"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attention and alertness, proud to accommodate the visitor. She went to her chest and opened it, filling the room with the fragrance of sweet herbs, and she selected her finest gown, "the one trimmed with torture lace," as she called it, meaning torchon, and she offered to take it herself down to the stranger. But Mrs. Force would not permit her to do that, and, with the gown over her arm, she went downstairs and into the room ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... abide. Silent, brooding, unwitting of your noisy incursions, I lie absorbed in my dream under my own illimitable skies. But soon or late, when the moment comes, I wake, I rouse, I see my inviolate desolations invaded. Then I gather my strength, I drown you with my torrential rivers, I torture you with my burning sun, I obliterate you with my flying sand. So shall my cactus bloom once more, my jeweled lizards crawl unmolested and the cry of the coyote echo again through the vast, soundless spaces of my desolation. Then to my looms, to my looms and out of emptiness ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... advantage of my Indian blood," she said. "Trust me, mother, I will be as steady as those ancestors of mine who bore torture without flinching." ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... detailed story of little Marie Soubitine, who refused to purchase her own safety by uttering a word to betray her friends, and was kept lingering in an underground dungeon for three years, at the end of which she was sent off to Siberia, and died on the road. No amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate cipher signals ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... been so very bad,' said the younger journeyman, 'if one only had to suffer death and nothing worse. But these Swedes torture people as the very headsman himself would be ashamed to do. My father died by the dreadful "Swedish Drink," and then they took my eldest brother, and—ah! it's ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... be read. And thus the whole book being gone over by the bare titles of the pictures, reading cannot but be learned; and indeed too, which thing is to be noted, without using any ordinary tedious spelling, that most troublesome torture of wits, which may wholly be avoided by this method. For the often reading over the Book, by those larger descriptions of things, and which are set after the Pictures, will be able perfectly to ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... young savages approaching puberty are eager to receive their "decorations" remains to be considered. Tattooing, scarring, and mutilating are usually very painful processes. Now, as all who are familiar with the life of savages know, there is nothing they admire so much as courage in enduring torture of any kind. By showing fortitude in bearing the pain connected with tattooing, etc., these young folks are thus able to win admiration, gratify their vanity, and show that they are worthy to be received in ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... pieces of raw meat thrown into it"!! The Brothers spent part of the afternoon in the mutual good offices of picking the pandanus thorns out of each others feet and legs, the blackboys following their example. These thorns were a constant source of small torture to the party. The necessity of trying the ground in advance of the cattle prevented them wearing boots, and thus feet and legs were left without any protection, and exposed them day after day to the same annoyance. Another horse, "Creamy," sickened from ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... fool and paid spy in our midst knows the tale of my past better than I do myself. I no longer dare attend our meetings, for all around me I hear whisperings and insinuations, and my name being passed from one mouth to another along with references to my past actions. The torture is becoming unendurable. Some of these cowards even descend to taunting me with their knowledge; and when I, in any way, cross their purposes in our discussions, they threaten me covertly with exposure. That disgusting young fool, Mori, only to-day, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... doze for a little in Dalness house. The whole events of the scandalous week piled up on me: I no sooner wandered one thought away in the mists of the nether mind than a new one, definite and harassing, grew in its place, so that I was turning from side to side in a torture-rack of reflection when I should be lost in the slumber my travel and weariness so well had earned me. Something of an eeriness at our position in that genteel but lonely house lay heavy on me too: it had no memories of friendship in any room for me; ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... in reality I longed to welcome you and to receive you with open hands, there seemed to be in the depths of my nature another woman than myself, who revolted, who was afraid of and mistrusted you—whose delight it was to torture you with uncertainty, in the vague idea of setting up a quarrel, the cause of which, in a time long passed, had been quite forgotten. I am not always good; often in my soul things seem to creep up that I cannot explain or account for. The worst of it was that ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... the bed, and, stupified by the harassing events and mental fatigue of this miserable day, he sunk into a deep and heavy slumber. This was more than he himself could have expected; but it is mentioned of the North-American Indians, when at the stake of torture, that on the least intermission of agony they will sleep until the fire ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... our wives and our children. If I could have made his torture last for two weeks I would have done so. You have made every effort to save him by trying to break loose, and you have not succeeded. We are not going to harm you, even though you refuse to sign this report. You cannot bring him ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Rachael Closs!" cried the woman, fiercely. "You would not have treated her so. It is Lady Hope you are putting to torture. Oh, Norton! what have I done to you? What have I done to you that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... we see reasonable methods constantly failing. People find themselves forced to "afflictive" methods which stand in no relation with the realities of life. I mean, above all, what are still called means of education, instead of means of torture,—blows. ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... watched the war with abated breath,— Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death. Months of torture, how many such? Weary weeks of the stick and crutch; And still a glint of the steel-blue eye Told of a spirit that ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... tragedies were transfused by its humors, by the subtle duel of woman's wit and man's lumbering legalism. The hunger-strike itself, with all its grim horrors and heroisms, was like the plot of a Gilbertian opera. It placed the Government on the horns of an Irish bull. Either the law must kill or torture prisoners condemned for mild offenses, or it must permit them to dictate their own terms of durance. The criminal code, whose dignity generations of male rebels could not impair, the whole array of warders, lawyers, judges, juries, and policemen, which all the scorn ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... whatever is meant as an act of devotion to God, or as an acknowledgment of His greatness and glory, whether expressed by the simple prayer of a Covenanter on the hill-side or by the ceremonies of a Catholic priesthood, or even by the prostrations of a Mahometan, or by the self-torture of a Hindoo, may and ought to inspire us with respect and with a devout feeling, at least when the worshippers themselves are pious and sincere. Otherwise, indeed, if the mummery is more apparent than the solemnity, I do not see how respect can be felt by those ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... us something to compassionate. As a rule the biographer cannot bear to evoke the smallest pity for his hero. The absence of female relatives in the case of Johnson was probably a part of his good fortune. No biographer likes, and seldom dares, to torture the sensibilities of a great man's widow and daughters. And the strength as well as the weakness of the feminine point of view is that women have a power not so much of not observing, as of actually obliterating the weaknesses of those whom they ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sharp stone formerly used as a measure of weight. Pharmacists always have scruples. There is nothing so torturing as to walk with one or several of these pebbles in the shoe. Spiritual scruples serve the same purpose for the conscience. They torture and torment; they make devotion and prayer impossible, and blind the conscience; they weaken the mind, exhaust the bodily forces, and cause a disease that not infrequently comes to a climax in despair ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... women, the crown o' the earth doth melt";—"O, wither'd is the garland of the war, the soldier's pole is fall'n";—"Look, our lamp is spent, it's out." And so in Macbeth's,—"The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of";—"Better be with the dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy";—"Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day." Also one of the Thanes, when they are about to make their ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... common soldier who raised himself by the aid of a faction to the throne of the East, and for twenty years defied attempts to dethrone him, but, being deserted by his party, was taken, subjected to torture, and beheaded in 610. "His reign," says Gibbon, "afflicted Europe with ignominious peace, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... their time in the peaceful business of agriculture and commerce; that revenge and hatred of foes were the noblest sentiments to be cultivated in the human breast; and that no act was more worthy than to kill a foe, or a feeling more delightful than to witness his suffering under torture. Yet the heart of young Laurence was not hardened, nor altogether debased. Occasionally yearnings for a different life to that he led rose in his bosom. Whence they came he could not tell. Still he could not help thinking that there might be a brighter and better state ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... vibrated through Sigurd's voice touched his listener profoundly. Dimly he guessed that the stricken soul before him had formed the erroneous idea that he, Errington, had come to do some great wrong to Thelma or her belongings, and he pitied the poor creature for his foolish self-torture. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... portrayal of these intense moments. He sees passion not as a blinding fume, but as a flame, which enlarges the area, and quickens the acuteness, of vision; the background grows alive with moving shapes. To the stricken girl in Ye Banks and Braes memory is torture, and she thrusts convulsively from her, like dagger-points, the intolerable loveliness of the things that remind her of her love; whereas the victim of The Confessional pours forth from her frenzied lips every detail of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds with red blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries. Out of a horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us, and when from his sepulchre of flame the great Ghibelline rises, the pride that triumphs over the torture of that bed becomes ours for a moment. Through the dim purple air fly those who have stained the world with the beauty of their sin, and in the pit of loathsome disease, dropsy-stricken and swollen of body into the semblance of a monstrous ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... noise; but they are just the very people who are also not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intellectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality. On the other hand, noise is a torture to intellectual people. In the biographies of almost all great writers, or wherever else their personal utterances are recorded, I find complaints about it; in the case of Kant, for instance, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul; and if it should happen ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... helplessly. She was as one manacled or paralyzed and submitted to such a torture as she had never endured. She harkened in vain for some hopeful note of uncongeniality, some reassurance for her love or at least her vanity, some certainty that her husband, her first possessor, had given her some emotion that he could never give another. But he was repeating to Zada the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... cries disturbed his siesta. He ordered them to be strangled, that he might hear no more of it. But the superintendent, whom I know, as well as his family, which is from Seville, more cruel than the officer, refused to end their torture." He would not be cheated of his after-dinner luxury, so he gagged them with sticks, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... every trace of life extinct. The family inquisition on the slaves of the household was held as a matter of course. Their statements were never published to the world, but it was believed that under torture they had confessed to seeing certain men introduced stealthily during the night through the back part of the house; these, they thought, had strangled their master.[460] The reason which they assigned for their reticence was their fear of the people; they knew ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... know," rejoined de Batz placidly, holding his podgy hands to the warm glow of the fire. "For you have started torture in your house of Justice now, eh, friend Heron? You and your friend the Public Prosecutor have gone ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... is a vile malady born of impure contact. It is the prowling instinct of phantoms who raise the lids of tombs; it is an inexplicable torture with which God punishes those who have sinned; they wish to believe that all sin as they have done, and would be disappointed perhaps to find that it was not so. But they inquire, they search, they dispute; they wag their heads from side to side as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... trees formed a dark mass, or else some straw-thatched hamlet indented the moor. At the cross-roads the images of Christ on the cross, which watch over and protect the country, stretched out their black arms on their supports like real men in torture; in the distance the Channel appeared fair and calm, one vast golden mirror, under the already ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... he; "a flood! a water-spout! or a new torture invented by these blacks? Faith, though, I'm not going to wait here till ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... very forcible idea of the powers of imagination, since he allows them four parts in five of the torments decreed by that satanic tribunal. "Know," Limborch represents Clarus saying, "that there are five degrees of torture, videlicit, first, the torture of being threatened to be tortured; secondly, the torture of being conveyed to the place of torture; thirdly, the torture of being, and bound for torture; fourthly, the torture of being hoisted on the torturing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... was held out,—for, by this time, the child's air of mystery and reserve had suggested a closet like that of Bluebeard, a chamber of torture, or, at least, the proofs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... all diseased: all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heartsick agony, all fev'rous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic-pangs Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums; Dire ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... blowing for to torture me (His voice rising and growing stronger.) That's your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be wary, for, if I've to face the gallows, I'll have a gay march down, I tell you, and shed the blood of some of you ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... can you torture the poor child?" said his wife, braver in the little boy's defence ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... verge From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... quicke you eternall counsell, or else I feare the nere-erturned dead Clad in the fearefull shapes of night and hell, will rife before the general day be spred; and hurrie me in flesh to Acheron, To taste hels torture both in soule and bone: Then blast me thunderer in righteous ire, and I like Semele wil ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... seemed a triumph, had not Theodora been thoroughly humbled. She only saw a humiliating contrast between the true pure heart that blindly gave its full affections, and that which could pretend to have given itself away, and then, out of mere impatience of restraint, play with and torture the love it had excited, and, still worse, foster an attachment it ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... place—luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them. You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded, for the viva voce schools are open to the public. But one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit Minos, Rhadamanthus ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of his slighted soul. If Mme. de Bargeton had been in his power, he could have cut her throat at that moment; he was a Fouquier-Tinville gloating over the pleasure of sending Mme. d'Espard to the scaffold. If only he could have put de Marsay to the torture with refinements of savage cruelty! Canalis went by on horseback, bowing to the prettiest women, his dress elegant, as became the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... instruments of such a rational method. Among the qualities inherent in matter movement is the first and foremost, not only in the form of mechanical and mathematical movement, but even more as an impulse, a vital spirit, a tension, as a qual (a torture)—to use an expression ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... offenders. Among the commissioners were Adrian van der Werff, John van der Does, who had been military commandant of Leyden during the siege, Barneveld, and other distinguished personages, over whom Count Maurice presided. The accused were subjected to an impartial trial. Without torture, they confessed their guilt. It is true, however, that Cosmo was placed within sight of the rack. He avowed that his object had been to place the city under the authority of Leicester, and to effect this purpose, if possible, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... indeed, and crown'd of fate As kings are crowned, as bards in their estate Are rapture-fraught, re-risen above the dust. Then were I torture-proof, and on the crust Of one kind word, though as a pittance thrown, I'd live for weeks! My tears I would disown And pray, contented with my discontent, As hermits ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... plot, and Belvidera, in order to save her father, persuades Jaffier to reveal the plot to Priuli, if he will promise a general free pardon. Priuli gives the required promise, but notwithstanding, all the conspirators, except Jaffier, are condemned to death by torture. Jaffier stabs Pierre to save him from the dishonor of the wheel, and then kills himself. Belvidera goes mad ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... interposed the governor sternly. "It is never well to threaten what we cannot perform. We break not bones nor put to the torture in our new community; but, John Billington, I shall counsel thy father to take thee ashore and whip thee so soundly as shall make thee long remember that gunpowder is for thee forbidden fruit. Go, now, to thy cabin, and remain there till he comes, while I go to see what harm ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... room. As Dr. Dale looked up and smiled a greeting, he placed his finger on his lips. Steve Strong, Captain in the Solar Guard, gazed around the room at the backs bent over busy pencils. He did not smile, remembering how, only fifteen years before, he had gone through the same torture, racking his brains trying to adjust the measurements of a magnascope prism. He was joined by a thin handsome young man, Lieutenant Judson Saminsky, and finally, Warrant Officer McKenny. They nodded silently in greeting. It would be over soon. Strong glanced at the clock over the desk. Another ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... than long! No one thought of her living. The doctors said the injury was too extensive to leave any power of rallying; but she was young and strong, and did not die in the torture, though people said that such an existence as remained to her was not worth the anguish of struggling back to it. I think my father only prayed that she might suffer less, and Julia stayed on and on, thinking each day would be the last, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... round; and you could thus pass a day or two in the States - a fortnight even - and still see me. But I have sworn to take no further excursions till I have money saved to pay for them; and to go to Ceylon and back would be torture unless I had a lot. You must answer this at once, please; so that I may know what to do. We would dearly like you to come on here. I'll tell you how it can be done; I can come up and meet you at ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shall be kept down, and their spirits broken. We are to see them again subject to individual persecution, as anger, or malice, or any bad passion may suggest: hence the whip, the chain, the iron-collar! hence the various modes of private torture, of which so many accounts have been truly given. Nor can such horrible cruelties be discovered so as to be made punishable, while the testimony of any number of the oppressed is invalid against ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... flogging properly administered should produce sharp stinging pain and leave no bad results whatever. Then it becomes a very useful punishment to use upon such men as those whose crimes are characterised by cruelty. Men who violate, torture, or frighten women, who are cruel to children or take advantage of the weak, imbecile or defenceless might well be punished with a flogging. In fact it is questionable whether any punishment is so effective. These men are cowards one and all; they do ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... is not exposed to danger, one may forget it for a few years. But he was living now in France, and France was being obliged to defend herself against enemies wishing to overpower her. The sight of all her people rising en masse was becoming an increasingly shameful torture for Desnoyers, making him think all the time of what he should have done in his youth, of what he ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and that was delicate till I came home and found how good and kind she was. I miss her; months from now I shall miss her a hundredfold. I'm very lonely. You've all been so good to me. To be alone, and to think of living alone for the rest of my days, is a torture. My nature craves companionship, and this craving has led me into plenty of mischief. I love Patty. What do ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the state of inaction to which we were doomed, aggravated by the stings of mosquitoes and large green-eyed flies, became a perfect torture. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... this faith know no god but force, no devotion but its use. They tutor men in treason. They feed upon the hunger of others. Whatever defies them, they torture, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... chill and dark, the window was partly open and the blind partly down: I cannot depict what an air he had of being out of place, like a man shipwrecked there. Uncle Adam had his station at the business-table in the midst. Valuable rows of books looked down upon the place of torture; and I could hear sparrows chirping in the garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the piano and pouring forth an acid stream of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... how the Church of God is trampled upon in the present day by proud worldlings, how one barks and another bites, how they torture, how they plot against her, how she is assailed incessantly by mad dogs and savage beasts, let it remind us that the same thing was done in all the olden time. It is true God sometimes gives her a truce and time of refreshment, and hence in the Psalm ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... gingerbread-buttons, of which the cob became passionately fond. Invariably, however, before giving it a button, he said, "Deaghblasda," with which word the cob by degrees associated an idea of unmixed enjoyment: so if he could rouse the cob to madness by the word which recalled the torture to its remembrance, he could as easily soothe it by the other word, which the cob knew would be instantly followed by the button, which the smith never failed to give him ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Dr. Gregory to my husband, who took me there. My husband wishes me to remain at home, but I tell him I feel more comfortable here in the hospital. I shall never go to that house again—the memory of the torture of sleepless nights in my room there when I felt my good looks going, going"—she shuddered—"is such that I can never forget it. He says I would be better off there, but no, I cannot go. Still," she continued wearily, "there can be no harm in ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... have clambered up the rocks—through some desperate impulse for a breeze—or to die! She lifted her head as the hoofs rang below—but still looked away toward some Mecca for good mules. You must needs have been there to get it all—the old gray against the red sky—and know first-hand the torture of the trails, the valor of labor, the awfulness of Luzon. To Cairns and Bedient there was something deep and heady to the picture, as they followed the eyes of Healy—and then his yell that ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... fever. It was for you I did it—for your sake I sold my honor, the love of my country, the freedom of my brothers. For your sake I risked an awful death. For your sake I have lived like a hunted man, with the cry of the wolves always in my ears, and the fear of death and of eternal torture with me day by day. No other man since the world was made has done ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... way wid him." I wonder now why I did not go mad with the joy, and the pain, and the uncertainty of it all. Never was a girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so courted. He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What guise would he wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or sullen, or teasing or passionate, or cold, or tender or scintillating? I know that my hands were always cold, and my cheeks ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... This plan kept the boy's mind clear and calm; the ever-present Saviour being to him instead of all soothing drugs. Sometimes when greatly oppressed, he has had leeches; and I remember once half a dozen were put on his side, at his own request. The inflammation was very great; the torture dreadful as they drew it to the surface; and I was called to him, as he sat grasping the arm of a chair, and writhing convulsively. He said to me, "Very, very pain; pain bad, soon kill;" and he seemed half wild with agony. Looking up in my face, he saw me in tears; ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Tooth. But let the frame of things dis-ioynt, Both the Worlds suffer, Ere we will eate our Meale in feare, and sleepe In the affliction of these terrible Dreames, That shake vs Nightly: Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gayne our peace, haue sent to peace, Then on the torture of the Minde to lye In restlesse extasie. Duncane is in his Graue: After Lifes fitfull Feuer, he sleepes well, Treason ha's done his worst: nor Steele, nor Poyson, Mallice domestique, forraine Leuie, nothing, Can ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... unshed tears—his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently; but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take care of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... destitute of Destitution's children are simply fellow-countrymen and fellow-Christians. Sons of the same soil, and worshippers of the same God, they need no good works in the way of proselyzation to save them from eternal perdition; consequently they receive no help to keep them from temporal torture. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... the 23rd he followed his daughter, penitent for his rebellion, but constant, as she had implored him to be, in his faith. His two brothers and Lord Cobham's sons were condemned. William Thomas, to escape torture, stabbed himself, but recovered to die at Tyburn. Lord Cobham himself, who was arrested notwithstanding his defence of his house, Wyatt, Sir James Crofts, Sir William St. Lowe, Sir Nicholas Arnold, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and, as the council expressed it, "a world more," were in various prisons ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... no doubt due in part to the theological ideas that have come down to us from the time of the Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some sort of a judgment that classes him as either a saint qualified for eternal bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The belief is based on that erroneous view of human nature that was common to the melodrama of a past generation and that will possibly have eternal life in the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good and the villain as ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... though it had been many years since he had used it, he begged them to take him with them away from this awful country. Once on board the Marjorie W. the stranger told his rescuers a pitiful tale of privation, hardships, and torture, extending over a period of ten years. How he happened to have come to Africa he did not tell them, leaving them to assume he had forgotten the incidents of his life prior to the frightful ordeals that had wrecked him mentally and ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the barbarous Scythians, to flay the corpses, and not the living forms, of criminals and of enemies; we may hope, therefore, that the Assyrians removed the skin from the dead, to use it as a trophy or as a warning, and did not inflict so cruel a torture on ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... mischievous rogue, the ally of the young against the old master of whom we read in Roman comedy, if he does not come up to our ideal of what a man should be, does not seem to have been physically very wretched. Even here, however, we see how degraded a thing a slave was, and the frequent threats of torture prove how utterly he was at the mercy of a cruel master's caprice. We know, too, that when a master was arraigned on a criminal charge, the first thing done to prove his guilt was to torture his slaves. But ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... sternly judged. If the supposed message to Cobham, which formed one of the most damaging charges in 1603 against Ralegh, were a gloss of his own, concocted from casual talk, he paid for his indiscretion by enduring imprisonment, and braving threats of torture, with a noble fidelity. He suffered yet more cruel penalties for having vaunted the mineral riches of Guiana to enhance the merit of its discovery, until the mirage ended by beguiling his admired chief into irretrievable ruin. Not even death ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the room—and shuddered. Every corner of it was filled with the terrible memories of the past night. She might wake from the torture of the dreams to find the terror of the Apparition watching at her bedside. Was there no remedy? no blessed safeguard under which she might tranquilly resign herself to sleep? A thought crossed her mind. The good book—the Bible. If she slept ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... earnest, and my father began to wonder how it had ever come to pass that he had consented to let her go. After breakfast, Dall and I walked to Mr. Cartwright's (the dentist), who fortunately did not torture me much; for if he had, my spirits were so exceedingly low that I am sure I should have disgraced myself and cried like a coward. As soon as we came home I set to work, and have never stopped copying till I began this letter, when, having done my day's work, I thought I might tell you ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Junior Deacon at the same time pressing his naked left breast with the point of the compass, and asks the candidate, "Did you feel anything?" ANS.—"I did." Junior Deacon to the candidate, "What was it?" ANS.—"A torture." The Junior Deacon then says, "As this is a torture to your flesh, so may it ever be to your mind and conscience, if ever you should attempt to reveal the secrets of Masonry unlawfully." The candidate is then conducted to the centre of the Lodge, where ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... the restless body of an African Negro in a position to which he has not been accustomed—to cramp his splay-feet, with his great toes standing out, into European shoes made for feet of a different form—to place a collar round his neck, which is called a stock, and which to him is cruel torture—above all, to confine him every night to his barracks—are almost insupportable. One unacquainted with the habits of the Negro cannot conceive with what abhorrence he looks on having his disposition to nocturnal rambles checked by barrack ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... surprised and nobody punished. Then there is the chapter of lynchings: First, the gross crime of some human brute, then a sudden passionate vengeance by the community; the custom spreads; it runs into hideous torture and public exultation in it; it extends to other crimes; it knows no geographical boundaries but spreads like an evil infection over the country—but most of its victims ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... like a cry wrung from a man in torture, and as he uttered them the last of his self-control slipped from his grasp. With a face gone suddenly devilish, he strode round the table and stood before his grandfather, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... letter with a sigh. He feared as much himself, and had doleful visions of a painful fortnight to be spent in a big country house, where the conversation would be all concerning the slaughter of pheasants and the torture of foxes, which his soul loathed to listen to. 'It's from Lady Hilda,' he said, glancing through it, 'and it ISN'T an invitation after all.' He could hardly keep down a faint tone of gratification as he discovered this reprieve. 'Here's what ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... burst of barking, followed by a series of the most piteous howls, wild and prolonged, such as an animal might utter who was suffering from some terrible torture. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever never kills; it merely tortures. No man ever died of it. Is the torture, then, an end in itself? Does it break the pride of strutting, snorting man, and turn his heart to the things of the spirit? Nonsense! A man with hay fever is a natural criminal. He curses the ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... and a graver aspect. Mrs. Loring scrutinized her countenance closely. This she bore without a sign of embarrassment. She partook but lightly of food. After the meal closed she retired to her own room, once more to torture her brain in a fruitless effort to solve this ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... Jimmy so much! Suppose she had lost her case in the Divorce Case and Jimmy had been taken away from her? Even now she shuddered when she thought of the risk she had run. She remembered again the period of waiting when the jury could not come to an agreement. What torture she had endured, though no one knew it, or, perhaps, ever would know it! Had not that torture been a tremendous warning to her against the unwise life? Why go into danger again? But perhaps there was no danger any more. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... did not think of myself," replied the other. "I was in torture for my brother and his poor wife and little child, for, as soon as I was gagged and bound, I saw Gomez and six of the villains all draw their knives and start towards the poop; and, presently, I heard the shriek of ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Bohemian fugitive and rebel, His neck is forfeit. Can he save himself At thy cost, think you he will scruple it? And if they put him to the torture, will he, Will he, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... to know he was a prince and torture him by pretending you did n't care for him," replied Janice. "Men are ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... their chests and backs in streams, until their waist-bands clung to the flesh like soaked sponges. Some began to moan and sob; others to entreat Heaven for a respite, as if God were directing their torture and taking delight in it; others again broke out into frightful imprecations, cursing their Maker and the hour of their birth. And while the oars swung and the chains clashed and the cries redoubled their volume, the three keepers ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more distinct, and to Virginia the man became more and more prominent in it. She saw the dying and exhausted dogs, the frost-rimed, weary men; she heard the quick crunch, crunch, crunch of the snow-shoes hurrying ahead to break the trail; she felt the cruel torture of the mal de raquette, the shrivelling bite of the frost, the pain of snow blindness, the hunger that yet could not stomach the frozen fish nor the hairy, black caribou meat. One thing she could not conceive—the indomitable spirit of the men. She glanced ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... minutes to nine. If she isn't here in five minutes we shall miss the train." His passion grew in intensity, and hope was dead, when he heard sounds of running footsteps, and saw the great girl holding her hat with one hand and her dress with the other. The torture of expectation was worth the rapture of relief, and he said, delighted: "So you have come, have you? One minute more and you ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... hoped to find from the death of the one some means for preserving the life of the other. The councillor was in a violent fever, agitated unceasingly both in body and mind: he could not bear any position of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt away. This, said the doctors; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... excitable, Pocahontas assented absently; she was bracing her will, and steeling her nerves to endure without flinching. Not for worlds would she—even by the quivering of an eyelash—let Norma see the torture she was inflicting. She felt that Norma had an object in this disclosure, and was dimly sure that the object was hostile. She would think it all out later; at present Norma must not see her anguish. A woman would ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... and looked out at the stars. Why had men arranged such clumsy constellations when the total pattern of the sky was a big and lovely harmony? He knew his personal danger would be enormous once he was on the ground. Torture, mutilation, even death. ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... its crimson calyx for a smothering-pit in which to seal and devour the victim of its beauty; the rainbow-colored jellyfish that spreads its prismed tentacles like streamers of great beauty, only to sting and torture all that falls within their radiant folds. Man himself is busy digging the pit and fashioning the snare, but he will not believe it. His feet are in the trap of circumstance; his eyes are ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... you; her sorrow makes your melancholy return. Privation conjures up countless illusions and every chimera imaginable, so that the peaceful retreat of virgins of the Lord becomes a veritable hell, peopled by phantoms that groan in torture!" ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... hiding-place for treasure—two long, shallow cavities in the floor, of which there cannot have been the slightest sign when the floor was covered with planking. A vaulted passage leads to the south court, and in one corner of this court rises a watch-tower over a horrible little dungeon or chamber of torture. ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... or resembling the mode of torture employed by Procrustes—a celebrated highwayman of ancient Attica, who tied his victims upon an iron bed, and, as the case required, either stretched out or cut off their legs to ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... he had been kicked once. He assured the House that the sensation was repugnant to his feelings as a man—much more as a Congressman. He moved to amend by substituting slow torture. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... must be borne in some degree by the government of George III. "God and nature," wrote the Earl of Suffolk piously, "hath put into our hands the scalping-knife and tomahawk, to torture them into unconditional submission." But the fault lay chiefly with the British officers at the western posts—most of all, with Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton at Detroit. Probably no British representative in America was on better terms with the natives. He drank with them, sang war-songs with them, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... suffered. The torture had been of a less acute kind while we were riding over comparatively level roads, but here we were going "up hill and down dale" again, and how I was to bear it ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... up for peace in Bosnia. Remember the skeletal prisoners, the mass graves, the campaign to rape and torture, the endless lines of refugees, the threat of a spreading war. All these threats, all these horrors have now begun to give way to the promise of peace. Now, our troops and a strong NATO, together with our new partners ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... we take good care so shall be our neighbour. Just as we have voted that there is nothing new, nothing strange, nothing amusing, we defy any one to differ with us, on pain of pronouncing him vulgar. North American Indians are not more case-hardened against any show of suffering under torture than are our well-bred people against any manifestation of showing pleasure in anything. "It wasn't bad," is about the highest expression of our praise; and I doubt if we would accord more to heaven—if we got there. The grand test of your modern Englishman is, to bear ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... guillotine—an awful instrument in the likeness of a straw-cutter, with a decapitated wooden figure under its blade—which the custodian confessed to be a modern improvement placed there by Signor P——. Yet my credulity was so strengthened by his candor, that I accepted without hesitation the torture of the water-drop when we came to it. The water-jar was as well preserved as if placed there but yesterday, and the skeleton beneath it—found as we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... more episodes of that sort eventually drove me to it. I passed my viva-voce examination at the hands of the young lady at the desk, paid my fees, got my testamur, and was shown into the torture-chamber, where the head executioner was busy adjusting his racks ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... reached the stage of being miserable out of his presence. The dawn of a woman's love is the happiest time in its story. There is no certain realisation of the truth to startle, perhaps affright, her, no doubts to depress her, no jealous fears to torture her heart—only a vague, delicious feeling of gladness, a pleasant rose-tinted glow to brighten life and warm her heart. The fierce, devouring flames ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... behoveth thee to tell my inquiring self, those auspicious signs by which I may recognise a Brahmana.' Vinata replied, saying, 'O child, him shouldst thou know as the best amongst Brahmanas who having entered thy throat would torture thee as a fish-hook or burn thee as blazing charcoal. A Brahmana must never be slain by thee even in anger.' And Vinata out of affection for her son, again told him these words, 'Him shouldst thou know as a good Brahmana who would ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... features, and was terrified accordingly. That they not only presented pistols to his breast, and led his horse out of the highway; but pricked him with goads, and pinched him, from time to time, till he screamed with the torture. That he was led through unfrequented places across the country, sometimes at an easy trot, sometimes at full gallop, and tormented all night by those hideous demons, who vanished at daybreak, and left him lying on the spot where he ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... had, on reaching this place, taken the further precaution of tying his ankles, so that he now lay on the ground utterly helpless, a prey to bitter thoughts, but nerving himself to bear bravely whatever torture might await him. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... shots ring out; and the Indians flee through the gate to disappear into the leafy woods. But they have lost one man, whom Robertson has shot, and have killed or wounded three or four of the settlers. Robertson, by keen watchfulness, has saved the fort from capture and his comrades from probable torture or death. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... futility, a week of inaction, thanks to that flesh wound in his leg. Futility seemed to haunt, yes, and torture him! Even his rehabilitation of Larry the Bat, with all its attendant risk and danger, had been futile as far as she was concerned. And he had counted so much on that! And that had failed, and nothing was left to him but to pursue again the one possible ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... especially woman," she began, "as something hostile, something against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. You feel that their power over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. This is a genuinely modern point ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... sorely troubled Wallop and Archbishop Loftus; but they were comforted by a great prize—an archbishop fell into their hands. Dr. Hurley refused to give information against others. Walsingham suggested that he should be put to the torture. To him Archbishop Loftus wrote with unction. 'Not finding that easy method of examination do any good, we made command to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture, such as your honour advised us, which was ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Southern negroes in public and hanging Wyoming horse-thieves in private. I consider the burning a proof that the South is semi-barbarous, and the hanging a proof that Wyoming is determined to become civilized. We do not torture our criminals when we lynch them. We do not invite spectators to enjoy their death agony. We put no such hideous disgrace upon the United States. We execute our criminals by the swiftest means, and in the quietest way. Do you think the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... incarnation of the evil principle. At the tribunal in Seville alone it is said that in thirty-six years four thousand victims were consigned to the flames, besides the thousands more who endured living deaths by torture, ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... and every torture of the Body ... Blessed be Plague and Pestilence and the Illness ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... of solitary imprisonment, a martyrdom of physical degradation quite unspeakable, and sickening even to think of for a moment, darkness, torture, utter despair, and then freedom and human tears, and this astounding roar of triumph, sympathy, and welcome! It was no wonder the scene unmanned him. The wonder was that he had not sunk into an unquestioning animalism—a mere ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... violently, though the night was warm, and with a distinct impression that this thing would end by making me mad. It was no longer a question of "this sort of thing" killing me. The moral atmosphere of this torture was different. It would make me mad. And at that thought great shudders ran down my prone body, because, once, I had visited a famous lunatic asylum where they had shown me a poor wretch who was mad, apparently, because he thought he had been abominably ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... answer; he turned away. The old man caught at his feet. 'You are not going,' he cried in a shrill voice, '—you are not going? Leave me to die,—that is well; the sun will come and burn me, thirst will come and madden me, these wounds will torture me, and all is no more than I deserve. But Silver? If I die, she dies. If you forsake me, you forsake her. Listen; do you believe in your Christ, the dear Christ? Then, in his name I swear to you that you cannot reach her alone, that only I can guide ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... there are many to whom the sight of suffering causes genuine pleasure, and in whom the passion to kill or torture is as strong as any other passion. Witness the number of boys who assemble around a sheep or pig when it is about to be killed, and who watch the struggle of the dying brute with hearts beating fast with pleasure, and eyes sparkling with delight. Often ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... jesting to your death! For you must die a prisoner now, without any hope. You and Orleans and Bourbon are England's only hold on France, and Bedford dare not let you go. Fetters, chains, dungeons, death, torture perhaps—that is what you must look for now. And you will no longer be held at Winstead, but in the ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... fourteen years to sixfold its original amount. The communities had to sell their public buildings, their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up children, in order to meet the claims of the Roman creditor: it was no rare occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected to moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack. To these sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale traffic. The exports and imports of Italy were very considerable. The former consisted chiefly of wine and oil, with which Italy and Greece almost exclusively—for the production of wine in the Massiliot ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... audacity on the part of Toledo, in basing arguments on the alleged cruelty and tyranny of the Incas, when the man was actually red-handed with the blood of an innocent youth, and engaged in the tyrannical persecution of his relations and the hideous torture of his followers. His arguments made no impression on the mind of Philip II. The King even showed some favour to the children of Tupac Amaru by putting them in the succession to the Marquisate of Oropesa. In the Inca pedigrees Toledo is called "el execrable ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... be frank, Wilhelmine.... Your last words have increased my torture.... Have you not spoken of your dear dead, and must I learn that you are perhaps going to pray ... at the tomb of ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... oilcloth of the topmost stairs, minutely instructing a maid in the craft of polishing banisters. And the next morning an attack of acute sciatica had supervened. For a trifling indiscretion Sarah was thus condemned to extreme physical torture. Hilda had found her rigid on the bed. She suffered the severest pain in the small of the back and all down the left leg. Her left knee was supported on pillows, and the bed-clothes were raised away ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... farther, reverend father: this youth who now speaks to you is he of whom I told you as we rode along, who bore torture without yielding up the name of the hiding place to which he knew the prince had escaped. But for him young Edward might yet have fallen into the hands of these robbers; for they would have watched our Priory and have set upon all who went or came, and ravaged the whole country, so that even the ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred—now trampled on! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate—a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people—in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of this country, restrain the merciless monster, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... this all. Neither the work nor the black silk dress contained for Mrs. Kelsey quite the possibilities of soul torture that were to be found in the words that fell from her lips. As the days passed, the task the little woman had set for herself became more and more hopeless, until she scarcely could bring herself to speak at all, so stumbling and halting ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... a door in a glass partition and found myself in the familiar torture-chamber. The old coloured plates of distinguished gentlemen in dazzling uniforms still hung on the walls. Their trouser-knees didn't bulge an inch. They fitted into their suits as wine fits into a decanter. Why couldn't I be like that? Also there were the looking-glasses artfully arranged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... [with a grimace] Thou art a most light-hearted and delightful companion, Master Wilfred. Thine anecdotes of the torture-chamber ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... haunted him. At first Christ's words and look of earnest affection filled his heart with a tumult of joy: but having fallen back into the old sordid self, the very memory of his master's face became a curse and torture. And so the vision blighted that should ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... loath to let Darby out of his own grasp and, for an instant, he was minded to stake all on one throw. He was firmly persuaded that Darby could disclose the Countess' whereabouts, if she were still of this world. Why not put him to the torture and wring the truth from him? Success would excuse, nay, approve such measures. . . But to fail! Mon Dieu! No; decidedly, no! It would be folly pure and childish. Only the long strain and his stress of feeling would have suggested ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the stranger, with a face of anguish that seemed to torture every feature out of ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton |
