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Torment   Listen
noun
Torment  n.  
1.
(Mil. Antiq.) An engine for casting stones. (Obs.)
2.
Extreme pain; anguish; torture; the utmost degree of misery, either of body or mind. "The more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me."
3.
That which gives pain, vexation, or misery. "They brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books



... long pilgrimage, it has seemed to me worth while to make a final survey of the great question of our time. How was the cruelty of vivisection once regarded by the leading members of the medical profession? Shall we say to-day that the utility of torment, in the vivisection of animals, constitutes perfect justification and defence? How far did Civilization once go in the approval of torture because ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... original sin, and the opinion that the eucharistic bread did not contain the real body and blood of Christ, as blasphemy properly punishable by death. He blamed Brenz for his tolerance, asking why we should pity heretics more than does God, who sends them to eternal torment? Brenz was convinced by this argument and became a ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... had even tried to think. For I could not get the smallest idea what he meant; and, much as I tried to believe that he must be only pretending, for reasons of his own, to have something important to tell me, scarcely was it possible to be contented so. A thousand absurd imaginations began to torment me as to what he meant. He lived in London so much, for instance, that he had much quicker chance of knowing whatever there was to know; again, he was a man of the world, full of short, sharp sagacity, and able to penetrate what I could ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... brim. The hat was no longer formed by the pinching up of a circular brim of moderate dimensions; but three enormous flaps were made to rear their unwieldy height in the air, and were strengthened, stiffened, and supported, against the envious winds, to the torment of the wearer, and to the disfigurement of his person. All through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... Beneath, and mended shoes in hell. Thus Partridge still shines in each art, The cobbling and star-gazing part, And is install'd as good a star As any of the Caesars are. Triumphant star! some pity show On cobblers militant below, Whom roguish boys in stormy nights Torment by pissing out their lights, Or thro' a chink convey their smoke Inclos'd artificers to choke. Thou, high exalted in thy sphere, May'st follow still thy calling there. To thee the Bull will lend his hide, By Phoebus newly tann'd and ...
— English Satires • Various

... proves ruinous to those individuals which get a chance to indulge it. For, unlike the true chigoe, the female of which deposits eggs in the wound she makes, these harvest-mites have no object of the kind, and when not killed at the hands of those they torment they soon die ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... consideration not being given to the inevitable arousing of his masculine amour propre, he sought to attribute to himself the popularity which she obtained, and that which might have constituted his pride became his torment. It would have been wanting in dignity to himself, he felt, ever to have owned or even in the least degree betrayed the secret motive of his wounded self-love; but the excessive extravagance of his wife, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... North's lips were tightly compressed. He merely looked at this young officer, but Algy found that look to be the same thing as acute torment. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... "Do not torment her thus, madam," cried Alizon, who with Dorothy looked at the strange scene with mingled apprehension and wonderment. "Much as I desire to know the secret of my birth, I would not ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... velvet body. But it made the captain remember back across the years to his own girl babe asleep on his arm. And so poignantly did he remember, that he became wide awake, and many pictures, beginning, with the girl babe, burned their torment in his brain. No white man in the Solomons knew what he carried about with him, waking and often sleeping; and it was because of these pictures that he had come to the Solomons in a vain effort ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... do you know what it is to love without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of words—misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment." ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... their character—from translucent lakes shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... his part, he found many things which shocked him. Although he no longer believed, yet he bore the marks of his inherited Catholicism, which was more poetic than a matter of reason, more indulgent towards Nature, and never suffered the self-torment of trying to explain and understand what to love and what not to love: and also he had the habits of intellectual and moral freedom which he had unwittingly come by in Paris. It was inevitable that he should come into collision with the little pious ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... says she rejoices and laughs at his Sorrows; and that his Unkindness to her has taught her to torment a Heart. ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym

... himself; he accepted it as one of the two or three inexplicable phenomena this night and the storm had produced for him, and was chiefly concerned in the fact that he was no longer oppressed by that torment of aloneness which had been a part of his nights and days for so many months. He was about to speak when he made up his mind not to disturb the other. So certain was he that Father Roland was asleep that he drew ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... their pleasure; yours is only a diversion of your pain. The Muses have seldom employed your thoughts, but when some violent fit of the gout has snatched you from Affairs of State: and, like the priestess of APOLLO, you never come to deliver his oracles, but unwillingly, and in torment. So that we are obliged to your Lordship's misery, for our delight. You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish triumph, where those who cut and wound their bodies, sing songs of victory as they pass; and divert others with their own sufferings. Other men endure their diseases, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... flashes like heliographic signals. . . . Still the unrestful noise continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat, and of a people seeking in vain for rest. It is only the lower-class women who sleep on the house-tops. What must the torment be in the latticed zenanas, where a few lamps are still twinkling? There are footfalls in the court below. It is the Muezzin—faithful minister; but he ought to have been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful that prayer is better than ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer

... conscious effort leads to nothing but failure and vexation in their hands, and only makes them twofold more the children of hell they were before. The tense and voluntary attitude becomes in them an impossible fever and torment. Their machinery refuses to run at all when the bearings are made so hot and the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... think it very manly for a big fellow like you to torment such a little one as our Eddie?" ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... of men!" cried Dr Thorpe, who was not renowned for weighing his words carefully when he was indignant. "Is it because they cannot drive nor persuade us into the sin and unbelief of Hell, that they be determined we shall lose none of the torment of it, so far as lieth in their hand to give us? Shall God see all this, and not move? Have they banished Him out of the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... Some imagined, that for the haughtiness of her humour, and the malignity of her disposition, characters that were wholly unexampled in the pastoral life, she had been carried away before the period limited by nature to the place of torment by the goblins of the abyss. Others believed that she concealed herself in the top of the highest mountain that was near them, and by a commerce with invisible, malignant beings, still exercised the same gloomy temper in ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... vengeance, which is prepared for the one and for the other, for the promoters, and for the persones promoted, except they spedelie repent. For they shall be deiected from the glorie of the sonnes of God[28], to the sclauerie of the deuill, and to the torment that is prepared for all suche, as do exalte them selues against God. Against God can nothing be more manifest, then that a woman shall be exalted to reigne aboue man. For the contrarie sentence hath he pronounced in these wordes[29]: ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... so easily catched—I thank him—I want but to be sure, I should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... midday and the restaurants at six—swinging his legs out of upper windows and smoking in his shirt-sleeves in the summer evenings—crowding the pit of the Odeon and every part of the Theatre du Pantheon—playing wind instruments at dead of night to the torment of his neighbors, or, in vocal mood, traversing the Quartier with a society of musical friends about the small hours of the morning—getting into scuffles with the gendarmes—flirting, dancing, playing billiards and the deuce; falling in love and in debt; dividing ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... who do not contribute to the common stock proportionately to their abilities and the opportunities they have of gain, and this is the source of their uninterrupted happiness; fully this means they have no griping usurer to grind them, no lordly possessor to trample on them, nor any envyings to torment them; they have no settled habitations, but, like the Scythian of old, remove from place to place, as often as their convenience or pleasure requires it, which render their life a perpetual source ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... de oberseah didn' 'pear ter do no good. Ev'y now en den 'is feet'd 'mence ter torment 'im, en 'is min' 'u'd git all mix' up, en his conduc' kep' gittin' wusser en wusser, 'tel fin'ly de w'ite folks couldn' stan' it no longer, en Mars' Dugal' tuk Hannibal back down ter ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... haven't I got enough trouble without a young wretch like you coming to torment me? For God's sake go away and leave me alone! I'm telling you the truth, my my poor boy died of influenza ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... him without uttering a sound, till, as he still continued smiling joyfully, she said, 'O—what do you mean? Is it done to torment me?' ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... torment her till she has had a cup of tea,' said Nelly good-naturedly. 'Come and ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety- nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon. If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight; If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood; He will my soldier be if once I wend to fight, If seas delight, he steers my bark amidst the flood. In brief, the cruel god doth never from me go, But makes my lasting love ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... tortured every nerve and sinew in his body, and there were times of terrible collapse,—when he was conscious of nothing save an intense longing to sink into the grave and have done with all the sharp and cruel torment which kept him on the rack of existence. In a semi-delirious condition he tossed and moaned the hours away, hardly aware of his own identity. In certain brief pauses of the nights and days, when pain was momentarily dulled by stupor, he saw, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... ever how much I at last depended on him. If Corvick had broken down I should never know; no one would be of any use if HE wasn't. It wasn't a bit true I had ceased to care for knowledge; little by little my curiosity not only had begun to ache again, but had become the familiar torment of my days and my nights. There are doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly more natural than the contortions of disease; but I don't after all know why I should in this connexion so much as mention them. For the few persons, at any ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... his blather wrench, An' gouts torment him inch by inch, Wha twists his gruntle wi' a glunch O' sour disdain, Out owre a glass o' whiskey punch Wi' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... trial fiance dryly. "I have always heard that when you were engaged to a girl she took the opportunity to torment you as thoroughly as possible. But I haven't any more personal experience of the holy bonds of affiancement than ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of torture horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces: made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil could repose ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... on at this, what a torment it was for Mr. Henry! And yet it brought our ultimate deliverance, as I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... purpose—don't you see? It was the only way to make the beggars lose their grip. Look there, they are swimming like brothers down the stream—that small spitfire of yours is not badly hurt. I told you that you were spoiling him—you ought to make him obey and come to heel, or he will become the torment of your life. The bank shelves a little a few yards further down; you will find that he will come to shore shaking himself nothing the worse. It may be a lesson to him; if not, I should like to give him a bit of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... greetings, his torment increased with every moment of this fruitless expectation, and he roamed aimlessly from room to room. That 'perhaps' made him sadly afraid that Elena would not come. And supposing she really did not? When was he likely to see her again? Donna ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... unnecessary trouble for my sake. I have no love for learned discourses. I like to take life easy, and it is too much trouble to be intellectual. Such ambition does not trouble my head, and I am perfectly satisfied, mother, with being stupid. I prefer to have only a common way of talking, and not to torment myself to ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... enough range of Thought to look out for any Good which does not more immediately relate to [his [5]] Interest or Convenience, or that Providence, in the very Frame of [his Soul [6]], would not subject [him [7]] to such a Passion as would be useless to the World, and a Torment to [himself. [8]] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... either: he followed Virgil in his descent to the infernal regions; and exhibits an intimate acquaintance with ancient history, as well as that of the modern Italian states, in the account of the characters he meets in that scene of torment. But in his own line he was entirely original. Homer and Virgil had, in episodes of their poems, introduced a picture of the infernal regions; but nothing on the plan of Dante's Inferno had before been thought of in the world. With much of the machinery of the ancients, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... mercy, their anger and animosity were raised to the point of fury, and many of them swore deeply with bitter oaths that if they ever caught him defenceless they would make him pay dearly in torture and torment for these various offences. He knew them well enough to realize their feelings toward him, and blind fate affording him the opportunity of the upper hand he made them rue more bitterly than ever ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying on his back. The endless pageant, the dreadful tolling of the funeral bell, meant no more than nightmare, the common torment of all humanity. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... himself, Sebastian Dundas said scornfully, "Heaven! You talk of heaven as if you knew all about it, Leam, like the next parish. How do you know she is there, and not in the place of torment instead? Your mother was scarcely of the stuff of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... use it. Then, full 2,000 years passed over our earth. At last came an era when man's heart journeyed forward with his mind. Then the woes of miners and the world's burden-bearers filled the ears of James Watt with torment, and his sympathetic heart would not let him stay until he had ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the lost badge never ceased to torment the girl who had so unfortunately handed it over to Tessie with her own modest purse on that eventful night when they both turned away from the much-despised millend of Flosston. It was Rose who gave Margaret Slowden the bunch ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... hand, and fixed his eyes upon Seraphina. I happened to be looking at his face; he seemed to be ready to go out of his mind. His jealousy, the awful torment of soul and body, made ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... evidently seized them with the sudden comprehension of the unprecedented singularity of their situation. Millions of miles away from the earth, confronted on an asteroid by these diabolical monsters from a maleficient planet, who were on the point of destroying them with a strange torment of death—perhaps it was really more than human nature, deprived of the support of human surroundings, could have been expected ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... slavery is in his worship: "That's a brave god, and bears celestial—liquor." But, in illustration of the sense in which the Latin "benignus" and "malignus" are to be coupled with Eleutheria and Douleia, note that Caliban's torment is always the physical reflection of his own nature—"cramps" and "side stiches that shall pen thy breath up; thou shalt be pinched, as thick as honeycombs:" the whole nature of slavery being one cramp and cretinous ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... more numerous party among its members were bent on setting up a Presbytery as the established religion of England and its dependencies, determined on a severe suppression of dissent from it, and keenly exasperated against that Independency which New England had raised up to torment them in their own sphere, and which, for herself, New England cherished as ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... "Master, that which I see moving toward us, seems to me not persons, but what I know not, my look is so in vain." And he to me, "The heavy condition of their torment so presses them to earth, that mine own eyes at first had contention with it. But look fixedly there, and disentangle with thy sight that which cometh beneath those stones; now thou canst discern how each ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... the memory of a great Englishman, whose deeds, in co-operation with others, have never been surpassed. But to make grants and give honours of so generous a character to Nelson's relatives, and especially to his wife, who had been a torment to him, and to measure out Collingwood's equally great accomplishments with so mean a hand, is an astonishing example of parsimony which, for the sake of our national honour, it is to be hoped rarely occurs. Even the haughty, plethoric nobles ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... which were not there yesterday. When she looked at him their velvety blue depths betrayed something which he knew she was struggling desperately to keep from him. It was not altogether fear. It was more a betrayal of pain—a torment of the soul and not of the body. He noticed that in spite of the vivid colouring of her lips her face was strangely pale. The beautiful flush that had come into it when she first saw ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... intolerable, worse than the wind outside. Very soon after breakfast she went out. Kalliope, faithful even amid the torment of the sirocco, followed her. They struggled together towards their watch place on the cliff. The wind buffeted them, set their hair floating wildly, struck their eyelids painfully. Their legs were caught and held by tangling petticoats. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... fair appearance joined to folly and ill-humour, forge the fetters of matrimony, they gall with their weight the married pair. Discontented with each other—at variance in opinions—their mutual aversion increases with the years they live together. They contend most, where they should most unite; torment, where they should most soothe. In this rugged way, choaked with the weeds of suspicion, jealousy, anger, and hatred, they take their daily journey, till one of these also sleep in death. The other then lifts up his dejected head, and calls out in acclamations ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... me forth, a torment To living men and dead, Hear me, O hear! by Leto's stripling son I am dishonoured: He hath ta'en from me him who cowers in refuge, To me made consecrate,— A rightful victim, him who slew his mother. Given o'er ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... willfully torment us. He will not take my baby, when my whole life would die with it. I had almost forgotten to pray, there was so much else to do, till baby came, but now I never go to sleep at night or waken in the morning, that there does not come a prayer of thanks for baby ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... it was more distant than the suns which flame in Space beyond the Milky Way. It was maddening, but it was true, and he knew the man well enough now to feel absolutely assured that no extremity of mental or physical torment would wring the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... am not. It is not because I have been listening to others, that I torment you with these ungrateful questions. Sometimes a terrible dread comes over me, and though my heart rebels against it, I cannot conquer it. I feel as if some dark memory, some person, either living or dead, were ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... sorrow and fear, with tears of anxiety and love. She had now given her whole heart and soul to Bonaparte, and it was the torment of martyrdom to see him every day threatened by assassins and by invisible foes, who from dark and hidden places drew their daggers at him. Her love surrounded him with vigilant friends and servants, who sought to discover every danger and to ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... attention was elsewhere. It had come back to the rows, because there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it ever so much more important than it really is. Loneliness with happy thoughts is perhaps an ideal state; but no torment could be greater than loneliness with thoughts that wound. Jenny's thoughts wounded her. The mood of complacency was gone: that of shame and discontent was upon her. Distress was uppermost in her mind—not the petulant wriggling of a spoilt ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... in the plot. To render his punishment more public and conspicuous, he was removed to Paris, there to undergo a repetition of all his former tortures, with such additional circumstances as the most fertile and cruel dispositions could devise for increasing his misery and torment. Being conducted to the Concergerie, an iron bed, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... preserved for the donors the same affection which he had felt for them in his lifetime, and gave evidence of it in every way he could, watching over their welfare, and protecting them from malign influences. If they abandoned or forgot him, he avenged himself for their neglect by returning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack them, and by ruining them with his imprecations: he became thus no less hurtful than the "luminous ghost" of the Egyptians, and if he were accidentally deprived of sepulture, he would not be merely ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Middleton's school, there was a great tall dunce of the name of Fisher, who never could be taught how to look out a word in the dictionary. He used to torment everybody with—"Do pray help me! I can't make out this one word." The person who usually helped him in his distress was a very clever, good natured boy, of the name of De Grey, who had been many years under Dr. Middleton's care, and who, by his abilities and good conduct, did ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... verbs, are not in the nominative case."—David Blair cor. "It is a solemn duty to speak plainly of the wrongs which good men perpetrate."—Channing cor. "The gathering of riches is a pleasant torment."—L. Cobb cor. "It is worth being quoted." Or better: "It is worth quoting."—Coleridge cor. "COUNCIL is a noun which admits of a singular and a plural form."—Wright cor. "To exhibit the connexion between the Old Testament and the New."—Keith cor. "An apostrophe discovers the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... from the cavern where Mahommed slept in the Hegira! How many times during the day had she wanted to take her shoe off? She would ascertain the cause of her torment, she would lay it to me. It had indeed been an amulet against sudden love. I was the man whose love it ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... terrible distress of mind at the desolate prospect that he saw before his orphan children. How Sheridan died is familiar to us all. The very conditions of temperament which gave Sterne genius gave him also torment. Fielding and Smollett battled all their lives with adversity; and Goldsmith died in his prime, embittered in his last hours by distress and debt. Banim, the great Irish novelist, withered early out of life upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... into the drawing-room. The moment she had finished Enid Crofton's letter she had begun to torment herself as to whether she had done right ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... and cruelties were perpetrated in the presence of Huascar to torment him. They murdered over 80 sons and daughters of Huascar, and what he felt most cruelly was the murder, before his eyes, of one of his sisters named Coya Miro, who had a son of Huascar in her arms, and another in her womb; and another very beautiful sister named Chimbo ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... at him curiously. "The boy's a wreck," he said. "Simply gone to pieces; nerves like fiddle-strings. He drinks like hell, but it's my belief he'd die in torment if he didn't." ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... seen sometimes how these poor wretches that get but almost to heaven, how fearfully their "almost," and their "but almost," will torment them in hell; when they shall cry out in bitterness of their souls, saying, 'Almost a Christian! I was almost got into the kingdom, almost out of the hands of the devil, almost out of my sins, almost ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan

... go about it in an entirely different way. She had counted upon an impassioned plea for himself, not this terse, cold-blooded, almost unemotional summing up of the situation. For an instant she was at a loss. It was hard to look into his honest eyes. A queer, unformed doubt began to torment her, a doubt that grew into a question later on: was he still in ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... shore 'bout dat. I don't want yer to ride hope's hoss down to torment. Now be shore an' come to-morrer an' bring dat young lady, an' take supper wid me. I'se all on nettles to ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... each man drew his watchful breath slow taken 'tween the teeth— Trigger and ear and eye acock, knit brow and hard-drawn lips— Bracing his feet by chock and cleat for the rolling of the ships: Till they heard the cough of a wounded man that fought in the fog for breath, Till they heard the torment of Reuben Paine ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... more human feeling than he would have supposed him capable of; but he was chiefly concerned about getting a priest, and about his father's soul, which he believed was in a place of torment and would remain there until his family and the priest had prayed a great deal for him. "As I understand it," Jake concluded, "it will be a matter of years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and right now ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... of one man forever springing beside the grave of another must work sadness in God. Yet Sainte-Helene did not know any young supplanter was there. He did not miss or care for the fickle vanity of applause; he did not torment himself with the spectres of the mind, or feel himself shrinking with the littleness of jealousy; he did not hunger for a love that was not in the world, or waste a Titan's passion on a human ewe any more. For him, the aching ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... peace until a few minutes since, when Thomas had sent him on an errand to the kitchen, and he had heard Mary Jane bewailing the loss of her bottle of "rheumatiz liniment." She at once charged him with hiding it to torment her, but, before he could defend himself, one of the other servants asked what kind of a bottle it was; to which she replied, that it was a vanilla-bottle into which she had emptied the liniment, as that in which the lotion belonged had been cracked, and that she ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... suggestion had gripped her. Sudden furious hate entered her soul. Victor Mahr—her enemy! The cause of all her heart break. She had forgotten how or why this was the case; but she knew herself the victim—he, the torturer. She wanted vengeance, she wanted relief from her own torment. It was he who held the key to the whole trouble. She must find him out. She must tear it from him. She strove to think clearly, to remember where she might find him. She started walking again; standing ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... sea-chest, maps and charts, a picture of the SEA UNICORN, a line of logbooks on a shelf, all exactly as one would expect to find it in a captain's room. And there, in the middle of it, was the man himself—his face twisted like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upward in his agony. Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that unless I submitted to be harnessed I never would hear any of it. And it seemed that night that I couldn't manage to do without hearing it. Keats was wrong about that, you know,—about unheard melodies being sweeter. They can come to be clear torment. So I decided I'd begin going in harness. I suppose it was rather naive of me to think that I could, all at once, make a change like that. Anyhow, I found I couldn't go on with this. I brought it around to-day,—it's out there in the hall—to turn it over ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... golden age lies in the immeasurably distant past; and the further we recede from it the deeper must we plunge into sin and wretchedness. True, ages and ages hence the "age of truth" returns, but it returns only to pass away again and torment us with the memory of lost purity and joy. The experience of the universe is thus an eternal renovation of hope and disappointment. In the struggle between good and evil there is no final triumph for the good. We tread a fated, eternal round from which there is no escape; ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... many others like him," said Mr. Spencer. "They do not see how helpless a horse is when his head is drawn back with an over-check or hurt by a curb-bit and when he has no chance to drive away the flies that torment him. To cut off a horse's tail not only hurts him very much at the time, but ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... poor little flower withered, and her death robbed him of L20,000, and indeed of ten times that sum, for he had now bought experience in trade and speculation, and had learned to make money out of money, a heap out of a handful. Stung by this vulgar torment in its turn, he started suddenly up, and dashed his wife's will down upon the floor in a fury, and paced the room excitedly. Hope still stood aghast, and hesitated to ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... at this point and cease their efforts to increase power. But the owners cannot pause! A force greater than their wills compels them to go on at an ever growing speed. Within the vitals of the economic system upon which it subsists the plutocracy has found a source of never-ending torment in the form of a ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... settlement on the Down East coast where I have been passing the last three months, and with each loath day the sense of its peculiar charm grows more poignant. A prescience of the homesickness I shall feel for it when I go already begins to torment me, and I find myself wishing to imagine some form of words which shall keep a likeness of it at least through the winter; some shadowy semblance which I may turn to hereafter if any chance or change ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... lonely hours, that seemed an eternity, he had been tossing in a burning fever upon that disordered bed, until he verily believed himself in a place of everlasting torment. He had that strange, double sense which goes with delirium—the consciousness of his real surroundings, the tapestry and furniture of his own chamber, and yet the conviction that this was hell, and had always been hell, and that he had descended ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... and the torment of the world! The despair of philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of cynics, and ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... in attacking the hermits. They assaulted Guthlac in hosts, disturbed him by strange noises, once carried him far away to the icy regions of the North, and not seldom took the form of crows, the easier to torment him; but his steady prayers and penance ultimately put them to flight, and the existence of his cell became known to the world. Ethelbald fled to Guthlac for refuge, and the hermit predicted he would become king, which ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... entice witty children to it, that they may not conceit a torment to be in the school, but dainty fare. For it is apparent, that children (even from their infancy almost) are delighted with Pictures, and willingly please their eyes with these lights: And it will be very well worth the pains to have once brought ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius

... letters, and especially the B before the Psalms, are at once elegant and elaborate. Among the subjects described, the Descent into Hell, or rather the Place of Torment, is singularly striking and extraordinary. The text of the MS. is written in a large bold gothic letter. This volume has been recently bound in red morocco, and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... of one end, and completing a little centre court. Three sides of the saloon were furnished with divans. There was a long table in the centre, with several chairs, and a glass window at each end of the room. But this was unluckily the season of flies, and they were the torment of the travellers; table, wall, ceiling, and floors swarmed with them. They flew into the face, the eyes, and the mouth. Thousands of musquittoes were also buzzing round and biting every thing. The breakfast ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... through raw flesh. Harold groaned in spirit; he felt a weakness which began at his heart to steal through him. It took all his manhood to bear himself erect. He dreaded what was coming, as of old the once- tortured victim dreaded the coming torment of the rack. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... metals, and iron of the north (hence the loadstone causes a tendency to that point), by an antipathy thereto, these odious, far-scenting creatures shrug and fright at all that comes thence relating to so abhorred a place, whence their torment is either begun, or ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... quiet, easy life! Am I not worse off than a horse? He gets his fodder at the proper time, and takes no care about it. Why did my father make my brother a minister? He gets his salary without any trouble, sits in a warm room, has no care in the world; and I must slave and torment myself." ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... her bridal home. Then, it was to escape from her lover,—now, it was to see him. As the victim stretched on the rack implores to be led at once to death, so there are moments when the annihilation of hope seems more merciful than the torment of suspense. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... garment for a baby; for as soon as Grizel heard that there was a new baby anywhere, all her intellect deserted her, and she became a slave. Books often irritated her because she disagreed with the author; and it was a torment to her to find other people holding to their views when she was so certain that hers were right. In church she sometimes rocked her arms; and the old doctor by her side knew that it was because she could not get up and contradict ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... adding to my torture, and striving to tear from me that for which I bartered conscience, peace, soul, everything that would make life desirable. If there is mercy in you, leave me with what I give you, and come back no more. Life has so little to offer, that rather than bear this continued torment and apprehension I daily suffer, I will cut my throat, and then your game ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... damned burn through all eternity tell me, then, how can a soul awaking in purgatory at the moment of separation from this body be sure that she is not really in hell? how can she know that the flames that burn her and consume not will some day cease? For the torment she suffers is like that of the damned, and the flames wherewith she is burned are even as the flames of hell. This I would fain know, that at this awful moment I may feel no doubt, that I may know for certain whether I dare hope or ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... party, was pre-eminent in every mean and every savage vice; a gang so low-minded and so inhuman that, compared with them, Robespierre might be called magnanimous and merciful. Of these wretches Hebert was perhaps the best representative. His favourite amusement was to torment and insult the miserable remains of that great family which, having ruled France during eight hundred years, had now become an object of pity to the humblest artisan or peasant. The influence of this man, and of men ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "Ole Mammy's Torment" has been fitly called "a classic of Southern life." It relates the haps and mishaps of a small negro lad, and tells how he was led by love and kindness to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... him Mister but a few times, and that was just after Bill had come from another branch. Castle was smaller than Watson and possessed an inferior personality. Bill was big and humorous—and reckless. It was the joy of his life to torment the teller; and yet he was not mean; he was not even obstreperous; he got along splendidly with the manager, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... slept in the Bastile. They would know better; they have never considered the thickness of my walls, the vigilance of my officers, the number of rounds we go. But, indeed, what can you expect, monseigneur? It is their business to write and torment me when I am at rest, and to trouble me when I am happy," added Baisemeaux, bowing to Aramis. "Then let them do ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... doeth it not, to him it is sin." We see that sin is either a direct disobedience of God's Word or a willful failure to live by its requirements. It is a serious thing to disobey God's law because it involves the destiny or end of our soul. It means living in either eternal torment or eternal bliss. To commit sin is a terrible thing and a very serious thing. That is the reason we need to search the Scriptures to find out how to live pleasing to the Lord in this world. We can't do this within ourselves. ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles

... lower animals leads us to suppose that while they suffer much as we do, their pains are of a physical sort, and unassociated to any great extent with the large fears and anticipations which in the case of man form so considerable a part of his torment when ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... abolish the idolatry, and various other abominations of his country, he exposed himself to cruel reproach, to manifold hardship and hazard of life; about fourteen years almost unsuccessful he persevered in this difficult, but delusive attempt. What hunger, what cold, what torment and death have some Jesuitic and other antichristian missionaries undergone, to propagate the most ruining delusions of hell; all under the pretence of earnestness to gain sinners to Christ and his church. The Scripture, however, nowhere saith, how shall they preach ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... down for two or three hours in their own rooms, and so, for the matter of that, did most people in the palace. But the princess, like many other girls, was restless, and preferred to wander about the garden, rather than rest on a pile of soft cushions. What a torment her stout old attendants and servants sometimes thought her when she insisted on staying awake, and making them chatter or do something, when they could hardly keep their eyes open! Sometimes, however, the princess would pretend to ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... silent. Speech seemed for a few moments a physical impossibility. She had been touched to the quick. Step by step she had gone with Eliot down into that place of torment where he had been wandering, suffering an agony of pain of which the keenest pang had taken birth in the bitter knowledge that it was of his own making, and in every fibre of her being she ached to give him ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... along the low level among the mists of earth and forests and swamps, when we can see the road climbing to the heights? Why be anxious about what three hundred and sixty-five days may bring, when we know what Eternity will bring? Why divert our God-given faculty of hope from its true object? Why torment ourselves with casting the fashion of uncertain evils, when we can enter into the great peace of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... the less annoying. He learned to know that most torturing form of jealousy—the jealousy of the past—against which it is hopeless to struggle, which will not be dispelled, and which, in its unalterable steadfastness, mocks at the despair of the heart that is forever searching after new grounds for torment, and yet cries aloud when it finds what it sought. His imagination wandered perpetually from the lovely pastel in the yellow salon to the new ebony bed, with its inlaid ivory scenes in the bedroom, and saw or guessed things ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... have I seen them in such immense numbers as in north-eastern Siberia during the month of July. They make the great moss tundras in some places utterly uninhabitable, and force even the reindeer to seek the shelter and the cooler atmosphere of the mountains. In the Russian settlements they torment dogs and cattle until the latter run furiously about in a perfect frenzy of pain, and fight desperately for a place to stand in the smoke of a fire. As far north as the settlement of Kolyma, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the natives are compelled, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... has only time to dwell upon essentials; he must put words in letters, and phrases in words, and let the scribes make it out afterwards." Napoleon indeed left a great deal for the copyists to do; he was their torment; his handwriting actually resembled hieroglyphics—he often could not decipher it himself. Las Cases' son was one day reading to him a chapter of The Campaign of Italy; on a sudden he stopped short, unable to make out the writing. "The little blockhead," said Napoleon, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... not what becomes of them, or whither they are sent. This, however, does not diminish our number, for new ones are always brought in to supply the place of those who are removed from hence; and I remember, at one time, to have seen seventy-three ladies here together. Our continual torment is to reflect that when they are tired of any of the ladies, they certainly put to death those they pretend to send away; for it is natural to think, that they have too much policy to suffer their atrocious and infernal ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... under its forcing influence, or of representatives of the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness for its possession. One huge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... in your hands, Huron," the captive at length answered, "and I suppose you will act your will on me. I shall not boast of what I can do, under torment, for I've never been tried, and no man can say till he has been; but I'll do my endivours not to disgrace the people among whom I got my training. Howsever, I wish you now to bear witness that I'm altogether of white blood, and, in a nat'ral way of white ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... fatigued physically and mentally, and neither mind nor body could rest. She became aware that at regular intervals a light flashed upon her face and a bodiless eye regarded her, and this, as the night wore on, became a torment.... ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... satisfaction or displeasure remains yet to be ascertained. Thackeray's feelings are not such as can be gauged by ordinary calculation: variable weather is what I should ever expect from that quarter, yet in correspondence as in verbal intercourse, this would torment ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... noticed the pique of the Chevalier at the mention of Philibert, but in that spirit of petty torment with which her sex avenges small slights she continued to irritate the vanity of the Chevalier, whom in her heart ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... understanding of their ways. I take this opportunity to make public confession of various acts of cruelty which I have from time to time perpetrated on unoffending plants, in order to compel them to give me answers. For this purpose, I have devised various forms of torment,—pinches simple and revolving, pricks with needles, and burns with acids. But let this pass. I now understand that replies so forced are unnatural, and of no value. Evidence so obtained is not to be trusted. Vivisection, for instance, cannot furnish ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... at that time I had found any one to teach me the fear of God, my soul would have grown strong enough not to fall away. Afterwards, when the fear of God had utterly departed from me, the fear of dishonour alone remained, and was a torment to me in all I did. When I thought that nobody would ever know, I ventured upon many things that were neither honourable nor ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... like. Them fellows is terrible afraid of the Irish Members. And they've a good right to be, for devil the finer set of men you'd see anywhere than what they are. There isn't a thing goes wrong in the country but they're ready to torment the life out of whoever might be responsible for the ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... of Noah and their children's children taken possession of the habitations apportioned to them, than the unclean spirits began to seduce men and torment them with pain and all sorts of suffering leading to spiritual and physical death. Upon the entreaties of Noah God sent down the angel Raphael, who banished nine-tenths of the unclean spirits from the earth, leaving but one-tenth for Mastema, to punish sinners through ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... The demon's sin is greater than man's sin. But man is punished with sorrow on account of the pleasure taken in sin, according to Apoc. 18:7, "As much as she hath glorified herself, and lived in delicacies, so much torment and sorrow give ye to her." Consequently much more is the devil punished with the grief of sorrow, because he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... have given all his political and social chances for the courage and skill of a prize-fighter. He could see only one way to escape the torment of Cashel's jeering and the self- reproach of a coward. He desperately clenched his fist and struck out. The blow wasted itself on space; and he stumbled forward against his adversary, who laughed uproariously, grasped his hand, clapped him on ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... life be a blessing, Or worth the possessing, Can life be a blessing, if love were away? Ah, no! though our love all night keep us waking, And though he torment us with cares all the day, Yet he sweetens, he sweetens our pains in the taking; There's an hour at the last, there's ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... light of the sunset into which they had run forth; the face of the babbling Chinaman as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a moment since, as he awoke from drunkenness into remorse. And time passed, and the sun swam higher, and his torment ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... like, my dear friend. They are very unpleasant people. As you were Anna's only friend in the place, they might give you considerable trouble. They would ask you where to look for her, and they would torment you incessantly. If I were you I would ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Pike, moved with anguish, moves up and down the water, and rubs himself against weeds, and whatever he thought might quit him of his enemy; but all in vain, for the frog did continue to ride triumphantly, and to bite and torment the Pike till his strength failed; and then the frog sunk with the Pike to the bottom of the water: then presently the frog appeared again at the top, and croaked, and seemed to rejoice like a conqueror, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... "Why am I, he exclaimed, recalled to this dungeon of torment? Why was not my spirit permitted to take its flight to regions where my guardian is gone? Why am I cursed with memory? O that I might be blessed with forgetfulness! But why do I talk of blessings?—Heaven never had one in store for ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... garners from the soil which our good swords have won. Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leech-craft may not cure, Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the poor. Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers bore; Still let your dens of torment be noisome as of yore; No fire when Tiber freezes; no air in dog-star heat; And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for free-born feet. Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate; Patient as sheep we yield ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... never dared to shine, began now to convince me that he came forth only to torment; for though the wind was still cutting, the rocks became intolerably warm under my feet, whilst the herring effluvia, which I before found so very offensive, once more assailed me. I hastened back to the house of a merchant, the little sovereign of the place, because ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... on social relations. As a preliminary to acquiring it is he to be shut out from the society of his fellows? How shall he exercise benevolence or justice in his cell? Will his heart become softened or expand who breathes the atmosphere of a dungeon? Solitary confinement is the bitterest torment that human ingenuity can inflict. The least objectionable method of depriving a criminal of the power to harm society is banishment or transportation. Expose him to the stimulus of necessity in an ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... end of every century. He was three hundred years in Heaven and thought it scarce an hour. The Icelandic version concerns a wicked priest. His unjust ways are reproved by a stranger who takes him to the place of joy and the place of torment, and shows him other wonderful things such as the youth in the Breton tale is permitted to behold. When he is brought back, and the stranger leaves him, he finds that he has been absent seven years, and his living is now held by ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... he cried, "that I should have let that thing of evil shriek out the wicked hours from day to day, only to torment her now with old remembrances! Why did I not crush it to atoms long ago? Why did I leave it hanging ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... ye would say, of your father?" continued Elspeth. "Nobe it a torment or be it a comfort to youken the truth, she was nae mair a daughter of your father's house than ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... house; but her mind, as may be supposed, was occupied by them in the intervals of other thoughts. She was not of the Warrender breed, but a woman of lively feelings; and as soon as the partner of her life was out of her reach she had begun to torment herself with fears that she had not been so good to him as she ought. There was no truth, at least no fact, in this, for there could have been no better wife or more careful nurse. But yet, as every individual knows more of his or her self than all the rest of the world knows, Mrs. Warrender was ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... across the bay whenever she looked out of her window, his name was constantly on the lips of those who made up her little circle of friends, and every day she was haunted by the fear of meeting him. Or, worse than all else, should that fear materialize, the torment of the almost hostile relationship which had replaced their former friendship had ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... voice—with her hands upon her lips like at the time when she used to serve brandy to her comrades at Daddy l'Arb's—that they had no common sense, that they were none of them good for much, neither the Police Commissary, the husband nor the subordinates, to come and torment a pretty young thing, who was having a little bit of fun, like that. It was a nice job, to get over the wall in that way, to be absent from the second call of names, especially when they were all of the same sort, and were glad of five francs an hour! She had certainly done quite right to get ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... and their eyes met. Once meeting, they could not quit each other. Diana's gaze was sad enough, but eager with the eagerness of long hunger. His was sharp with pain at first, keen with unreasonable anger; one of the mind's resorts from unbearable torment. Then as he looked it changed and grew soft; and finally, springing up, he went over to where she sat, dropped on his knees before her, and seizing her hands kissed them one after the other till ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... future conflict to God. The next day she was arraigned a second time at the tribunal, and answered with equal constancy that Jesus Christ was her life and her salvation. Quintianus then ordered her to be stretched on the rack, which torment was usually accompanied with stripes, the tearing of the sides with iron hooks, and burning them with torches or matches. The governor, enraged to see her suffer all this with cheerfulness, commanded her breast ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler



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