"Thumbscrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The rack? The thumbscrew? Sink me, ye shall see how an Englishman can die! Even from these ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... magnetic meridian. This is accomplished by making the needle revolve in a vertical instead of a horizontal plane. The only adjustment necessary is that of leveling, which is accomplished by turning the thumbscrew shown at A, Fig. 1, until the hand points to zero ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... would rather be racked for a creed that existed intensely in somebody's head, rather than vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone's head, and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If I gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to profess. ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... himself is on our side. The King of France is with us; the King of Denmark is with us; the world is with us—war against Spain! And if we move not now, yet it will be known that we have moved; and if Philip come to be King, O, my God! the rope, the rack, the thumbscrew, the stake, the fire. If we move not now, Spain moves, bribes our nobles with her gold, and creeps, creeps snake-like about our legs till we cannot move at all; and ye know, my masters, that wherever Spain hath ruled she hath wither'd all beneath her. Look ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... is a common square, placed in a slit in the top of the stake B. By means of a plumb-line the square is brought to a level, when a thumbscrew, at C, fixes it fast. If the square is two feet long, and is so carefully adjusted as not to vary more than the twentieth of an inch from a true level, which is easily accomplished, then a twentieth of an inch in two feet will be one inch in forty feet—a sufficient degree ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... despise mankind enough already, I have sufficient evidence to throng the pillory. I deal in gold; well, it is only such that can know the world. Hate, ambition, religion—all have their hypocrisies; but money applies the thumbscrew to them all. Want, sir, want, is the master of mankind. There have been men—ay, and women too—within this dungeon, as you think it, whose names would astonish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... cat o'nine tails; rope's end. pillory, stocks, whipping post; cucking stool[obs3], ducking stool; brank[obs3]; trebuchet[obs3], trebuket[obs3]. triangle[instruments of torture: list], wooden horse, iron maiden, thumbscrew, boot, rack, wheel, iron heel; chinese water torture. treadmill, crank, galleys. scaffold; block, ax, guillotine; stake; cross; gallows, gibbet, tree, drop, noose, rope, halter, bowstring; death chair, electric chair; gas chamber; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... To apply the thumbscrew, the boot, and the rack to the victim before him was the work of Mr. Chaffanbrass's life. And it may be said of him that the labour he delighted in physicked pain. He was as little averse to this toil as the cat is to that of catching ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... chattering teeth. "'Tis pity poor Ranulph must die before his time, for ne'er shall be found hangman, headsman or torturer the like o' Ranulph—so dainty i' the nice adjustment o' noose! So clean and delicate wi' the axe! So tender and thoughtful wi' pincers, thumbscrew, rack or red-hot iron! A hangman so kindly o' soul, so merry o' heart, alack, so free, so gay, so merry—forsooth a very wanton, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... abominations of desolations standing where they ought not, as depressing to the mind as they are cacophonous to the ear! and, worst of all, their impudent demand that we should admire the diabolical process! Admire! As though we should be asked to admire the beauty of the rack and the thumbscrew!" ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson |
