nature's energies, and less and less an exerter of energy on his own account. So that, if the homo sapiens ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... uneasy, and that with crying out, and making all the menacing noise we could, we should endeavour to drive the sow away—But if this should happen to be an half-starved creature, that, mad with hunger, went roaming about in quest of food, and we should behold the ravenous brute, in spite of our cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... greater sorrow, may be gathered together and built into this edifice. The Life of Reason is the happy marriage of two elements—impulse and ideation—which if wholly divorced would reduce man to a brute or to a maniac. The rational animal is generated by the union of these two monsters. He is constituted by ideas which have ceased to be visionary and actions which ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... reaches his own conclusions. He tends, that is to say, to think of the voters as the subject-matter rather than the sharers of his thoughts. He, like Plato's sophist, is learning what the public is, and is beginning to understand 'the passions and desires' of that 'huge and powerful brute, how to approach and handle it, at what times it becomes fiercest and most gentle, on what occasions it utters its several cries, and what sounds made by others soothe or irritate it.'[50] If he resolutely guards himself against the danger of passing from one illusion to another, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... startling. We had the usual polite party at Josh's last night. Shook hands with the new chaps and told 'em how tickled we were to see them. Ate sandwiches and cake and lemonade and—by the way, we've got a new master; physics; Moller his name is; Caleb Moller, B.A. Quite a handsome brute and a swell dresser. Comes from Lehigh or one of those Southern ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hey? The road-makers lead you a pretty dance here; those gentlemen know how to make money, and like to show people the scenery from a variety of points. No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... own little circle. But the thing to guard against is loss of faith. Men and women who have lost faith in each other never rise above the world again—one wing is broken, and they cannot soar. It has been said that the best way to manage man is to feed the brute [laughter], but sovran woman never made that discovery for herself—I believe it was a man in his mere man mood who first confided the secret to some young wife in distress—somebody else's young wife. [Laughter.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Sparling's voice rose to a roar again. "What in the name of Old Dan Rice do you think you've been doing? Here you've kept a cage with a five-thousand-dollar lion from tipping over, to say nothing of the people who might have been killed had the brute got out, and you want to know how you can earn a pass to the show? What d'ye think of that?" and the owner appealed helplessly to an assistant who had run across the lot, having been attracted to the scene by ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... I knowed there was a lion somewheres, because Don wouldn't lie down. I'd like to get a pop at the brute." ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... brute, a stock!" cried Mr Harrel, "nothing but the money will satisfy him: he will hear no reason; one might as well talk ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... dart at the nut, whisk it into a little bag on one side of his jaws, which Madam Nature has furnished him with for his provision-pouch, and down into his hole again. An ungrateful, suspicious little brute he was too; for though in this way he bagged and carried off nut after nut, until the patient little woman had used up a pound of hazelnuts, still he seemed to have the same wild fright at sight of her, and would whisk off and hide himself in his hole the moment she ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... All whom they left behind them had now abundant subject-matter for conversation and for unlimited "Ughs!" The entire future suddenly brightened up for that band of Nez Perces, and they were entirely confident of their ability to procure a new supply of dogs. As for One-eye, that sagacious brute wandered around the corral, from hoof to hoof, until he knew the facts of the case thoroughly. He would have followed Two Arrows, but for the stern refusal of Long Bear. He was needed at home all the more now that there would ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... honourable love: And thou deserv'st to be a councillor, For he deserves not other to command, That hath no power to master his desire; For Locrine, being the eldest son of Brute, Did doat so far upon an Almain maid, And was so ravished with her pleasing sight, That full seven years he kept her under earth, Even in the lifetime of fair Gwendolin: Which made the Cornish men to rise in arms, And never left, till Locrine was slain. And now, though late, at ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... also without knowing why, replied: "The little comtesse is charming, I feel that I shall love her, but the husband looks like a brute. Where did ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... significant squeeze. "I shall always be nice to you," she whispered—with a look that contained a host of pretty promises in itself. Arnold returned the look (Geoffrey was unquestionably in the way!). Their eyes met tenderly (why couldn't the great awkward brute write his letters somewhere else?). With a faint little sigh, Blanche dropped resignedly into one of the comfortable arm-chairs—and asked once more for "some poetry," in a voice that faltered softly, and with a color that was ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... yours that did it; you wouldn't speak to me for a fortnight. You haven't changed, I can see that," he said, watching Esther's face, which did not alter until he spoke of how unhappy he had been in his marriage. "A regular brute she was—we're no longer together, you know; haven't been for the last three years; could not put up with 'er. She was that—but that's a long story." Esther did not answer him. He looked at her anxiously, and ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... discussion more frequently than any of the college of military tribunes. Then indeed, after so brutal and inhuman an expression, "Romans," says he, "do ye hear him threatening woe to his soldiers as to slaves? Yet this brute will appear to you more deserving of so high an honour than those who send you into colonies, after having granted to you cities and lands; who provide a settlement for your old age, who fight against such cruel and ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... be absurd, Jenny. You don't care a bit for cutting off the heads of the chickens so why should you mind cutting up this great brute." ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... in the glance than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in the one act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove and skin from the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his beard for ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... amusing results. Once when the Theatre Royal comedian, Dr. Max Pohl, was suddenly taken ill the Emperor said to an acquaintance, 'Fancy, my Pohl had a seizure yesterday;' and the acquaintance, thinking he was referring to a pet dog replied, commiseratingly: 'Ah, poor brute!' After rehearsal the Emperor often goes on to the stage and talks with the actors ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... deal the creature its death thrust it halted in its charge and, as my sword cut harmlessly through the empty air, the great tail of the thing swept with the power of a grizzly's arm across the sward and carried me bodily from my feet to the ground. In an instant the brute was upon me, but ere it could fasten its hideous mouths into my breast and throat I grasped a writhing tentacle ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to look with some stir of feeling in his breast, since this was the man who had so early roused in him an emotion of anger and rebellion. Across the field came pounding a great black horse, a fine big-boned brute; on him rode a tall, heavy man who must once have been of the handsomest, since even yet, in spite of years, bloated face, and careless attire, he retained a sort of dissolute beauty. He was of huge frame and had ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Grant's strong point was horsemanship, and the riding-master, whether seriously or as a joke, determined to "take down" the young cadet. At the exercise Grant was mounted on a powerful but vicious brute that the cadets fought shy of, and was put at leaping the bar. The bar was raised higher and higher as he came round the ring, till it passed the "record." The stubborn rider would not say enough, but the stubborn horse was disposed to shy and refuse to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Master had spoken truly, however. Brian's strength lay not so much in brute muscles, though he had enough of them, as in his nervous energy; and the slow horror of his burning hair and of that iron which had twice raked the length of his body had come close to destroying his whole nervous system. Other men might have endured the same thing ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones |
