"Merciless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while gazing into the fire, too stunned with misery even to think; but presently everything came to her with merciless clearness. How small she had been all along! Instead of waiting until she heard the truth, she had let a wretched paragraph in a newspaper inflame her wounded vanity, so that she gave her promise to Henry there and ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... suppose it is because he does it for a living. Now I ..." "Now, you," interrupted the other, "do it for a living, too, because you want your fruit trees to bear fruit, and your roses to thrive, and your cabbages to prosper. Who more merciless than you on slugs and other pests that fly or crawl? No, no, we are all out for a living, you as much as the spider, the spider as much as the fly." "We are all Huns," said I. "What a detestable world it is." "Not ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... little sheep-dog had already placed herself at the grey whelp's voracious disposal, and he was pounding and tugging away at her in his usual merciless style. Then, when she went dutifully to lick the rascal, he thrust at her strongly with his great strong legs, and the Master, who had been standing, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... have quite done throttling me I shall be glad," said Bob, after enduring the embrace of the merciless ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... learned from their spiritual instructors. Fathers and brothers took a cruel pleasure in receiving the hapless infants on the point of their pikes, or in despatching them with halberds, reserving the same fate for any of more mature age who might venture to appeal from the devouring flames to their merciless fellow-men. The number of the victims of sword and fire is said to have reached two ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... was to prosecute her from the judgment seat. She was soon to become a mother, and her health was feeble, but she was made to stand till she was exhausted; and yet, abandoned and forlorn, before those merciless judges, through two long, weary days of hunger and of cold, the intrepid woman defended her cause with a skill and courage which even now, after two hundred and fifty years, kindles the heart with admiration. The case for the government was opened by John Winthrop, the presiding justice, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the recurrent waves of terror, the ever latent fear of Brandes, or even her appalling loneliness that broke her down; it was sheer fatigue—nature's merciless third degree—under which mental and physical ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... country, as far as their example and influence could extend. They were admired, esteemed, and applauded by every person of taste, sentiment, and benevolence; at the same time beloved, revered, and almost adored by the common people, among whom they suffered not the merciless hand of indigence or misery to seize one ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... dwell on the events of that journey, marked as it was by fatigue and danger, though the road lay through the wildest and most desolate deserts and mountains, and though our companions, both men and women, were fierce and lawless themselves, and exposed to the most merciless retaliation from those with whom they were constantly engaged—yet would I rather dwell on these hazardous events than tell that which awaited me at ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... evil result with which they were once by chance connected; and the true causes of the evils are often overlooked. Even when dimly conscious readjustments become highly conscious deliberation, the results of that deliberation may be less forwarding morally than the unconscious and merciless grinding ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Was it the earthquake's shock that left those long lines of dead heaped like grass before the mower's scythe? The rear ranks, paralyzed by the terrible disaster, held their ground, but no human courage could withstand the fire that blazed fierce and merciless from the redoubt. A moment's pause, and then a wild, headlong flight to the sheltering boats on ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... and a loaded pistol prepared and given to a person who stood ready, should they get into the cabin, and secure to themselves the ship, to fire into it, and blow the whole up, preferring to die in that manner rather than fall into the hands of such merciless wretches. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... play, And the tall pines rose dark and sublime o'er their way. Alas for the visions that, joyous and pure, Wove a vista of light through the Future's obscure! Contention waxed fierce 'neath the evergreen boughs, And the braves of the chieftain were false to his vows; In vain knelt the Pale-Face to merciless wrath, The tomahawk gleamed on her desolate path, One prayer for her lover, one look towards the sky, And the dark hand of Death closed the ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... poet Lingave, as he awoke in the morning, and turn'd him drowsily on his hard pallet, "another day comes out, burthen'd with its weight of woes. Of what use is existence to me? Crush'd down beneath the merciless heel of poverty, and no promise of hope to cheer me on, what have I in prospect but a life neglected ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... looking as nearly like a dangerous old eagle as a human being well could. Rapacious, merciless, tyrannical; a famous philanthropist. Stingy to pettiness; a giver away of millions. Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter of his given word, yet so treacherous where ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... if nothing else, and the forces of the Revolution probably would have swamped him from the very first moment of his emergence at Toulon, when the whiff of grape-shot, symptom of an inexorable, merciless intellect and will, started him upon the road that led to the Napoleonic Era. Destiny is always ironic. For the deficiency of the internal secretions which made him eligible for glory was responsible as well ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... indignation do they seem to raise in our breasts, when we reflect, that a part of the human species are considered as game, and that parties of pleasure are made for their destruction! The lion does not imbrue his claws in blood, unless called upon by hunger, or provoked by interruption; whereas the merciless Dutch, more savage than the brutes themselves, not only murder their fellow-creatures without any provocation or necessity, but even make a diversion of their sufferings, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... munched a hard cracker apiece, occasionally exchanging a muttered word or two, thrashing their limbs about to keep up circulation, and dampening their lips with snow. They were but dim, spectral shapes in the darkness, the air filled with crystal pellets, swept about by a merciless wind, the horses standing tails to the storm and heads drooping. In spite of the light refraction of the snow the eyes could scarcely see two yards away through the smother. Above, about, the ceaseless wind howled, its icy breath chilling to the bone. Carroll clambered stiffly into ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... allowed to go on unrestrained, they would either have perverted this Republic into an open Plutocracy, in which individual liberty and equality before the law would have disappeared, or they would have hurried on the Social Revolution, the Armageddon of Labor and Capital, the merciless conflict of class with class, which many persons already vaguely dreaded, or thought they saw looming like an ominous cloud on the horizon. It seems astounding that any one should have questioned ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... a little exclamation, with a sob following close upon it. There was a sound of tearing cloth, and he held his captive upright, and with a merciless hand turned her face so that the moonlight struck it full. They stared at each other, breathing hard from more than the race they ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... reactionary, and it had the centre of its strength in the North, whence Margaret drew the plundering and devastating host which gained for her the second battle of St. Albans and paid the penalty of its ravages in the merciless slaughter of Towton. The North had been kept back in the race of progress by agricultural inferiority, by the absence of commerce with the Continent, and by border wars with Scotland. In the South was the seat of prosperous industry, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... to her, and she had declined. I glanced at her now and then. I had grown accustomed to that sarcastic, wrinkled, bitter face, and did not dislike it. Indeed, Miss Hallam had given me abundant proofs that, eccentric though she might be, pessimist in theory, merciless upon human nature, which she spoke of in a manner which sometimes absolutely appalled me, yet in fact, in deed, she was a warm-hearted, generous woman. She had dealt bountifully by me, and I knew she loved me, though ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... what mood of Nature this world of cacti which we run against in the great Southwest expresses. Certainly something savage and merciless. To stab and stab again suits her humor. How well she tempers her daggers and bayonets! How hard and smooth and sharp they are! How they contrast with the thick, succulent stalks and leaves which bear them! It is a desert mood; heat and drought ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... including Jimmie, for they knew that what Frank said was the truth. Jimmie liked to talk of merciless measures, but he was not inclined ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the mischief that may be done by giving undue prominence to one idea. I only wonder that so few broken heads and dislocated joints bear witness to the falseness of such philosophy. I am quite sure, that, if I should give the chickens such merciless impulses, they would not recover from the effects so speedily. Unlike human mothers, too, she has no especial tenderness for invalids. She makes arrangements only for a healthy family. If a pair of tiny wings droop, and a pair of tiny legs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the cries and ejaculations of encouragement or dismay; the quick jar and clash of blade upon blade; the occasional explosion of a pistol; the dull, crushing sound of unwarded blows; the sharp scream of agony as some poor wretch felt the stroke of the merciless steel; the cries and groans of those who had been smitten down, and, still conscious, were being trampled underfoot by the combatants; the deep muttered curse; the sharp word of command; and the occasional cheer that broke from the lips of our own gallant lads. Suddenly ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... faint of the starlit sky The gleaming snow-drifts lay wide and high; O'er hill and dell stretched a mantle white, The branches glittered with crystal bright; But the winter wind's keen icy breath Was merciless, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... And yet it moves me, Romans! it confounds The counsels of my firm philosophy, That Ruin's merciless ploughshare must pass o'er And barren salt be sown on yon proud city. As on our olive-crowned hill we stand, Where Kedron at our feet its scanty waters Distils from stone to stone with gentle motion, As through ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... who never spared any antagonist, used to be merciless in dealing with Washburn. He once had a case with him which attracted a great deal of public attention. There had been a good many trials and the cost had mounted up to a large sum. It was a suit by a farmer who had lost a flock of sheep by dogs, and who tried to hold another ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... By day, when the merciless sun slew all things alive, and even scorpions sought shelter under stones and writhed there in a mad desire to sting, he sat motionless under the sunrays, his blue face and the uncouth, bushy beared lifted up, bathing ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the earth in size, is a planet which the imagination, warmed by its sunny aspect, would fain people with intelligent beings a little fairer than ourselves; but how can such ideas be reconciled with the picture of a world one half of which is subjected to the merciless rays of a never-setting sun, while the other half is buried in the fearful gloom and ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... closed forever on him, thou didst lose Thy truest friend, and none was left to plead For the old age of brute fidelity. But fare thee well! Mine is no narrow creed; And He who gave thee being did not frame The mystery of life to be the sport Of merciless man. There is another world For all that live and move—a better one! Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine Infinite Goodness to the little bounds Of their own charity, may ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... inducement to invasion by the East India Company. 'Apres moi le deluge' has been his motto, and its ruin has been accelerated not less by his rapacity than by his political jealousy, which suggested to him at any cost the merciless removal of its wealth and the reckless havoc he ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... extinguishment. It is the grossest outrage to ask this girl to face certain exposure. A challenge of this blatant kind will rouse the most violent antagonism among scientists, and if you succeed in getting any really good man to take it up—which I doubt—he will be merciless." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... she went to bed, she remained merciless. She saw the quiet doctor with the penetrating eyes examining that ankle, asking a few questions, and looking curiously at his patient; then she saw him lift his hat and walk out of ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... little effort, and he has thrown out his productions, in prose as well as poetry, with a profusion and a variety that seem miraculous; and yet, of all our bards, he has met with the most severe and merciless censures. In some measure he has deserved the treatment. In College he would not condescend to study, and charity only for his high genius enabled him to gain a degree. Besides, he gained his first and best reputation by pieces founded upon scriptural subjects, and he stood committed ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... priestcraft, which had, indeed, been the jest of the educated and thoughtful for generations. But it required gigantic courage to become the spokesman of discontent, to attack an imposture which was supported by universal popular credulity, by a well-nigh omnipotent Church, and by the keen-edged, merciless swords of kings and emperors. Still more, it required an indisputable elevation of nature to attack the imposture where, as in the sale of indulgences, it threatened the very essence of personal and social morality. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... to this tragedy. Do this, and you will be giving Mr. Grant the greatest possible help. He needs it. Next Wednesday, at the adjourned inquest, he will be put on the rack. Ingerman will fee counsel to be vindictive, merciless. Such men are to be hired. Their reputation is built up on the slaughter of reputations. I want to understand Siddle before Wednesday. By the way, what's ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... continued the child, her eyes very wide open as she weighed Brackett's qualifications in her merciless ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... denounce her," she said. "I should be appalled if anything approaching the arm of the law got into my house. I'll burn the proofs after dinner." Then she turned to Frau von Treumann. "If you think it over," she said, "I know you will not wish me to be so merciless, so pitiless, as to send Emilie back to misery only because her father, who has been dead thirty ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... any family to provide for. It has been frequently known, that the mother has been forced to leave her infant babe from her breast upon the bare earth to provide for itself, to carry the baggage of a merciless enemy, whose only payment, after going fifteen or sixteen Indian miles, is, if she complains, a bambooing, (that is a caning,) and, perhaps, after she gets home, which cannot be till the next day, she finds her poor ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... the warm-hearted, impulsive Hal, and the winsome, pretty Juanita, prisoners in the hands of the cruel and merciless Apaches, who were never known to surrender a captive alive. Then, as I thought of a worse fate than death, that was in store for the bright, beautiful girl, I thanked God that her old father was spared the anguish that such a ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... the man, "but it may bite us or some other passer-by," and he again drew out his bolo; but Andres restrained him. "What do you want this snake for?" said the merciless man. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... and raw materials, and we wish to shut off England's. You do not attempt to land on our coast; keep away also from that of Britain. You were warned early. What is now to take place is commanded by merciless necessity; must be. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... walk. The wood is well peopled with pheasants, wild turkeys, squirrels and hares, who live so unmolested, that they seem to have forgot all fear, and rather to welcome than flee from those who come amongst them. Man never appears there as a merciless destroyer, but the preserver, instead of the tyrant, of the inferior part of the creation. While they continue in that wood, none but natural evil can approach them, and from that they are defended ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... feign ignorance of that which your unbounded and unselfish devotion has proved so often? Why should you not know that before this deadly stroke fell my one grief was that you suffered; and that as long as I could pray I prayed for your happiness? Now I can see only merciless force or blind chance, that in nature smites with the tornado the lonely forest or the thriving village, the desolate waves or some ship upon them. Men, with all their boasted reason, are even worse. What could be more mad and useless than this war? Alford, ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... on his merciless pursuit, never letting Wildfire rest by day, time went on just as relentlessly. Spring gave way to early summer. The hot sun bleached the grass; water-holes failed out in the valley, and water could be found only in the canyons; and the dry winds began to blow the sand. It was a sandy valley, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... After these merciless taunts, and particularly after the next slashing hit that tied the score, Merritt looked ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... said that love brings beauty to the cheeks Of them that love and meet, but mine are pale; For merciless disdain on me she wreaks, And hides her visage from my passionate tale: I have her only, only when she speaks. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at auction for old iron. I believe I should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary kingship and so-called "nobility." It is enough to make the monarchs and nobles themselves laugh—and in private they do; there can be no question about that. I think ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a glorious day, right at the end of August. Out of a flawless sky the sun blazed, broiling and merciless. There was nowhere a breath of wind, and in the sheltered garden—always ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in the vain and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual and moral improvement would be steady and rapid." William Lloyd Garrison was untiring and merciless in flaying the inconsistencies and selfishness of the colonization organization. In an editorial in the Liberator, July 9, 1831, he charged the Society, first, with persecution in compelling free people ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... my knees now I fall down, And of God chiefly asking forgiveness; And next of you; for into oblivion I have put your doctrine and lessons doubtless. DAN. Fear not, daughter, I am not merciless; I trust ye have not so greatly offended, But that right well it may be amended. MEL. Ye have fostered me up full lovingly In virtuous discipline, which is the right path To all grace and virtue; which doth signify By your dream the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... began in earnest, for so desperate were the savages rendered by the merciless persecution to which they had compelled me, in self-defence, to subject them, that they made the most strenuous efforts to get into South-west Bay; and, indeed, it was not until I bore up and took the extreme risk of running down one canoe that ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... or so is privileged in this high hour. Yet we ought not to make a jest of matters which concern the Church. Am I not right, Ayrart? Oh, no, this merciless Demetrios is assuredly that very Antichrist whose coming was foretold. I must relinquish him to Mother Church, in order that he may be equitably tried, and be baptised—since even he may have a soul—and afterward be ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... hers to the bed where Dr. Pettit stood gazing down upon the seemingly unconscious girl and speaking in measured, merciless fashion. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... first half of the fourteenth century, after the terrible ravages of the great plague had abated, the people were prostrate with fear and terrorized by the merciless words of the priests, who had not been slow to declare the pestilence as a mark of the wrath of God and who were utilizing the peculiar possibilities of this psychological moment for the advancement of the interests of the Church. In the churches—the wondrous mediaeval ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... now cut away his drag, was coming up with us hand over hand. The slave-drivers came down among us, and, standing on the drivers' plank, running down the centre of the galley, drove us to superhuman exertions by the merciless blows of their heavy-thonged whips, the lashes of which were plaited up with small lead balls on them. They even used the flat of their sword-blades to our backs, and after that, when the English ship still continued to overhaul us, they drew the edges of their weapons along our flesh, making the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the little cabin. The winds of an early fall shrilled outside, and life suddenly seemed to Hal a stern and merciless thing. He had thought in his youthful fervour it would be thrilling to be a revolutionist; but to be an ant, one of millions and millions, to perish in a bottomless ditch—that was something a man could hardly bring himself to face! He looked at the bowed ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... that sisterhood, the most pugnacious undoubtedly was Abby Kelly, a little New England woman, with, as the name would indicate, an Irish crossing of the blood. I heard her once, and it seemed to me that I never listened to a tongue that was so sharp and merciless. Her eyes were small and it appeared to me that they contracted, when she was speaking, until they emitted sparks of fire. Although she went by her maiden name, she was a married woman, being the wife of Stephen Foster, a professional Abolitionist agitator and lecturer. ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... judgments of the young Western congressman. The aged Adams, doubtless the best representative of the older school in either branch of Congress, gave a page of his diary to one of Douglas's early speeches. "His face was convulsed,"—so the merciless diary runs,—"his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... revealed by the merciless hand of war is that of physical shortcoming. A large number of men were rejected for service and a still larger number accepted only for limited service because of physical disability as shown by the medical examinations. I have not the figures at hand, but 'tis common knowledge ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to the northeast, at Gamboa, a wild and hilly country forms both banks. The hillsides as well as the plateaux are overgrown with dense vegetation. As in all tropical lands, the fight for survival is fierce and merciless. Trees are destroyed by great creepers, great creepers are destroyed by smaller growths, and every form of life, vegetable as well as animal, has its enemy. Every living thing springs up from the dead body ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... thousand points. Notwithstanding his wonderful self-control, it was not without difficulty that the young officer preserved a calm demeanor under the severe blows dealt him by Fortune. Paul Landry, always master of himself, lowered his eyes that their expression of greedy and merciless joy should not be seen. The nearer the game drew to its conclusion, the closer pressed the circle of spectators, and in the midst of a profound silence the last hand began. Favored from the beginning with the luckiest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bent forward and fixed upon them the most curious of glances. His merciless, green eyes ran from Eileen's tumbled chestnut hair to her small, tan boots—then he regarded Peter with the same intensity, and thereupon he seemed to be weighing the doomed lovers as a unit, or ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... among those who called out for him, and those who did not know him cried out loudest. In moments of general helplessness the crowd clings to a name, to a mere word. Some thus thrust from themselves the calls of conscience which demanded personal effort, personal risk, and these are they who are most merciless in their judgment of the helper if he is unable to help. The rest are happy if they can delude themselves for the moment. "What could he do?" cried one. "Help! Rescue!" cried others. "Even if one had wings, he would not dare the ascent in such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... well inured to the risk of losing it. Had he been a coward, or unused to such perils as at that moment surrounded him, he would in all likelihood have succumbed through fear; and toppled helplessly over upon the shoulders of the merciless monster that was threatening to destroy him. With all his bravery, however, it was just as much as he could do to keep his balance. Unfortunately, in climbing up the rock, he had been compelled to abandon his boar-spear: else with that he might have supported himself. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless face, but a steady, merciless eye. "I can guess, without your telling me, what lies may be circulated about me by the man and woman who know that I have only to declare myself alive to convict them of infamy—perhaps even of criminality before the law. You are not MY friend, or you would not have believed them; if you ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... undergone, and of the hopelessness of the situation in which he is placed,—or still more the shriek of agony in Orestes, when he finds the horrors of madness again assailing him, and when, in that utter prostration of soul which the belief of inevitable and merciless destiny alone could produce in his mind, he abandons himself in dark despair to the misery which seems to close ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... was equally merciless in dealing with the tribe of "dough-faces." This was illustrated in a speech later in the session, in which he alluded to his colleague from Bucks County, Mr. Ross, who had attacked him in a ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Christians have me believe in a God who differentiates creatures from himself, only that they may be the prey of other creatures, or spend a few hours or years, helpless and lonely, speechless and without appeal, in merciless hands, then pass away into nothingness? I will not; in the name of Jesus, I will not. Had he not known something better, would he have said what he did about the father of men and ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... call, But the visage that met her Completely upset her: It wasn't familiar at all! With a whitening cheek She started to speak, But her peril she instantly saw:— Her Grandma had fled, And she'd tackled instead Four merciless Paws and a Maw! When the neighbors came running, the wolf to subdue, He was licking his chops, (and Red ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... single stroke of the paw, could sweep away those strong men; and as the bear came on, once more he saw himself breathless and exhausted, climbing up and up the snowy slope towering above where he now stood, with the savage beast close at his heels, merciless and untiring, and so determined that it had gone on tracking him ever since his escape. All this robbed him of any feeling of commiseration for the ferocious creature, and he hoped fervently that it was coming ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... having sacked and burned Argos, then laid siege to a monastery, which surrendered upon terms; and it is honorable to the memory of this Tartar general, that, according to the testimony of Mr. Gordon, at a time when the war was managed with merciless fury and continual perfidies on both sides, he observed the terms with rigorous fidelity, treated all his captives with the utmost humanity, and even ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... it stood; As two spent swimmers that do cling together And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald,— Worthy to be a rebel,—for to that The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him,—from the Western isles Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied; And fortune, on his damned ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... know who is your enemy, Paul—the creature who was base and treacherous enough to attempt to deliver you into the hands of those merciless villains? What wrong had you ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... him from the height of his erect and lofty form, with a merciless eye; for in this one quarter, Maltravers had shut ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she, raising her head at last and looking up at me, "I am sure, Martin. Where hate is, true love can never be, and love howsoever vehement is gentle and reverent and, being of God, a very holy thing! But you have made of it a thing of passion, merciless and cruel—'tis ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... her brother stood before her in a really terrible shape; she felt his villainy turning with a cowardly and merciless treason upon her forlorn self. Sacrificed for him, and that sacrifice used by him to torture, to extort, perhaps to ruin. She quailed for a minute in the presence of this gigantic depravity and cruelty. But Rachel was a brave lass, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the despairing on-lookers choked the ways of escape. In their mad panic hundreds of the flying Waikatos were forced headlong over a cliff by the rush of their fellow-fugitives. Hundreds more were smothered in one of the deep ditches of the defences, or were shot by the merciless Ngapuhi, who fired down upon the writhing mass till tired of reloading. It was the greatest of Hongi's victories, though not bloodless for the conquerors, like that of Totara, where only one Ngapuhi had been killed. Famous fighting men, the Waikato chiefs had died bravely, despite the amazement ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Lordships will, perhaps, not feel the same degree of interest as in the others. Hitherto you have had before you crimes of dignity: you have had before you the ruin and expulsion of great and illustrious families, the breach of solemn public treaties, the merciless pillage and total subversion of the first houses in Asia. But the crimes which are the most striking to the imagination are not always the most pernicious in their effects: in these high, eminent acts of domineering tyranny, their very magnitude proves a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... closely, I caught a glimpse of the man's inner nature. It was but a glimpse. The curtain closed, and he was absorbed in prayer. Yet in that moment I saw an ambition boundless as Cromwell's, and as merciless. This latter quality was exhibited in his treatment of General Richard Garnett, cousin to Robert Garnett, before mentioned, and his codisciple at West Point. I have never met officer or soldier, present at Kernstown, who failed ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... had those words rung in his ears! Louise had never called him by name save that once, and then it was the cry of a soul surprised, the wail of one who felt a heart-break coming on, the approach of merciless Fate. It was the companionship of trouble; it was the bird, pursued by a hawk, calling across the lonely valley to its mate. "Oh, Orlando!" He had waked in the morning with the words in his ears to make him face the day with hope and cheerfulness. It had sounded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... softer, I admit," replied Marillac negligently; and he examined the lock submitted to this merciless criticism as if it were simply a piece of goods, of the fineness of whose texture he ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... his enterprise. The Amil having no troops to support his authority, or even to defend his person in such a position, has also remained at Court. No revenue has been collected, and the people are left altogether exposed to the depredations of these merciless robbers. The belt of jungle is nine miles long and four miles wide; and the west end of it is within only fourteen miles of the Lucknow cantonments, where we have three regiments of infantry, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... with me, I was but making background. To accomplish these things, the Party had to, and did, become a strong, ruthless, even merciless organization, with all power safely—from its viewpoint, of course—in its hands. And, in spite of all handicaps and setbacks, eventually succeeded in the task it had set itself. That is the ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... came from the fact that she perceived in Stephen a natural and merciless logic,—a faculty for getting at the bottom of things. His brain did not seem to be thrown out of gear by local magnetic influences,—by beauty, for instance. He did not lose his head, as did some others she knew, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... some one talking ill of Margaret. They'd blame her for not keeping me, for letting things go so far.... I wanted the whole world to know how fine she was. I saw in imagination the busy, excited dinner tables at work upon us all, rather pleasantly excited, brightly indignant, merciless. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the Kalevala as "hyva emanta," the good hostess; she feasted her guests on lizards, worms, toads, and writhing serpents. Tuouen Poika, "The God of the Red Cheeks," so called because of his bloodthirstiness and constant cruelties, is the son and accomplice of this merciless and ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.—He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... merciless! For she had never known—nor ever could know now—the ecstasy of Love. Truly, it conquered; but it left its prisoners to perish of starvation in ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... revealed in the all-seeing crystal. Everywhere it was the same. Merciless, cold-blooded destruction of the Rulan scientists, the most valuable of all in the Llott scheme of things. The Earth men were speechless with horror. Ulana once more buried her head in Carson's ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... twenty-eight days in one case, and for more than thirty-one days in the other, without at any time a period of unbroken rest longer than ten minutes. Such a procedure, in the light of physiology, is a greater inhumanity than the most merciless Boston teamster would inflict upon his dumb brutes. Why does not Mr. Bergh exercise his function in such cases? We did not wonder that the poor women looked pale and suffering, and trudged along with a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... to his preying upon the merchants, he would endeavour to amend his ways and would harry instead such castles as fell into his hands. Thus Baron von Wiethoff became known as the Outlaw of the Hundsrueck, and being as intrepid as he was merciless, soon made the Rhenish nobility withdraw attention from other people's quarrels in order to bestow strict surveillance upon their own. It is possible that if the dwellers along the river had realised at first the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... New Bailey, where one of the turn-outs had been tried for a cruel assault on a poor north-country weaver, who had attempted to work at the low price. They were indignant, and justly so, at the merciless manner in which the poor fellow had been treated; and their indignation at wrong, took (as it often does) the extreme form of revenge. They felt as if, rather than yield to the body of men who were resorting to ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tide until we drew in between the high rocky sides of the channel, when suddenly the ship was hurried onwards with such rapidity that to prevent our being swept past a cove on the right it was necessary to close with its outer point, towards which a merciless eddy flung the ship's head so rapidly, that before the thrown-aback sails checked her way, her jib-boom was almost over the rocks.* During the few awful moments that succeeded, a breathless silence prevailed; and naught was heard but the din ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... encouragement to help me face Anderson. He will probably pick some flaw in it somewhere. He is merciless with all the fellows." ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... breath, with manes erect, and wild eyes full of the keenest suffering, tried to fly from the scene, but the merciless Indians drove them back into the water. A very few, who succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the guards, regained the bank, stumbling at every step, and lay down upon the sand, exhausted with fatigue, every limb paralyzed from ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Bullying is indeed practically extinct in well-managed schools; but small boys are inquisitive, observant, extremely conventional, almost like savages in their inventiveness of prohibitions and taboos, and perfectly merciless in criticism. The instinct for power is shown by small boys in the desire to make themselves felt, which is most easily accomplished by minute ridicule. Hugh made friends there, but he never really enjoyed the life of the place. The boys ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... part of the King of Bambarra's dominions, it was in fact a city of the Moors—the chief part of the inhabitants being Bushreens, a fanatical Mahommedan sect. He heard, too, that Timbuctoo, the great object of his search, was entirely in possession of that savage and merciless people, who allow no Christian to live there. He had, however, advanced too far to think of returning with uncertain information, and he determined ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... being found fault with when it is necessary to make out a case against him. A diplomatist is watched by the sharpest eyes and commented on by the most merciless tongues. The best and wisest has his defects, and sometimes they would seem to be very grave ones if brought up against him in the form of accusation. Take these two portraits, for instance, as drawn by John Quincy Adams. The first is that of Stratford Canning, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... licentiousness, unvisited, either by present or future retribution. Mark the consequence. Anarchy broke in like a flood, from whose boiling surge blood spouted up in living streams, and on whose troubled waves floated the headless bodies of the learned, the good, the beautiful and the brave. The most merciless proscription for opinion's sake, followed. A word, a sigh, or a look supposed inimical to the ruling powers, was followed with instant death. The calm which succeeded, was only the less dreaded, because it presented fewer objects of terrific interest, as the shock of the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Gather them before you and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers, needle-picked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in the shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough! ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... his wealth, and save what Outzlake keepeth to himself by force, he hath no share of the inheritance. He owneth, nevertheless, one fair rich manor, whereupon he liveth, loved of all men far and near. But Damas is as altogether hated as his brother is beloved, for he is merciless and cowardly: and now for many years there hath been war between these brothers, and Sir Outzlake evermore defieth Damas to come forth and fight with him, body to body, for the inheritance; and if he be too cowardly, to find some ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... dew glittered on the grass; hard by the royal Boyne rolled silently. The son of Sualtam slumbered without sound or motion, and the charioteer stood beside him upright, like a pillar, his grey bright eyes fixed upon the house of the sorcerers, the merciless, bloody, and ever-victorious sons of ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... full of poetry, too full of suggestion, of the fine-drawn excitement of things which had been and might not impossibly again be. It was dangerous to loiter, and in such company, though waves might beat out a constant reminder with merciless ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Fortune herself stood godmother. She seems like a perfect rose, blooming in a precious vase of gold and gems and exquisite workmanship. Camiola's contemptuous rebuff of her insolent courtier lover; her merciless ridicule of her fantastical, half-witted suitor; her bitter and harsh rebuke of Adorni when he draws his sword upon the man who had insulted her; above all, her hard and cold insensibility to his unbounded devotion, and the cruelty of making him the agent for the ransom of her lover from ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... protection. The Barons possessed everything and ruled everything for their own profit; they defended their privileges with their lives, and they avenged the slightest infringement on their powers by the merciless shedding of blood. They were ignorant, but they were keen; they were brave, but they were faithless; they were ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... constructive elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki; that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement, render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable difficulties to the establishment of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... exertions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years been levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of their letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most of them. A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters I have kept,—not only such as are signed by the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... him, those who envied and those who feared him, he ruled over them all by the strength of his own cold-blooded savagery, by the resistless power of his merciless cruelty. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... suffered from want of water, air and space. The arrival of the captives at Columbia took place in the midst of a drenching rain-storm, and during the entire night, with scarcely any clothing, no rations, and no shelter, they were exposed to the merciless elements, while not twenty yards off, in front of their camping ground, glared the muzzles of a park of loaded artillery. The prisoners, being in a starving condition, looked the picture of despair. A discovery ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... merciless man, I say,' repeated Miss Lake. 'From my observation of him, I am certain of two things—I am sure that he has some reason for thinking that your brother, Mark Wylder, is dead; and secondly, that he is himself deeply interested in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Brunswick, and Mrs. Wormser Ma Mandle lied magnificently. Their eager, merciless questions pierced her like knives, but she made placid answer: "Young folks are young folks. They do things different. I got my way. My son's wife has got hers." Their quick ears caught ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... yards, and her affected, mincing manner amused and sickened me at the same time. Her dress might possibly have been the fashion twenty years before. I was looking with dread at the fearful havoc of old age upon a face which, before merciless time had blighted it, had evidently been handsome, but what amazed me was the childish effrontery with which this time-withered specimen of womankind was still waging war with the help of her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... less afraid to look life full in the face and much more willing to understand and to pardon, than is supposed. Also, I came to the conclusion that women, though great disciplinarians, and often hard upon each other, are not essentially merciless. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... lady, "though I have been pelted by the merciless storm all day, which added fresh difficulties to the descent, and still suffer much from my poor, frozen cheeks, I do not for a moment regret my journey. I suppose you young ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of sudden and reckless impulse in his act. He surely had not meditated that bold challenge of one who had passed under his merciless hand, and was now, according to all accepted procedure, beyond his reach and his concern. But Sam Lucas did that unusual thing. He stood pointing at her, his jaw trembling as if the intensity of his passion had ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... unhappily, the authenticity of the story is dubious. The meeting, so far as the cold eye of the historian can discern, was dramatic only in its implications and no more exciting than a sewing-circle. The Marquis de Mores was present; so also was Gregor Lang, his most merciless critic; but whatever drama was inherent in that situation remained beneath the surface. By-laws were adopted, the Marquis was appointed "as a Committee of One to work with the committee appointed ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... if she could see what would remain of him after the scavengers of the desert had done their work. The thought gave him personally no feeling of disgust. He had lived always too near to Nature to shrink from contemplation of her merciless laws. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... or rather my disembodied consciousness, seemed to come up for judgment, and the horror of it was that I appeared to be my own judge. There, a very embodiment of cold justice, my Spirit, grown luminous, sat upon a throne and to it, with dread and merciless particularity I set out all my misdeeds. It was as if some part of me remained mortal, for I could see my two eyes, my mouth and my hands, but nothing else—and strange enough they looked. From the eyes came tears, from the mouth flowed words and the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... roads that before thee lie open from life to conduct thee; To the ideal one leads thee, the other to death. See that while yet thou art free, on the first thou commencest thy journey, Ere by the merciless fates on to the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Distresses and would have blushed at the idea of paying their Debts.—Alas! what was their Reward for such disinterested Behaviour! The beautifull Augustus was arrested and we were all undone. Such perfidious Treachery in the merciless perpetrators of the Deed will shock your gentle nature Dearest Marianne as much as it then affected the Delicate sensibility of Edward, Sophia, your Laura, and of Augustus himself. To compleat such unparalelled Barbarity we were informed ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... work and merciless grinding That purchases glory and fame; It's repeatedly doing, nor minding The ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... man of more wits than muscle, or to a gay old Lothario, it would have been an incentive to the chase, but I feared Dawn was too horribly, uncompromisingly given to speaking what she felt, irrespective of grace, to expand this young Romeo to love; but much merciless fire will be stood from beauty, and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the whole resembles him most. She has his transparent simplicity, candour, courage laid want of self-control; but she is the least selfish woman I know and the least self-centred. She is also more intolerant and merciless in her criticisms of other people, and has a finer sense of humour. Papa loved things of good report and never believed evil of any one. He had a rooted objection to talking lightly of other people's ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith |
