"Tortured" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... besides the father of your elder cousin Chen, of the eastern mansion. He had a disposition that flared up like a fire over which oil is poured. If anything was said, and he flew into a rage, why, talk about a son, it was really as if he tortured a robber. From all I can now see and hear, Mr. Chen keeps his son in check just as much as was the custom in old days among his ancestors; the only thing is that he abides by it in some respects, but not in others. Besides, he doesn't exercise the least restraint over his own ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... irregular sobbing breaths of the girl there was silence. The Indian woman crouched beside the tortured young thing and rocked the dark head, held close against her bosom, while she crooned a ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... more, if stern remorse With iron grasp the tortured bosom wring. Ah then! even Fancy speeds the venom's course, Even Fancy points with rage the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... rarely, spoken of: it is, however, generally believed that the souls of the dead continue for some time to hover round the earthly remains: dreading, therefore, that the spirits of those they have tortured watch near them to seek opportunity of vengeance, they beat the air violently with rods, and raise frightful cries to scare the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the imaginary reproaches of our great literary church-father, the most preciously endowed minds are still toiling in letters. The sad and tortured devotion of genius still works itself out in them. Writing is now a marvellous craft and industry. The books which last, the books of a season, the quarterlies, monthlies, weeklies, dailies, and even the hourlies, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... body that breathes in the darkness there. Under the darkness I feel you stirring. . . . Is this you? Is this you? Bats in this air go whirring. . . . And this soft mouth that darkly meets my mouth, Is this the soft mouth I knew? Darkness, and wind in the tortured trees; And the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... have been seated around my own fireside, surrounded by friend & relation. That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the deaths of many testify, and the heart has a thousand missgivings, & the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced at the side boards of the waggon, not knowing how soon it might serve as a coffin for some one of us; but thanks for the kind care of Providence we were favored more ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced,— And soothed by every azure breath That under heaven is blown To harmonies and hues beneath, As tender as its own: Now all the tree-tops lay asleep Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... propensities had power to reveal themselves, was man the genuine victim for them, and the dying anguish of man the best 'nidor' that ascended from earthly banquets to their nostrils. Their stern eyes smiled darkly upon the throbbings of tortured flesh, as in Moloch's ears dwelt like music the sound of infants' wailings. Secondly, as to the birth of a new idea respecting the nature of God:—It may not have occurred to every reader, but none will perhaps object to it, when once suggested to his consideration, that—as is the god ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... your eyes should rest on me. Everywhere, wherever I go, they look at me, those eyes ... and that is my ruin. If business is bad. your eyes ask me, 'Why did you mix yourself up with these things, without a thought of wife or children?'... Then I feel as if some evil spirit possessed me and tortured my soul. Oh, why can't you look at me again as you did when you were my bride?—then you looked so happy, so lovely! At other times I think: 'I shall yet grasp fortune with both hands ... and then I can face my Gudule's eyes again.' ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... tortured into violence by the hurricane, foamed with rage, and flung its boiling spray upon the land. The thunder pealed along the vault of heaven—the lightning appeared to rend the firmament. For a moment all was still, and a ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... opened a little hand-bag which depended from her arm. She was quite intently devoted to a search for something. Presently she produced a coin, and then Harboro observed for the first time that the tortured figure of a beggar sat in the sun outside ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... in his eighth year, sitting clasped in his father's arms, had pierced anew that tortured heart by asking questions about his mother and the mystery of death, which no human mind can answer. The child was in a vortex of wonder, grief and speculation. It was the first great lesson of his life, and he would ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... ran elections merely to count its thugs in, and fattened at the public crib; and how the whole evil thing had its root in the tenements, where the home had ceased to be sacred,—those dark and deadly dens in which the family ideal was tortured to death, and character was smothered; in which children were "damned rather than born" into the world, thus realizing a slum kind of foreordination to torment, happily brief in many cases. The Tenement House Commission long afterward called the worst of the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... opinions. The cause of the Priscillianists, [51] a recent sect of heretics, who disturbed the provinces of Spain, was transferred, by appeal, from the synod of Bordeaux to the Imperial consistory of Treves; and by the sentence of the Praetorian praefect, seven persons were tortured, condemned, and executed. The first of these was Priscillian [52] himself, bishop of Avila, in Spain; who adorned the advantages of birth and fortune, by the accomplishments of eloquence and learning. Two presbyters, and two deacons, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... that was crawling on the table, and asked if it would not be mercy to kill it, and cruelty, damnable cruelty, to tear off a wing one day, and a limb the next, and so on, till nothing remained of its tortured frame but the quivering pulse of life. I spoke of men who die on the scaffold, or who drag on existence in jails and hulks, and whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses, who sit at our tables, with smiles ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... the little wayside shrine with a strange look on his face. A tortured Christ hung there, casting the shadow of pain upon the passers-by. The expression in the brown eyes of the heathen god haunted her all the way down the hill, and throughout the day: they seemed to understand, and ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... his feelings until his father had gone, and then, with a gasp of relief, put his head on the table and gave way to them. Convulsive tremours assailed him, and hilarious sobs escaped at intervals from his tortured frame. Ejaculations of "Joan!" and "Poor girl!" showed that he was not entirely bereft of ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... would here recommend the alternative, not the combined, employment of the curb and the snaffle." Thin bits which irritate horses' mouths often cause them to fight and pull hard; it is unfortunately no uncommon sight in the hunting field to see a tortured horse bleeding from the mouth, and yet such animals are expected ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... as they wither under a blight. What does Paley see in this? A legion of animated beings (for such is a blight) claiming their portion of the bounty of Nature, and made happy by our comparatively trifling privation, We are tortured by bodily pain,—Paley himself was so, even at the moment that he was thus nobly vindicating God's wisdom and ways. What of that? Pain is not the object of contrivance—no anatomist ever dreamt of explaining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... man, strong upon its rock, hiding in its heart the answer to all the questions that tortured man's existence—and yet, perhaps, aware of man's immortality, scornful of him for making so slight a use of that—but admiring him, too, for the tenacity of his courage and the undying resurgence ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... sounded like an echo down in the hollow form that confined the imprisoned, miserable soul. That soul was overwhelmed by the unexpected love from those realms afar. One of God's angels wept for her! Why was this vouchsafed to her? The tortured spirit gathered, as it were, into one thought, all the actions of its life—all that it had done; and it shook with the violence of its remorse—remorse such as Inger had never felt. Grief became her predominating feeling. She thought that for her the gates of mercy would never open, and as in ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... intervals, to serve as a guide to the fugitives, but many, no doubt, perished in the woods. On the morning after the massacre the Indians left in a body for Montreal, taking with them two hundred prisoners, to be tortured and murdered on their return to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... advancing rapidly to the next post-house, when, after they had proceeded about half a mile, Essper George calling loudly from behind, the drivers suddenly stopped. Just as Vivian, to whose tortured mind the rapid movement of the carriage was some relief, for it produced an excitement which prevented thought, was about to inquire the cause of this stoppage. Essper George rode up to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Tarzan stood straight against his stake. His face was entirely expressionless in so far as either fear or anger were concerned. His countenance portrayed bored indifference though both men knew that they were about to be tortured. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... evidence of the affair was given by Agnes Sampson (also called Anny Simpson or Tompson), John Fian, Euphemia or Effie McCalyan, and Barbara Napier. As it was a case of high treason, the two leaders, Sampson and Fian, were tortured to force them to divulge the name of the prime mover. Both these two and Effie McCalyan were condemned and executed; Barbara Napier, equally guilty according to the evidence but more fortunate in her jurors, was released; for which action the ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... empty compliments, but a word of panegyric has often made me feel a sense of confused pleasure which it required my strongest effort to conceal—and on the other hand, a hasty expression which I could construe into neglect or disapprobation has tortured me till I have lost half a night's rest from ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... bust of Pallas' sat The Raven from the 'night's Plutonian shore;' His burning glance withered my wasting life, His ceaseless cry still tortured as before: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... me, thou fairest, best of all thy kind, None e'er in dreams was tortured so before. Yet what most shocks the niceness of my temper, Even far beyond the killing of my father, And my own death, is, that this horrid sleep Dashed my sick fancy with an act of incest: I dreamt, Jocasta, that thou wert my mother; Which, though impossible, so damps my spirits, That I could do ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... these drugs for a while the body demands the continuation and if the victim is deprived of his accustomed portion there will be a collapse with intense suffering. Every tortured nerve in the body seems to call out for the drug. The victim will do anything to get his drug. He will lie, steal, and he may even attack those who are caring for him. For the time being ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... words the mother of Khaled, defeated of her object, went back to her son, who was tortured by the most cruel anxiety. He rose suddenly to his feet, for his love had reached the point of desperation, and asked with inquietude what were the feelings of his cousin. When he learned the answer of Djaida his distress became overwhelming, for her refusal only increased his ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... different quarters of the city; they stripped about fifteen thousand of the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex, and drove them naked into the castle, that the garrison might be the sooner induced to capitulate. There they remained like cattle in the open air, without food or covering, tortured between the horrors of their fete and the terrors of a bombardment. When they were set at liberty, in consequence of the fort's being surrendered, a great number of them died along the banks of the Neckar, from cold, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... both minded. But I had ideals of womanhood that I wouldn't sacrifice to any human being. Then I fell in with a woman who seduced me, and for a whole year led me the life of a French novel ... played about with my emotion as I had tortured that other poor girl's brains. Education you'd call it in the one case as I called it in the other. What a ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... very much the same purgatory years before. Indeed it was very much like a coffee room in purgatory, if the reader can imagine such a thing, for every one of the patrons had this distinguishing trait—they were shackled and tortured and seared by the lack of a little money. The mangy old waif who asked for a cup of tea and furtively fished out of a little black oil-cloth bag a couple of thick sandwiches; the middle-aged person with a fine moustache, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... his stirrups, rubbing the mist out of his eyes that he might see clearer, and stared ahead. What was that away out yonder? a shadow? a spot dancing before his tortured vision? or a moving, living something which he actually saw? He could not tell, he could not be sure, yet he straightened up expectantly, shading his eyes, and never losing sight of the object. It moved, grew larger, darker, more real—yet how it crawled, crawled, crawled ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... come to know that Karna was the eldest born! Having caused my brother to be slain, my heart is burning exceedingly. If I had both Karna and Arjuna for aiding me, I could have vanquished Vasudeva himself. Whilst I was tortured in the midst of the assembly by the wicked-souled sons of Dhritarashtra, my wrath, suddenly provoked, became cooled at sight of Karna. Even while listening to the harsh and bitter words of Karna himself on that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... appeared the great welts of chalk of the main line trenches, then the lesser connecting ones; the woods became black patches and the remaining tree-trunks gaunt, still and dismal sentinels of the gray ruins of the villages, until finally all the conformations of the scarred and tortured slope were distinct in the first fresh light of a brilliant summer's day. Where the blazes had been was the burst of black smoke from shells and we saw that it was still German fire along the visible line of the British objective, assuring us that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... deciding to see what could be done in the way of rooms, without the expense of going from place to place in a cab. The places Miss Abercrombie had recommended her to struck her as being expensive, and it seemed to her tortured nerves as if the landladies viewed her with distrustful eyes. She finally decided to take a bus down to Chelsea; she remembered having heard from someone that Chelsea was a cheap and frankly Bohemian ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... laws of slavery in that, as well as many other of the slave States, he was compelled to receive, on his naked person, nine and thirty lashes with a raw hide! This, at the age of seventy odd, after the distinguished services rendered his country,—probably when the white ruffian for whom he was tortured was unable to raise an arm in its defense,—was more than he could bear; it broke his heart, and he sank to rise no more, till summoned by the blast of the last trumpet to stand on the battle-field of the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... with a shuddering cry of horror. The sense of his words, the memory of Monty, the certainty that she would kill Stewart if she held the gun an instant longer, tortured the self-accusing ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... my prophet wail deride! The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; And lonely in the waste, I hide The tortured heart that would forewarn. Amid the happy, unregarded, Mock'd by their fearful joy, I trod; Oh, dark to me the lot awarded, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... this human being and had been obeyed. The traveler braced himself for the leap from the tortured mind to ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... Covered with blankets, every window tightly sealed, and the moaning cry for water answered by a little hot ale or tincture of bitter herbs, nature often gave up the useless struggle and released the tortured and delirious wretch. The means of cure left the constitution irretrievably weakened if not hopelessly ruined, and the approach of the disease was looked upon with affright and regarded usually as a special visitation of the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... and the young lady had really been married, and became the parents of a posterity, still extant, of which the Middleton of the romance is the surviving male. Perhaps he had changed his name, being so much tortured with the evil and wrong that had sprung up in his family, so remorseful, so outraged, that he wished to disconnect himself with all the past, and begin life quite anew in a new world. But both he and his wife, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... clubs. He loved fighting, finery, gambling, and the chase. He domesticated no animals but the dog and possibly the hog. Sometimes brave, he was oftener treacherous, cruel, revengeful. His power of endurance on the trail or the warpath was incredible, and if captured, he let himself be tortured to death without a quiver or a cry. Though superstitious, he believed in a Great Spirit to be worshipped without idols, and in a future life of happy ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... there ever a grimmer cycle than this, by which that which feeds, and that which heals, becomes in the end that which kills! But let me try to forget that side of it, and remember, rather, as we leave the smells behind, that the calcined bones become artificial manure, and go back again into the tortured fields of France, while other bye-products of the factory help the peasants near to feed their pigs. And anything, however small, that helps the peasants of France in this war, comforts ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... could not guess. She seemed to withdraw into herself so that he was conscious that he knew no more of her than when he had first seen her bathing in the pool. He had an uneasy feeling that she was concealing something from him, and because he adored her it tortured him. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... head with the singular wild grace always a part of her actions, with that old unconscious intimation of innocence which always tortured Venters, but now with something more—a spirit rising from the depths that linked ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... beginning less to think it so, now that his name was put to the hated monstrous thing; which also now fell to pricking at curiosity. For he was in the early steps of his career, and if his lady, holding to pride, despised him—as, he was tortured into the hypocrisy of confessing, she justly might, why, then, unless he was the sport of a farceur, here seemed a gilding of the path of duty: he could be serviceable to friends. His claim on fair young Rose's love had grown in the short while so prodigiously asinine that it was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... glowering misery that possessed him by day and the despair to which he would give rein by night, it was always with dauntless ferocity that the tortured Wolfhound faced his enemy, the Professor. Short of starving him to death, or killing him outright with the iron bar, the Professor could see no way of making the Giant Wolf cringe to him; he could devise no method of breaking that fierce spirit, though he exhausted every kind ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... first time, of asphyxiating gases drove back in confusion the French colonial troops on the left of the Canadians. Attacked and outflanked by a German army of 150,000 men, four Canadian brigades, immensely inferior in heavy artillery and tortured by the poisonous fumes, filled the gap, hanging on doggedly day and night until reenforcements came and Calais was saved. In sober retrospection it was almost incredible that the thin khaki line had held against the overwhelming odds which faced ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... crushed into dust, the slaughtered creatures fell down on the field. Others, again, of terrible mien were struck and thrown down on the earth by others armed with diverse and excellent weapons and sunk into the earth by the tread of steeds and elephants, and tortured and mangled by heavy cars and car wheels. And during the progress of that fierce carnage so delightful to beasts of prey and carnivorous birds and cannibals, mighty combatants, filled with wrath, and slaughtering one another careered over the field putting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... went not unpunished. Neither business, nor pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising into life, to threaten and upbraid him. [25] The consciousness of his crime should have induced him to convince mankind, by the virtues of his reign, that the bloody deed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... have guessed that the one was the reading of that book of social protest, though its writer has fallen into disfavor in these fickle days. The other was the wild and unladylike street brawl in which she took part so that a terrified and tortured little ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... her cottage that night weary and depressed. She had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and yet was too tired to prepare supper. She made her a cup of tea which she drank standing, and then crept into bed only to lie staring into the darkness tortured by the thought of those heavy weights ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... "it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and upon beast." Even the magicians were afflicted. Now the readers will bear in mind that all the cattle of Egypt were killed by the fifth, plague. What beasts, then, were these tortured with boils? Were they dead carcasses, or were they live cattle miraculously created in the interim? Surely this is a thing which "no fellah can understand." From the serpent of Eden to Jonah's whale, the animals of the Bible ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... tried to break it to them, and the hearts of his listeners stood still with awe and misery. And yet, dreadful as it was, they all felt that the certainty of knowing that Violet was no more, did not equal the agonizing suspense which had tortured them during the last ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... wife of Charles, third Earl of Tankerville, lady of the bedchamber to Princess Augusta. Nothing but Mr. Walpole's facetious ingenuity could have tortured the Prince's little attention to Lady Tankerville into a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... shore, a fringe of gray slate, battered by the tide and broken into thin layers, with edges keen as knives; above it, low woods of dwarf oaks stretched northward, gray and phantasmal as the shore, stunted and tortured into writhing, unearthly shapes by the violence of storms. For here and now the sea had its way; it had taken on reality; and earth was the phantom, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... X. Y. Z., Employs the word "researcher," And then,—his blood be on his head, - He makes it rhyme to "nurture." Ah, never was the English tongue So flayed, and racked, and tortured, Since one I love (who should be hung) ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... high and terrible thing that happened then. Feodor had taken his daughter's face between his hands. He looked long at those eyes raised toward heaven, the mouth which had just uttered the word "Never," then, slowly, his rude lips went to the tortured, quivering lips of the girl. He held her close. She raised her head wildly, triumphantly, and cried, with arm extended toward ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... to Vasilievskoe; but he did not remain four days,—it seemed so irksome to him there. He was tortured, also, by expectancy: the information imparted by M—r. Jules required confirmation, and he had received no letters. He returned to the town, and sat out the evening at the Kalitins'. It was easy for him to see, that Marya ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... different," she said. "I do not love you—like that. I do not know what I feel; I do not care for that—for that love. I need something warmer, stronger, more kindly—something I never have had. My childhood is gone, Jack, and yet I am tortured with the craving for it; I want to be little again—I want to play with children—with young girls; I want to be tired with pleasure and go to bed with a mother bending over me. It is that—it is that ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... applause? Surely it has gone the way of the March in Faust, once so enthusiastically received and cheered to the echo; and now—"March off!" It is true that, once let a "tuney tune" become vulgarised by street-musicians, and organic disease would be sufficient to kill it were it not tortured and ground to death by remorseless hands. But the Toreador's song and the March have not been the victims of an organised opposition. Perhaps, though, they may have been, only 'tis so long ago as not to be within the ken of the present deponent. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... the office which began with him ended also with him. For no other man has been made adrastadaran salanes. Rufinus also slandered Hypatius to the emperor. As a result of this the emperor reduced him from his office, and tortured most cruelly certain of his associates only to find out that this slander was absolutely unsound; beyond this, however, he ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... Aldebaran's wan face. It was as white and drawn as if he had been tortured by the rack and thumbscrew, so he made no answer for the moment. But when the fire was kindled, and they had supped the broth set out in steaming bowls upon the table, he ventured on ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fiercenesses crushed so long, and now trembling eagerly under his breath at the prospect of a little more liberty in loving. A suspicion that already he loved perhaps too well and far too passionately thrilled through his conscience, and tortured a heart to whom thought was a refuge and ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... time tortured her whole body, and contracted her limbs with agonizing cramps. She had the appearance of a woman of sixty years of age, who was tottering ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the Court at the mention of Moreau's name. All eyes were turned towards the conqueror of Hohenlinden, and while the Procureur Imperial read over the long indictment and invoked the vengeance of the law on an attempt against the head of the Republic, it was easy to perceive how he tortured his ingenuity to fasten apparent guilt on the laurels of Moreau. The good sense of the public discerned proofs of his innocence in the very circumstances brought forward against him. I shall never forget the effect produced—so contrary to what was anticipated by the prosecutors—by the reading ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and which in this case is disgusting cruelty. Thoroughbred horses are never docked, whether they be used for racing, steeplechasing or hunting, and it is a monstrous thing to mutilate unfortunate half-breds, especially mares, and condemn them to be tortured by flies, and to have the most sensitive parts of their bodies turned into a safe camping ground for insects, simply because these poor animals have a stain in their pedigree. In summer time, when flies are ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... new-ploughed ground; and some late-awakened feminine instinct of dress, restrained, too, by due economy, indued her with the oddest decorations that woman ever devised. The French lessons went on more smoothly. If Monsieur Leclerc's Parisian ear was tortured by the barbarous accent of Vermont, at least he bore it with heroism, since there was nobody else to hear; and very pleasant, both to our little lady and her master, were these long winter evenings, when they diligently waded through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Quelle horreur me saisit?"—and at once a shriek, dreadful beyond all description, announces the destruction of reason, and the agonies of madness. It is vain to describe the wild, desperate, and horrifying manner in which he represents Orestes tortured by the frightful visions with which the furies had visited his mind, till his nature, exhausted by such intense sufferings, sinks at once into a calm, more dreadful even than the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... out upon a six hours' tonga drive to Jhung; an isolated civil station fifty miles off the line of rail. Tortured India was already awake and astir; and along an interminable road of fine white dust, covered with straw, they sped at a hand-gallop between converging lines of sheesham-trees, with clank and rattle and incessant tooting of horns, scattering ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... an impatient toss. Why had he come to this siege at all? He was not sure now that if he had accomplished his object, or should yet do it, the reward would come. He had known women that in Elizabeth's place would like to show their power of torture; but she scarcely deigned to glance at him, and tortured him a thousand times more. Why had Archdale thrown his arm about so clumsily and saved his life? So good an appointment was not likely to make itself again; he must have a hand in framing the next. And if worst came to worst as to absence of chance, he ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... that my nullity was an insult to her charms; doubtless I must have tortured her by raising desires which I could not appease; for several times I felt my fingers drenched with a flow that shewed she was not passive in the matter; but she pretended all the while to be asleep. I was vexed at her being able to feign insensibility ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... thy shame, seeing thy heart is pure and chaste? Arise, display thy wound, that all the world may see the blood of Abel upon the forehead of Cain. Let the world know, my afflicted sister, how thou art tortured! ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul released from the tortured body. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... above them cut off all but a very limited view. But, as far as they could see, the same conditions prevailed. There was only a small trickle of water. It was in the very middle, the lowest point of the stream, and up to the very edge of this the thirst-tortured cattle pressed, sinking down deep in the ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... was in that of Theodosius. What the Calvinists called perfidy and cruelty seemed to him nothing but generosity and kindness.[101] These were the sentiments of the man from whose hands Charles IX. received the last consolations of his religion. It has been related that he was tortured in his last moments with remorse for the blood he had shed. His spiritual adviser was fitted to dispel such scruples. He tells us that he heard the last confession of the dying King, and that his most grievous sorrow was that he left the work unfinished.[102] In all that bloodstained ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... cried Yoomy, with glee. "What did some one say to me, not long since, Babbalanja, when in the matter of that sleepy song of mine, Braid-Beard bestowed upon me an equivocal compliment? Was I not told to wrest commendation from it, though I tortured it to the quick?" ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... away from the stove it was freezing. She sought to look out of the little window but great massing clouds had hidden the crimson of sunset. A strong wind was arising and caused the great firs and spruces to groan dismally. The minutes were again becoming cruel things that tortured one with their maddening slowness. The girl became conscious of the beats of her heart, unaccountably slow, as ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... had tortured them with its heat, and now the night had brought the even more intolerable discomfort of cold. The Arabs swathed themselves in their gowns and wrapped up their heads. The prisoners beat their hands together and shivered miserably. ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Vai['s]ali that many turned to his doctrine. Many legends are told of his intercourse and friendship with Bimbisara or ['S]re[n.]ika, king of Videha, also of the murder of the latter by his son Ajata['s]atru, who, tortured with remorse, afterwards approached Buddha; mention is also made of his brother Abhayakumara, likewise Makkhali Gosala is mentioned among Buddha's opponents and rivals. It is thus clear that the oldest Jaina legend makes Vardhamana a fellow countryman and contemporary of Buddha, and search might ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded one of the story of Giles de Rays, marechal of France, who was said to have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not "rise," and only returned ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... were a prophecy, there came a terrific jar that twisted the platform violently from under them. They were thrown headlong and an awe-inspiring rumbling came up from the vitals of Antrid. An earthquake! The tortured satellite could not withstand the strains set up by the tremendous reactive force of the rocket-tube. The lights snuffed out and the platform came to a grinding stop. One of the underground power plants was out of commission and they were trapped ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... the details of Julien's death. What did it matter to her? Did she not know enough already? Every one thought it was an accident, but she knew better, and she kept to herself this secret which tortured her: the knowledge of his infidelity and the remembrance of the abrupt and terrible visit of the comte on ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... beside her. Slowly she floated outward upon a dark sea whose waves beat a ceaseless requiem of anguish on her ears. It seemed to her that she was enduring all the sorrows of the ages; that she was brain-tortured by the death agonies of all humanity; that all the uselessness, all the meaninglessness, all the utter weariness of the death-ridden world pressed upon her, suffocating her, forcing her to stillness, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Mississippi. But he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... her in the dingle whither she came with the Flaming Tinman, whose look Lavengro did not like at all? Reality and romance, though Borrow made them wear double harness, are not meant to be driven together. It is hard to weep aright over Isopel Berners. The reader is tortured by a sense of duty towards her. This distraction prevents our giving ourselves away to Borrow. Perhaps after all he did meet the tall girl in the dingle, in which case he was a fool for all his pains, losing a gift the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to His glory, so will ours if we keep by His side—and only if we do. There is nothing in the mere fact of being tortured and annoyed here on earth, which has in itself any direct and necessary tendency to prepare us for the enjoyment, or to secure to us the possession, of future blessedness. You often hear superficial people saying, 'Oh! he has been very much troubled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... passion was so imperious, he had determined to make me his in spite of those sentiments of female delicacy which, while they tortured him, rendered me dearer in his eyes. He told me, that as he had often read in my blushes the sympathy which my too severe virtue made me conceal, he would now wrest me from my cheerless widowhood; and having nothing in reality to reproach ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... echo ships Wild-tongued o'er pools where petrifaction strips Her breasts of crystal from which crystal pours.— Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sits Staring all life to stone in ghastly mirth, I seem to tread, with awe no tongue can tell,— Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits, 'Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth,— An ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... journey is over. She has brought him to the home which shall be theirs. The heart of the wild, where the mountains rise sheer to the sky above; where no man comes, where a dark peace reigns, and has ever reigned. Where snow is not, and summer and winter are alike. It is the fitting home for a tortured spirit. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... four other members of the party brought up the rear. Scroll's look was a little clouded. He had heard what passed in the hall, and he found himself glancing uncomfortably from the girl beside him to the pair forging so gaily ahead. Alice Hooper's expression seemed to him that of something weak and tortured. All through the winter, in the small world of Oxford, the flirtation between Pryce of Beaumont and Ewen Hooper's eldest girl had been a conspicuous thing, even for those who had little or no personal knowledge of the Hoopers. It was ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to drive thoughts of Olga from his mind; but the terrible flame of passion which had grown from the tiny, buried spark of boy love that lurked in his heart, under the sinister suggestion of Millar, tortured him. He could hardly keep himself from rushing off to Olga's house, in advance of the ball, to beg her not to proceed with her design of bringing him and Elsa together; to tell her that he loved her and that in all the world there lived ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... his confinement could not discovered. At last, however, the unfortunate man was betrayed by some false friend, and again fell into the power of the Indians, who took him across the river to be burned and tortured. Tied to the stake, and the fire burning by his side, his thirst from the great heat became intolerable, and he begged that some drink might be given him. It is a custom with the Indians, previous, to a prisoner being put to death, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Adoniram Judson appealed to us even in our childhood. We wished to see how the mustard-seed which Judson sowed in faith has grown up to bear fruit. So we went to Aungbinle, where for twenty long months Judson was imprisoned and tortured. There we seemed to hear God's word to Moses: "Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground." We were reminded also of the burning bush, which was ever burning but not consumed. Great forward movements in history are ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Those epithets are, however, merited by the subsidiary doctrine that such punishment can be abridged by vicarious acts of worship which may take the form of simple prayer addressed to benevolent beings who can release the tortured soul. More often the idea underlying it is that the recitation of certain formulae acquires merit for the reciter who can then divert this merit to any purpose.[892] This is really a theological refinement of the ancient and widespread notion that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... though no fault be thine For that red horror far across the sea; Though not a tortured wretch can point to thee, And curse thee for the selfishness supine Of those great Powers that cowardly combine To shield the Turk in his iniquity; Yet, since thy hand is innocent and free, Arise, and show the world the way divine! Thou canst not break the oppressor's iron ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... making his court to the Romans; he ordered the poison, which he had long kept for this melancholy occasion, to be brought him; and taking it in his hand, "Let us," said he, "free the Romans from the disquiet with which they have so long been tortured, since they have not patience to wait for an old man's death. The victory which Flamininus gains over a man disarmed and betrayed will not do him much honour. This single day will be a lasting testimony of the great degeneracy of the Romans. Their fathers ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the whole, and, besides, to bring his mother into frightful suspicion of complicity in his father's murder. Ought not the faintest shadow of a doubt, assuaging ever so little the glare of the hell-sun of such crime, to be welcome to the tortured heart? Wretched wife and woman as his mother had shown herself, the Ghost would have him think her far worse—perhaps, even accessory to her husband's murder! For ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... stormy, the wind rose, loud gusts shaking down the dying leaves, and howling through the wide extent of the forest. The moan of the river came on like the agony of some tortured spirit. The sound seemed to creep closer to his ear; and Gregory thought some evil thing was haunting him for intruding into ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and very white and very still. Only his face twitched. A muscle in one cheek jerked and jerked and jerked at his mouth. It was as though he controlled a desire to smile. That jerking, suppressed smile upon his white and tortured countenance was terrible. I could see the blood drain down from his forehead, down from his cheeks. He became ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... rare," said Agricola; "for that kind of courage is the most admirable of all. Most bravely did you seek almost certain death, alone, bearing the cross in hand as your only weapon, to preach charity and Christian brotherhood. They seized you, tortured you; and you await death and partly endure it, without complaint, without remonstrance, without hatred, without anger, without a wish for vengeance; forgiveness issuing from your mouth, and a smile of pity beaming upon your lips; and this in the depths of forests, where no one could witness your ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... fallen into premature unpopularity. All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance. And the game of war was not only momentous to him in its issues; it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a theatre, it was a place of education it was like a season of religious revival. He watched Lincoln going daily to his work; he studied and fraternised with young soldiery passing to the front; above all, he walked the hospitals, reading the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leav'st me tortured on the rack, 'Twixt shame and pride, I cannot call thee back.— She's guiltless, and I should submit; but oh! When she exacts it, can I stoop so low? Yes; for she's guiltless; but she's haughty too. Great souls long ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... bold yet not well-bred, His heart was soft, but thickish was his head. He blustered much and boasted more and more, Frolicked and vapoured as he took the floor Indeed he was a very horrid bore. Marcel, most mad for Franconnette, tortured the other girls, Made her most jealous, yet she had no chance, The swelled-out coxcomb called on her to dance. But Franconnette was loth, and she must let him see it; He felt most madly jealous, yet was maladroit, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... company, he suffered the most. He loved Christine with a far deeper affection than Donald had ever dreamed of. He would have given his life for hers, and yet he had, perhaps, been her murderer. How he hated Donald in those days! What love and remorse tortured him! And what availed it that he had bought the power to ruin the man he hated? He was afraid to use it. If Christine lived, and he did use it, she would never forgive him; if she died, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: 'had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;—though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of the wounded, lying on the slopes of Wellington Ridge and elsewhere, racked with pain, and tortured almost to madness by flies and thirst, exposed for hours to the merciless rays of the sun, until the stretcher-bearers, working though they were like men inspired, had the opportunity to carry them away ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... friend;—why did not you yourself do it? Most true, "those actual Voltaire-Friedrich LETTERS of the time are a resource, and pretty much the sole one: Letters a good few, still extant; which all HAD their bit of meaning; and have it still, if well tortured till they give it out, or give some glimmer of it out:"—but you have not tortured them; you have left it to me, if I would! As I assuredly will not (never fear, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... had lighted them downstairs, he ascended once more to his cabin, tortured by an acute self-consciousness. The evening had been far from satisfactory; never had the difference between anticipation and realisation been more impressively illustrated. In his afternoon dreams he had not considered Miss Wycliffe's companions, except as shadows, and it was they who had ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... eventually, a feeling of satiety, without satisfaction, and of repletion without sustenance; till, at night, gradually recovering from the whirl of the anomalous repast, famished yet incapable of flavour, the tortured memory can only recall with an effort, that it has dined off pink champagne and brown ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... to do wrong. It is only under the strain of strong temptation that human character is put through the thirty-third degree and tried out. No doubt a great many of us could be provoked to join a mob for murder, or forced to steal, or tortured into homicidal insanity. It is only under the artificial conditions of captivity, with loss of freedom, exemption from the daily fear of death, abundant food without compensating labor, and with every want ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Mary. I hope she fights my battle for me. Pray think of all this, and relent if you can. I do so long to have an end of this purgatory. If there was any use, I wouldn't say a word; but there's no good in being tortured, when there is no use. God bless you, dearest love. I do love you ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... gradually succeeded in working himself into the same frame of mind. Yet there were many moments when he was tortured by doubts as to whether the "Gridley spirit" would serve in bucking a long line of young fellows all equally anxious to get ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... pretext whatsoever. As for the bitten man, he suffered severely for several hours, the wounded limb swelling to about three times its normal size, while acute pains shot through the whole of his tortured body; but at length these gradually grew less, until he sank into a state of coma which eventually became natural sleep, during which the swollen limb gradually resumed its normal dimensions. When he at length awoke, beyond being troubled with a dazed feeling ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... expression of defence, for we often find cruelty and weakness paired elsewhere, as among children, idiots, etc. It is particularly noticeable among cretins in the Alps. The great danger of the cretin's anger is well known there. Once, one of these unfortunates was tortured to death by another because he thought that his victim had received from the charitable monks a larger piece of bread than he. Another was killed because he had received a gift of two trousers buttons. These instances, I should think, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... is not against any one particular form of religion that the terrors of the new Freedom are hurled. Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Lutherans alike have been tortured, mutilated, and done to death under the aegis of the Holy Revolution which appeals to the proletariat of the whole ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... ever worked in the mines of Cornwall. All that can be done, in a case like this, is to show that no one has produced an atom of evidence in support of Mr. Gilbert's opinion. The Jews were certainly ill treated, plundered, tortured, and exiled during the reign of the Plantagenet kings; but that they were sent to the Cornish mines, no contemporary writer has ever ventured to assert. The passage in Matthew Paris, to which Mr. Gilbert most likely alludes, says the very ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... conventicle they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were easily defeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sufferings of the country—'made us choose, rather to betake ourselves to the fields for self-defence, than to stay at home, burdened daily with the calamities of others, and tortured with the fears of our own ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he said; but Ardea's glance had gone beyond the tortured tree to the shuttered windows and smokeless ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... under his sufferings. Jerusalem was turned into a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina, and no Jew dared appear in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, under penalty of death. Jews under the Roman rules were forbidden to practise their religion, and anyone found teaching or preaching Judaism was horribly tortured.' ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... he writes, "and my strength was restored and renewed to admiration." He thinks that he walked that day forty miles on the snow. Following the Winooski to its mouth, the party reached Lake Champlain a little north of the present city of Burlington. Here the swollen feet of the prisoner were tortured by the rough ice, till snow began to fall and cover it with a soft carpet. Bending under his load, and powdered by the falling flakes, he toiled on till, at noon of a Saturday, lean, tired, and ragged, he and his masters reached the French outpost of Chambly, twelve ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... and abhorrence; whilst my love for her grew to such an extreme, that I should have deemed my fate most blest if she had killed me by her scorn, provided she did not bestow open, though maidenly, favours on Cornelio. Imagine the anguish of my soul, thus lacerated by her disdain, and tortured by the most cruel jealousy. Leonisa's father and mother winked at her preference for Cornelio, believing, as they well might, that the youth, fascinated by her incomparable beauty, would chose her for his wife, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... night cannot be portrayed. As the fever rose higher and higher, all evidence of the kind, loving husband and father perished, and there remained only a disease-tortured body. The awful black vomit soon set in. The strong physical nature in its dying throes taxed Haldane's powerful strength to the utmost, and only by constant effort and main force could he keep the sufferer in his bed. Mrs. Poland and the old colored woman who assisted her would ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... little clock, my life away! Even a second seems a day. Even a minute seems a year, Peopled with ghosts, that press and peer Into my face so charnel white, Lit by the devilish, dancing light. Tick, little clock! mete out my fate: Tortured and tense I wait, I ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... achievement. It is merely a negative blessing. With good health you may hope to reach your highest mental and spiritual development free from the harassment of soul-racking pain. But without good health men have reached the summit of Parnassus and have dragged their tortured bodies up behind them. ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... dirty, weak, sick poor. I could taste the porridge in the thick little bowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her kid. I could hear the stifled sobs that wise, poor children give—quiet ones, so they'll not be beaten again. I could feel the night, when strange, deserted, tortured babies lie for the first time, each in his small white cot, the new ones waking the old with their cries in a nightmare of what had happened before they got to the Cruelty. I could see the world barred over, as I saw it first through the Cruelty's barred windows, and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... and preparation meant, no one, not even Boswell, ever knew. The old childish determination to suffer, in order to know, held true and unfaltering. The tortured nerves, after the first shocks, regained their poise and strength; the heavy work and strict discipline left the sturdy body like fine steel, although weariness ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... as a matter of course. It was clear that he had forgotten the catastrophe that had parted him from Hamlyn's Purlieu, and yet, strangely, he asked no questions. Lucy was tortured by the thought of revisiting the place she loved so well. She had been able to deaden her passionate regret only by keeping her mind steadfastly averted from all thoughts of it, and now she must actually go there. The old wounds would be opened. But it ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... knew how Beorn had been made to speak the truth. They had tortured him, and there was no strength left in him at all, so that I almost started back from the cruel marks that he bore. Yet I had things to hear from him, now that he had no need to speak falsely, and I went to his side. The ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler |
