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More "Extort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with her assistance drugged his food; so that he was rendered insane, and, imagining himself a god, insisted that sacrifices and offerings should be made to him, and began to levy upon the nobility for enormous sums, often putting them to the torture to extort treasure. Instigated by their infuriated lords, the people now rebelled against their lately idolized master, and attacked him in his palace, from, which he fled by a secret passage to an adjoining monastery, in the disguise of a priest. But the premier, to whom he was presently betrayed, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Minister of Police, order the arrest of every person from amongst the populace against whom there was the least suspicion; in vain did La Regnie rage and try to extort confessions; in vain did they strengthen their watch and their patrols;—they could not find a trace of the evil-doers. The only thing that did to a certain extent avail was to take the precaution of going armed to the teeth and have a torch carried before one; and yet instances ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... so. He did come. Came to extort money, goods—I don't know what else. Wanted to set up as a trader—the swine! I kicked his hat into the courtyard, and he went after it, and that was the last of him till he showed up with Abdulla. How could I know that he could do harm in that way? Or in any ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... also imaginary) follows, kind but timid, to advise submission; then appears Io, victim of Zeus' love and Hera's jealousy, to whom Prometheus prophesies her future wanderings and his own fate; lastly Hermes, insolent messenger of the gods, who tries in vain to extort Prometheus' secret knowledge of the future. Oceanus, the well-meaning palavering old mentor, and Hermes, the blustering and futile jack-in-office, gods though they be, are vigorous, audacious and very human character-sketches; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a small degree, except this aspect of a young King who does know what he means in it. Clear as a star, sharp as cutting steel (very dangerous to hydrogen balloons), he stands in the middle of it, and means to extort his own from it by such ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... syllables. It illuminated the long vista of the past, and cast a gloomy shadow into that of the future, alluding to a people driven from their haunts, never to find another resting-place on earth. That this young warrior so meant to express himself—not in an abject attempt to extort sympathy, but in the noble simplicity of a heart depressed by the fall of his race—Fuller could not doubt; and every generous feeling of his soul was enlisted in behalf ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... the other hand, increased their wealth by "farming" the public revenues; i.e. the state would let out to them, for a stipulated sum, the privilege of collecting all import and other duties. These, in turn (called in later times Publicans), would extort all they could from the tax-payers, thus enriching themselves unlawfully. So the hard times, the oppression of the tax-gatherer, and the unjust law about debt, made the condition ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... great a Confidence in his Virtue and Love, that she will refuse him nothing, tho' it would be a very bold Venture for a Maid, to trust her self with a passionate young Man, in silence of Night: and tho' she did not extort a Vow from him to secure her, she expected he would have a care of her Honour. He swore to her, his Love was too religious for so base an Attempt. There needed not many Vows to confirm her Faith; and it was agreed on between them, that he should come ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... independent systems, or in the systems of the schools, steered clear of the vulgar errors of mythologists. They have in every age introduced into nature active causes without contact, continuity, or proximity; and, even in our days, continue to extort worship towards the unseen and occult powers of attraction or sympathy, and of repulsion or antipathy! It is true, they say that such words only express results or phenomena, and others equivocate by saying there is in no case any ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... if the syce can extort two pice from you for repairs and get the work done for five pies, one clear pie will adhere to his glutinous palm. I do not assert that this is what happens, for I know nothing about it. All I maintain is that there is no hypothesis which will satisfactorily explain ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... did that do him, when he could not fix the vision, talk with it face to face, and extort the fulfilment of the three ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... but recovering, he shut himself up in his cell, and lived a recluse twelve years, almost continually weeping, in the perpetual meditation of death. When he was near death, his brethren could only extort from him these words of edification: "He who hath death always before his eyes, will never sin." John, abbot of Raithu, explained this book of our saint by judicious comments, which are also extant. We have likewise ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... concede those lights which they were not legally bound to respect. The head of a great empire has sometimes governed it with a mild and paternal sway, but the kindness of an irresponsible deputy never yields what the law does not extort from him. Between such a master and the people subjected to his domination there can be nothing but enmity; he punishes them if they resist his authority, and if they submit to it he hates ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... so severe as those for mercies abused; and no instrumentality employed in their infliction is so dreadful as the wrath of man. No spasms are like the spasms of expiring liberty, and no wailing such as her convulsions extort. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the more it vexes me," said he. "It is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to such shifts to extort praise or deprecate censure, ... and all without my wish, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... I am wealthy—far wealthier than was ever my Lord Ostermore, as my friends Collis, Stapleton and many another can be called to prove. What need, then, had I to extort?" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the authority of that constitution. The antagonist parties each hold possession of different States of the Republic, and the fortunes of the war are constantly changing. Meanwhile the most reprehensible means have been employed by both parties to extort money from foreigners, as well as natives, to carry on this ruinous contest. The truth is that this fine country, blessed with a productive soil and a benign climate, has been reduced by civil dissension to a condition of almost hopeless anarchy and imbecility. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... of the Roman race am I, the offspring of an illustrious chieftain, lord of the world in the one case, or in the other the destined heir to my father's calamity. I stand on a tremendous and giddy height: snatch me from this posture of doubt; let me not blindly rush on, and blindly fall; extort this secret from the gods, or force the dead to confess what ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... out of her Course, and never fails of taking her Revenge on those that do so. Opposing her Tendency in the Application of a Man's Parts, has the same Success as declining from her Course in the Production of Vegetables; by the Assistance of Art and an hot Bed, we may possibly extort an unwilling Plant, or an untimely Sallad; but how weak, how tasteless and insipid? Just as insipid as the Poetry of Valerio: Valerio had an universal Character, was genteel, had Learning, thought justly, spoke correctly; 'twas believed there was nothing in which Valerio did not excel; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... visited almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were huddled together in the prisons which Howard ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... declarations of the individual? Winding himself up with twopenny-worth of cheese! Pleading for the additional penny for the waitress, whose personal charms and obliging disposition must be considered to extort the amount! And above all, unable to conceive any motive, except aversion to trouble, for disliking to carry "his chop" upon a skewer through the streets of London. How every line revels in the recollection of having dined, and speaks how seldom! while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... receive no assistance even from her, so that he might wholly claim the credit of regaining all that he had lost; but now, in the recklessness of despair, he proposed not only to ask for all the money he could obtain, but, if necessary, extort it by any means in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... juries men diseased and decrepit, and having continual or sudden disease; and men also that dwelled not in the country at the time of the summons; and summon also an unreasonable number of jurors, for to extort money from some of them, for letting them go in peace, and so the assizes and juries pass many times by poor men, and the rich abide at home by reason of their bribes; it is ordained that from henceforth in one assize no more shall ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... of grain still served out to each of the fighting men. A few only had, in their sufferings, refused to obey the orders of John and their officers, and had joined the bands of Simon and John of Gischala in the revolting cruelties which they practised, to extort food from the inhabitants. These had not been allowed to rejoin the band; which was now reduced to a little over fifty stern, gaunt, and famine-worn figures—but still unshaken in their determination to fight ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... way back from the Church, for indeed I did not mean to break my appointment. I don't think the servants knew who was here. And Jock, if you mention it to the others, don't speak of this matter of the papers. Call it, as you may with truth, an attempt to extort money." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what time Homer composed either of his poems, we know not; but the Aeneid, we are informed, was the employment of Virgil during eleven years. For some years, the repeated entreaties of Augustus could not extort from him the smallest specimen of the work; but at length, when considerably advanced in it, he condescended to recite three books—the second, the fourth, and the sixth—in the presence of the emperor and his sister Octavia, to gratify the latter of whom, in particular, the recital ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... princes violently extort many things from their subjects: and this seems to savor of robbery. Now it would seem a grievous matter to say that they sin in acting thus, for in that case nearly every prince would be damned. Therefore in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... taken and sacked, Alphage, the Archbishop, being made prisoner, and carried away by the Danish fleet to Greenwich. Finding it impossible to extort a ransom, they brutally murdered him (19th May, 1012), in one of their drunken moods, pelting him in their open court or "husting" with bones and skulls of oxen.(43) The worthy prelate's corpse was allowed to be removed to London ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... confession—being at that time formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... regard to their safety, fled to the seat of Government, it being avowed that the motives to such outrages were to compel the resignation of the inspector, to withstand by force of arms the authority of the United States, and thereby to extort a repeal of the laws of excise and an alteration ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... she had great influence over him, and nothing delighted her more than to exercise it. The submission of his will to hers was sure to be liberally rewarded; for it gave her great happiness to extort, from his indifference or his affection, the concessions which she never sought by force of reason, or by appeals to principle—concessions which he frequently withheld, solely for the sake of asserting his independence ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... darling, please don't; I cannot bear it—and I am not worth it," he protested. "I ought never to have told you. I was a selfish brute to extort your sympathy by the miserable recital of my own misfortunes; I have basely worked ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... its first fierceness, and during his long bleak journey the thought of Madame de Cintre's "life-time," passed within prison walls on whose outer side he might stand, kept him perpetual company. Now he would fix himself in Paris forever; he would extort a sort of happiness from the knowledge that if she was not there, at least the stony sepulchre that held her was. He descended, unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping lonely watch in his great ...
— The American • Henry James
... pre-eminence. But this "polished reserve," like something as fashionable, the ladies' rouge, at first appearing with rather too much colour, will in the heat of an evening die away till the true complexion come out. What subterfuges are resorted to by these pretended modest men of genius, to extort that praise from their private circle which is thus openly denied them! They have been taken by surprise enlarging their own panegyric, which might rival Pliny's on Trajan, for care and copiousness; or impudently veiling themselves with the transparency of a third person; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... with Richard; but would wonder, if they were delights, whether their delightfulness would not seem heartless as laughter in a house of mourning to this woman whose delight lay in a grave, and if they were sorrows, whether coming to a woman who had wept so much they would not extort some last secretion more agonising ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... were the archbishops of Mainz (Mayence), of Cologne, and of Trier (Treves), the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the count palatine of the Rhine. Not infrequently the electors used their position to extort concessions from the emperor elect which helped to destroy German unity and to promote the selfish interests of the princes. The imperial Diet was composed of the seven electors, the lesser princes (including the higher ecclesiastical ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... thereto, and cui bono? Fifteen devastated provinces! not to be brought into harmony with their conquerors, but to be held for generations by heavy garrisons at an expense quadruple the net duties or taxes, which it would be possible to extort from them, followed by a protector ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... of wringing from this boy revelations to criminate his unhappy mother. Whether this wretch imputed to the child false revelations, or abused his, tender age and his condition to extort from him what admissions soever he pleased, he obtained a revolting deposition; and as the youth of the Prince did not admit of his being brought before the tribunal, Hebert appeared and detailed the infamous particulars which he had ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... wept for the safety of Clotelle, while she felt glad that Jerome had escaped. In vain did they try to extort from the girl the whereabouts of the man whose escape she had effected. She was not aware that he had fled on a steamer, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... discharged!" he cried, turning to the old cashier. "I will give you just ten minutes to get out of this building—you and the girl, both of you. It was a plan hatched up between you and her to extort money from me." ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... water buckets. The figure is cut out of yellow Roach Abbey stone. The armour is linked. This knight was fined L800 by Richard Coeur de Lion for allowing a French prisoner of consequence to escape from his custody. He married a daughter of a King of Scotland, was Sheriff of Cumberland, helped to extort Magna Charta from King John, and gave much public ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of the mark which they have left on our judicature, our municipal liberty, our political constitution, the first three Plantagenets are to most of us little more than dim shapes of strange manner and speech, hurrying to their island realm to extort money, to enforce good government, and then hurrying back to Anjou. But there is hardly a boy in the streets of Angers to whom the name of Henry Fitz-Empress is strange, who could not point to the ruins of his bridge or the halls of his Hospice, or tell of the great "Levee" ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... kiss from him would be payment for it all. But all his love, all his sweetness, all his truth, all his eloquence should avail nothing with her towards overcoming that spirit of self-sacrifice by which she was dominated. Though he should extort from her all her secret, that would be her strength. Though she should have to tell him of her failing health,—her certainly failing health,—though even that should be necessary, she certainly would not be won from her purpose. It might be sweet, she thought, to make him in all ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... may peruse an ample specimen of the kind of wit, or rather banter, employed by this facetious person.[20] The letters were written successively at different periods; for Clifford in the last complains that he cannot extort an answer, and therefore seems to conceive that his ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... ardent young Radicalism, were to be induced to give a vote against Mr. Gladstone's proposal to take away the time of private members. And it is reported that one member of the Liberal party had begun operations as many as four weeks before Mr. Gladstone's Bill came on, and had tried to extort a number of pledges, the full meaning of which would only come upon the unhappy people who made them when they had endangered or destroyed the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... withdraw, and he then exerted all the rhetoric he was master of to reconcile his bride to the situation love and necessity had thrown her into. But in vain he employed reasoning, caresses, and threats; the only answers he could extort were tears and entreaties to be taken from a place where she declared she felt it impossible ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... favor; that she has no particular interest in terminating the war; that as she means to assume the character of a mediator, she must preserve that of justice and impartiality; that nothing, therefore, can extort from her measures that are favorable to us, but a conviction, that we cannot be brought back to the dominion of Great Britain. That this should lead us to think (a sentiment which he desires the Minister to inculcate) that our success ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... and do not cease to rage and rave against the holy Gospel, albeit ye know that it is righteous, and that ye may not gainsay it. Moreover, in your worldly regiment, ye do naught otherwise than flay and extort tribute, that ye may satisfy your pomp and vanity, till the poor, common man cannot, and may not, bear with it longer. The sword is on your neck. Ye think ye sit so strongly in your seats, that none may cast you from them. Such presumption and obstinate pride will twist your necks, as ye will ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... fourth plan was to prevail on congress, by a show of preparation for war, to extort from the cabinet of Madrid, what it ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... investigation; he might satisfy himself, and then if Mortimer were found still deeper in the toils it might be spoken of; but if he were found innocent—well, was Crane his brother's keeper? He could adopt one of two plans to get at the truth; he could trace out Billy Cass and extort from him the name of his principal; but if startled, the latter might refuse to divulge anything. Police pressure meant publicity. There was a better plan—Crane always found a better plan in everything. If David Cass had stolen the money he must have sent ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... arms; for gold, parents were tortured in their children's presence; for gold, brides were scourged to death before their husbands' eyes. Wherever treasure was suspected, every expedient which ingenuity, sharpened by greediness, could suggest, was employed to extort it from its possessors. The fire, spreading more extensively and more rapidly than had been desired through the wealthiest quarter of the city, had unfortunately devoured a vast amount of property. Six millions, at least, had thus ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... under Lord Charlemont. The Bishop of Derry, Lord Bristol, a vain and half-crazy prelate, advocated the admission of catholics to the franchise, and tried to excite the volunteers, who were then no longer exclusively protestant, and were recruited from the rabble, to extort reform from parliament by force. He attended parliament with an escort of volunteers and in regal state, and appeared in a purple coat and volunteer cap fiercely cocked. His seditious behaviour, the claim made for the catholics, and the violence of the democratic party ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... he seems himself, sincerely to believe in them. He is now suffering for those opinions, and suffering with a firmness, which to those who think him wrong, is stubbornness; and, thus, he affords another proof of the extreme impolicy of attempting to impose silence by prosecutions, and extort from the mind the abjuration of opinions by external and physical force. It never succeeds; but, on the contrary, works the very opposite effect to that which is its object. As the author from ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... soon afterwards to be raised in support of the opposite cause, was proclaiming the sternest doctrines of a renovated Catholicism. A spell which acted so widely and so marvellously could not be altogether unfelt by a mind whose peculiar property it was to yield itself to every influence in order to extort its secret and comprehend its power. Beyond this point the magic failed. "In all my transitions,"—thus he has written of himself,—"I have never alienated my judgment and my will; I have never pledged my belief. But I had a power of comprehending persons and things which gave rise to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... I say, retire inwardly, and ask in sobriety and sadness, what thy conscience thinks of it, and undoubtedly it shall confess a divine majesty, or at least tremble at the apprehension of what it either will not confess or slenderly believes. The very evidence of truth shall extort an acknowledgment from it. If any man denied the divine majesty, I would seek no other argument to persuade him than what was used to convince an old philosopher who denied the fire: they put his hand in it till he felt it. So I say, return ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... obeyed her by rising; but her son, who inherited a portion of her own spirit, rushed between them both and the door, and exclaimed, "Stay, madam, stay! I cannot let you go: I see your intention, I see your dreadful purpose; you will work upon the feelings of Miss Beverley, you will extort from her a promise to see ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Liturgy. He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold would press in. Those who still remained without would then not be sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and would be glad to compound for a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seen to go in (to the keeper's lodge) perfectly well, and when he came out again, he was in the greatest disorder; his thumbs were much swollen, and very sore; and he declared that the occasion of his being in that condition was, that the keeper, in order to extort from him a confession of the names of those who had assisted him and others in their attempt to escape, had screwed certain instruments of iron upon his thumbs, so close, that they had forced the blood out of them with exquisite pain. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... power. So deadly is this secret, that Zeus will, in the lapse of ages, be forced to reconcile himself with Prometheus, to escape dethronement. Finally, Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, appears with fresh threats, that he may extort the mystery from the Titan. But Prometheus is firm, defying both the tyrant and his envoy, though already the lightning is flashing, the thunder rolling, and sky and sea are mingling their fury. Hermes can say no more; the sea nymphs resolutely refuse to retire, and wait their doom. In this crash ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... east!—mighty mart of old renown!—for thou art not a place of yesterday:—long before the Roses red and white battled in fair England, thou didst exist—a place of throng and bustle—place of gold and silver, perfumes and fine linen. Centuries ago thou couldst extort the praises even of the fiercest foes of England. Fierce bards of Wales, sworn foes of England, sang thy praises centuries ago; and even the fiercest of them all, Red Julius himself, wild Glendower's bard, had a word of praise for London's ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... they made speeches, they got up petitions to extort this boon; on what terms it was made ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... which their governors were liable to be accused had better be repealed. If no fear of a prosecution were hanging over them, they would be content with as much plunder as would satisfy their own wants. They would not need to extort as much more wherewith to bribe their judges. Then he called his witnesses. A marvelous array they were. "From the foot of Mount Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from many islands of the Aegean, from every city and ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... a toll, In the spirit of his fraternity; But he knew that sort of man would extort, Though summon'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... ambition. The Elector shed tears when he heard of these devastations, and offered large sums to prevent military execution on the land. "The forces of England," replied the duke, "are not come into Bavaria to extort money, but to bring its prince to reason and moderation. It is in the power of the Elector to end the matter at once by coming ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... duties, was building. In this amusement he followed his own ideas, sifting the plans of architects with the most rigid scrutiny, and never hesitating to alter, and sometimes to pull to pieces, what it had cost hours of hard brain-work to devise. No amount of entreaty could extort his consent to what did not commend itself as clear and faultless to his understanding. It might not be a very agreeable process to some of those concerned, but the result was generally satisfactory ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... had nothing to complain about. One more question, my friend. When the lady escaped hurriedly on Wednesday night, what was it that she left behind and what price are you trying to extort from her ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... inquired the editorial roosters, "that when you tip the hat-check girl she gets the tip? She doesn't. It goes to a man who rents from the restaurant the privilege of bullying you out of a dime or a quarter. The girl holds you up, because if she doesn't extort fifteen dollars a week, she loses her job and her own munificent wages of seven dollars. The 'Clarion' takes pleasure in announcing a series of portraits of the high-minded pirates of finance whom you support in luxury, when you 'give up' ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was to be pitied. Love of this kind begins as a gift; but a woman of this temperament does not leave it so. She promptly turned it into a debt, and the more she loved the debtor, the more oppressively and inexorably did she extort the uttermost penny from him. About this time she was introduced to an eminent medical specialist in mental diseases, who, by some inexplicable means, was induced to give a certificate of her insanity. Then her cousins took her before a justice, and swore that she was an indigent lunatic, upon ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... the individual members of the rich nations, the owners of the surplus, would not make upon their own account. The edge of this issue should not be blunted. If the people and government of America were only concerned to let their individual citizens extort the highest prices they could get for their surplus in the best markets, they would let Central and Eastern Europe starve. If, however, they also take into account the social, political, and economic ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... a purpose in which neither my feelings nor interests have any part. I venture to say, Stanley, your plans are all for yourself. You want to extort some advantage from Wylder; and you think, in his present situation, about to marry Dorcas, you can use me for the purpose. Thank Heaven! Sir, you committed for once the rare indiscretion of telling ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the judges to contrition, and having proceeded to call forward the local secretary and to extort from him a long and painful apology, Mrs Bosenna wound up with a threat to bundle the whole Demonstration out of her field if she heard of any further nonsense, and, taking Dinah's arm, sailed off (so to speak) with all the ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... conditions, or no, is uncertain; but he seems to have sent a pretty numerous body of horse to the support of the "Liberators" against their antagonists. Perhaps he trusted to obtain from the gratitude of Cassius what he had failed to extort from the fears of Pompey. Or, perhaps, he was only anxious to prolong the period of civil disturbance in the Roman State, which secured his own territory from attack, and might ultimately give him an opportunity of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr. Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age. She could behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... gain her John's approval, or his understanding at least. But she could think of nothing to say. He had promised to manage it all for her: he had not reproached her; and yet not content with that she wanted to extort a favourable word from him before he should go. But she could not find a word to say. He it was only who spoke. He asked when she was going to return home, with his hand ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... tramp is a much-abused person, and I have no doubt that he often deserves what is said of him, but, in spite of that, his life is often so hard that he might extort at the least a little sympathy—and something to eat. All Americans are too ready to confound two distinct classes of tramps—those who take the road to look for work, and those (the larger number, I confess) who look for work and pray to heaven that they may never find ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... the old man, "is T. B. Smith, and I shall take you into custody on a charge of attempting to extort money by blackmail." ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at once, and even eagerly. I held it for a while in mine, and gazed into her eyes. It was she who first tore her hand away, and, forgetting all about her request and the promise she had sought to extort, ran at the top of her speed, and without turning, till she was out of sight. And then I knew that I loved her, and thought in my glad heart that she—she herself—was not indifferent to my suit. Many a time she has denied it in after days, but it was with a smiling and not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should mean all emperors; or speaking of Machiavel, comprehend all statesmen; or in our Sordido, all farmers; and so of the rest: than which nothing can be uttered more malicious or absurd. Indeed there are a sort of these narrow-eyed decypherers, I confess, that will extort strange and abstruse meanings out of any subject, be it never so conspicuous and innocently delivered. But to such, where'er they sit concealed, let them know, the author defies them and their writing-tables; and hopes no sound or safe judgment will infect itself with their contagious ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which towards the end gave place to the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian—a transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek even forcibly to extort from me a consent to his wishes, or by means still more horrible, of which I scarcely dared to trust myself to think, to possess ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Colonies, utterly at variance upon most subjects, were upon this agreed: They would not submit to the tax. They had read the Magna Charta, they knew that the Stamp Act violated its most vital principle. This tax had been framed to extort money from men who had no representation in Parliament, hence ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... species of deference, which is compounded of habitual respect for the person, and conventional submission to his station; the young master must, therefore, effect a change in his footman's manner of thinking and speaking by violent means; he must extort that tribute of respect which he has neglected so long, and to which, consequently, his right is disputed.[35] He is sensible, that his superiority is merely that of situation, and he, therefore, exerts his dormant prerogatives with jealous insolence. No master is so likely to ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... world, or have yet had no proofs of its inconstancy and desertion, are cut off, by this cruel interruption, from the enjoyment of their prerogatives, and doomed to lose four months in inactive obscurity. Many complaints do vexation and desire extort from those exiled tyrants of the town, against the inexorable sun, who pursues his course without any regard to love or beauty; and visits either tropick at the stated time, whether shunned or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... to break open a jail, is a forerunner of evil, and desperate measures will be used to extort ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... it occasionally with an electric pocket-lamp. Which do you prefer, passive admiration, of which you must have had more than enough already, or the calm affirmation of physicists who are accustomed to extort from Nature secrets which she hides from physical eyes? 'In this way,' adds the master, 'Eusapia's irritation was softened; she rebelled no further, but yielded with docility to the sharp, attentive scrutiny of the observer, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... by reflection shown, Whilst Gay once more knows Polly for his own. Talk not to me of diffidence and fear— I see it all, but must forgive it here; Defects like these, which modest terrors cause, From Impudence itself extort applause. 710 Candour and Reason still take Virtue's part; We love e'en foibles in so good a heart. Let Tommy Arne[56],—with usual pomp of style, Whose chief, whose only merit's to compile; Who, meanly ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... polished jade which is called "the stone of famine," because it is supposed capable of causing either dearth or abundance, but is oftener used by the sorcerer to create, or at least to threaten, dearth, in order thereby to extort presents from his alarmed fellow tribesmen. This stone is kept in a burial-ground and derives its potency from the dead. The worshipper or the sorcerer (for he combines the two characters) who desires to cause a famine ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... supplies was called) had to infringe a little on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This week, as it happened, Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore herself in her high office as to extort the ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... worsted, in the colonial field. The revolt of the English colonies might seem a tempting opportunity for revenge; but suppose that the colonial resistance collapsed before effective aid could arrive? Suppose the colonists merely used the threat of French intervention to extort terms from England and then made common cause against the foreigner? These obvious considerations made the French statesmen hesitate. Aid was indeed given to the colonial rebels, especially in the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would probably contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. The internal condition of Ireland ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... moral issue. When a few men get possession of one of the necessaries of life, either through ownership of a natural resource or through unfair business methods, and use that control to extort undue profits, as in the recent cases of the Sugar Trust and the beef-packers, they injure the average man without good reason, and they are guilty of a moral wrong. It does not matter whether the undue profit comes through stifling competition by rebates or other crooked devices, through ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... heavy, slow tread, some shyly. Often you could guess their trades by the look of them. You learnt in what way to put your questions so that they should be understood, you discovered on what subjects nearly all lied, and by what inquiries you could extort the truth notwithstanding. You saw the different way people took the same things. The diagnosis of dangerous illness would be accepted by one with a laugh and a joke, by another with dumb despair. Philip found that ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... is equal in cruelty to those of the Gold Coast. He is beaten with sticks, and then pegged down to the ground. Whilst thus helpless, a nest of venomous bush-ants is broken over his racked and quivering body. If this fail to extort a confession, he is singed to ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... torments they are to suffer, of the preparations making in order to it, of the mangling their limbs, and of the feast that is to be made, where their carcass is to be the only dish. All which they do, to no other end, but only to extort some gentle or submissive word from them, or to frighten them so as to make them run away, to obtain this advantage that they were terrified, and that their constancy was shaken; and indeed, if rightly taken, it is in this point only ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... opening his purse. Dr. Clark describes a call Harris made on him early one morning, greatly excited, requesting a private interview. On hearing his story, Dr. Clark advised him that the scheme was a hoax, devised to extort money from him, but Harris showed the slip of paper containing the mysterious characters, and was not ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying forms is a craving for sympathy. The sufferers parade their miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity them. They like sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of interest from the bystanders; as we have seen children, who, finding themselves of no account when grown people come in, will cough till they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... grown up between the mother and son, hastened to insinuate to Marie de Medicis that Louis had expressed his gratification at her refusal, and to assure her that should she suffer the Prince to extort her consent to such an act of wilful revolt against the royal command she would ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... desired. With so much conceded, they had every thing in their own hands. They could march out of the Union at their own will and caprice, without resistance from the National Government, and they could come back upon such conditions as, with the President's aid, they might extort from an alarmed and weakening North. Assured by the language of the President that they could with impunity defy the constitutional authority of the government, the Secessionists were immeasurably encouraged. The Southern men had for three generations been cherishing the belief ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... trade with America will be continued, while the principles and power of the British Parliament be the same, have indulged themselves in every exorbitance which their avarice could dictate, or our necessities extort; have raised their commodities called for in America, to the double and treble of what they sold for, before such exclusive privileges were given them, and of what better commodities of the same kind would cost us elsewhere; and, at the same time, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no increase in the quantity of the labor, but simply in its value; 2d, that no rise in the value of labor can ever settle upon price; but that all increase of wages will be paid out of profits, and all increase of profits out of wages. I shall now, however, extort a sufficient defence of Mr. Ricardo from your own concessions. For you acknowledge that the same cause which raises the wages of the hatter will raise wages universally, and in the same ratio—that is, by twenty-five per cent. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... message, was to loot Perlmer's desk some time after the man had gone home for the night, and then, at midnight, armed with the false documents, to beard old Nicky Viner in his miserable quarters over on the East Side, and extort from the old miser the neat little sum that Danglar estimated would amount to some ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... doubtless would like to depart with a full pocket; but he would never dare to release Trent, even if he could. It's simply a trick. They are playing artfully upon the anxiety, the suspense, the wretched state of fear and hope and dread in which young Trent's friends are held, to extort from them a little money, which will keep them in comfort while they wear out either the father or ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... poles, Sarpent, if Sarpent you be," said Hurry, amid the groans that the tightness of the ligatures was beginning to extort from him—"run out one of the poles, and shove the head of the scow off, and you'll drift clear of us—and, when you've done that good turn for yourself just finish ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Brandenburg. But at no time was the election seriously in doubt. The electors followed the only possible course in choosing Charles on June 28. They profited, however, by the rivalry of the rich king of France to extort enormous bribes and concessions from Charles. The banking house of Fugger supplied the necessary funds, and in addition the agents of the emperor-elect were obliged to sign a "capitulation" making all sorts of concessions to the princes. One of these, exacted by Frederic of Saxony in the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... any impediment to Bouvard; but for fear of impostures and attempts to extort hush-money, it was better to put aside the project. They contented themselves with a collection of musical glasses, which they carried about with them to the different houses, so as to delight ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of Elizabeth's imprisonment Gardiner had laboured to extort evidence against her by fair means or foul.[303] {p.130} She had been followed to the Tower by her servants. Sir John Gage desired that her food should be dressed by people of his own. The servants refused to allow themselves to be displaced,[304] ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... slavery. It concerned Free Trade, a very respectable issue, but so clearly a minor issue that to break up a great country upon it would have gone beyond the limit of solemn frivolity, and Calhoun must be taken to have been forging an implement with which his own section of the States could claim and extort concessions from the Union. A protective tariff had been passed in 1828. The Southern States, which would have to pay the protective duties but did not profit by them, disliked it. Calhoun and others took the intelligible but too refined point, that the powers ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... liar, Captain Lamine, and only wants to extort money for his services," interjected the brute. "Leave him to me, sir; I'll find a way to refresh his memory of Key West that will open the bottom of the gulf to his eyes as clearly as the pathway to his piratical hut on the sand key! To ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... result of treachery on the part of Arthur Vane, they well understood the motives of the robbers, and knew, as well as if Pierre had explained the matter to them, that they were to be used as a means to extort money from their relatives, and that they had nothing to fear, so long as they submitted quietly to their enemies. But this was something that one of the three boys, at least, had no intention of doing. ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... later, the two-year olds entered for the race have to be watched by their trainer that they may not be overfed or drugged against the day of the race. It has come to this, that schools are bidding for clever boys in order to run them in the races, and in France, I read, that parents actually extort money from schools by threatening to take away the young racers that are likely ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... that their judgment being darkened and their hearts depraved, its applauses and contempt will for the most part be systematically misplaced; that though the beneficent and disinterested spirit of Christianity, and her obvious tendency to promote domestic comfort and general happiness, cannot but extort applause; yet that her aspiring after more than ordinary excellence, by exciting secret misgivings in others, or a painful sense of inferiority not unmixed with envy, cannot fail often to disgust and offend. The word of God teaches us, that though such of the doctrines ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... were not followed up according to school discipline, they were not the less diligently applied to." This high-soaring ambition was the source both of his weakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with the world of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to extort her secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the philanthropist who dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence, and the poet who invented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of grandeur too colossal to be animated with ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... not hear the answers he got from up there; but the vague sounds that reached me carried the usual commingling of derision and applause, the resentment of their jeers at the admiration he knew how to extort by the display of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... what may, you shall not quit the castle till then.' Madame Montoni burst into loud lamentation, which she as suddenly checked, considering, that her husband's assertions might be only artifices, employed to extort her consent. She hinted this suspicion, and, in the next moment, told him also, that his designs were not so honourable as to serve the state, and that she believed he had only commenced a captain of banditti, to join the enemies ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... compelling us to supply what's wanted! But hadn't you really been able to contribute any more, no one would have a word to say; but the gold and silver, round as well as flat, have with their heavy weight pressed down the bottom of the box! and your sole object is to harass us and to extort from us. But raise your eyes and look about you; who isn't your venerable ladyship's son and daughter? and is it likely, pray, that in the future there will only be cousin Pao-y to carry you, our old lady, on his head, up the Wu T'ai Shan? You may keep ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... you know full well: not even your unkind desertion could affect that love, which was unchangeable. I dared all for your sake; my brothers, my father, could not extort the secret from me, and their suspicions, although directed towards you, could never be confirmed. I bore the offspring of my guilt in solitary anguish, afterwards loaded with reproaches when I needed comfort and consolation, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... followed the fellow," Ralph said. "I would not have slain him could I have helped it, but would have left it for the hangman to extort from him the name of his employer; but, in truth, he struck so hard, and you fell so straight before the blow, that I feared the mail had given way, and that you were sorely wounded if not killed. You have oft told me that I was over-careful ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... on Mrs. Wade, "as if Northway really had no intention of using his power to extort money. To be sure, your own income is not to be despised by a man in his position; but most rascals would have gone to Mr. Quarrier.—He is still in ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... thing I ever did in my life," Mr. Shaw is reported to have said to his American interviewer, "was to force my friendship on Webb, to extort his, and keep it." Mr. Sidney Webb was then, as now, the constructive encyclopaedist, the man who, wherever he went, "knew more than anybody present." "The truth of the matter is that Webb and I are very useful to each other. We are in perfect contrast, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... assuredly have then realized to be unfounded. Instead the lieutenant accepted the most ridiculous statements, brought charges of attempted murder against Alberto and his sister, Mrs. Rizal, and evidently figured that he would be able to extort money from the rich man and gratify his ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... me out of my senses. This Anthony is as like you, Algernon, as two peas. He is your own son, and you are welcome to him. His absence will give me no pain, nor will his adoption by you extort from me one farthing for his future maintenance. If you persist in taking him it will be at ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the empire, for some years past, there have been many instances of suspected persons, or those falsely accused, being tortured till death ensued. From Hoopih province, an appeal is now before the emperor, against a magistrate who tortured a man to death, to extort a confession of homicide; and we have just heard, from Kwang-se province, that on the 24th of the 11th moon, one Netseyuen, belonging to Canton, having received an appointment for his high literary attainments, to the magistracy of a Heen district, in a fit of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... European in a sulky frame of mind. Hajjee Ali has very kindly offered to take Marie down to Cairo and start her off to Alexandria, whence Ross's people can send her home. If she wants to stay in Alexandria and get placed by the nuns who piously exhorted her to extort ninety francs a month from me, so much the better for me. Ali refuses to take a penny from me for her journey—besides bringing me potatoes and all sorts of things: and if I remonstrate he says he and all his family and all they have is mine, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... territory the mafus had conceived the idea that for some reason we were afraid to meet other foreigners. Since we had inadvertently crossed into Burma it appeared to them that it would be an opportune time to extort an increase of wages. They announced, therefore, that unless extra money was given them at once they would untie the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... member of the Administration rushed his attorney as courier to the women in the workhouse to implore them not to consent to the habeas corpus proceedings. He was easily admitted and tried to extort from one prisoner at a time a promise to reject the plan. The women suspected his solicitude and refused to make any promise whatsoever without first being allowed to see their ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... me what's on your mind," Mamise suggested, but he shook his head. The car rolled into the gloom of the park, a gloom rather punctuated than diminished by the street-lamps. Mamise realized that she could not extort Nicky's secret from him by asserting her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Southern states that had no shipping said it would never do; for New England, by controlling the carrying trade, would extort ruinous prices for shipping tobacco ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... should pass through his dominions without disorder; but the adventurers, imagining that they were already in the enemy's country, began their usual service of fire and sword. In Barbastro they pillaged the houses, killed the burghers or tortured them to extort ransom, and set fire to a church in which some had taken refuge, burning alive more ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... of guilt might be readily obtained from some of the weaker brethren in order to receive the pardon which was promised by the King. But no such confession was made. All the prisoners denied the charges brought against them. Then the usual mediaeval expedient was resorted to, and torture was used to extort acknowledgments of guilt. The unhappy Templars in Paris were handed over to the tender mercies of the tormentors with the usual results. One hundred and forty were subjected to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... smooth and the Cheerful One is denied the joy of making sea-sick folk feel sicker, he is disappointed but not idle, for he may still extort confessions from untravelled persons. You know him: the solid, red-faced man who dresses for dinner and sits at the head of the table eating fried things loud and long when it is rough. He wears travel as though it were the Order of the Garter, and tells ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... fortune. He asserted in his speech to the constitutional authorities, immediately after hostilities had commenced with England, that the war would be of short duration, and he firmly believed what he said. Had he by his gunboats, or by his intrigues or threats, been enabled to extort a second edition of the Peace of Amiens, after a warfare of some few months, all mouths would have been ready to exclaim, "Oh, the illustrious warrior! Oh, the profound politician!" Now, after three ineffectual campaigns on the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... The plan then, according to the code message, was to loot Perlmer's desk some time after the man had gone home for the night, and then, at midnight, armed with the false documents, to beard old Nicky Viner in his miserable quarters over on the East Side, and extort from the old miser the neat little sum that Danglar estimated would amount to some ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... Millicent," suggested Leslie with an uneasy laugh. "These heroics hardly become you—and nobody can extort a great deal in return for—nothing better than you. In any case, it's no use now debating whether one or both of us were foolish. I'm speaking no more than the painful truth when I say that if I can't get the man back into my hands I shall ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, during which it relentlessly crushed every vestige of opposition by means of that hideous monster, the Inquisition. During these three centuries, the same selfish policy actuated the home government towards Mexico as was exercised towards Cuba, namely, to extort from the country and its people the largest possible revenue for the Spanish treasury. Finally came the successful revolution which separated the country from continental Spain and achieved the independence ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... it—but if you others are able to persuade Mr. Orden to restore the packet, our task with him is at an end. We are not his gaolers—or perhaps he would say his torturers—for pleasure. The Council has ordered that we should extort from him the papers you know of and has given us carte blanche as to the means. If you others can persuade him to restore them peaceably, why, do it. We are prepared ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... son Alexis, who allied himself with a reactionary party that aimed to reverse the Czar's policy, he finally caused to be tried for treason. He was condemned, but died either from the bodily torture inflicted on him to extort confession, or, as many have believed, by poison, or other means, used by the direction of his father. His friends, after being barbarously tortured, were put ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that, despairing to maintain it by reason, he seeks to uphold it by passion; that not being able to convince by fair means, he would bear down by noise and clamour: that not skilling to get his suit quietly, he would extort it by force, obtruding his conceits violently as an enemy, or imposing them arbitrarily as a tyrant. Thus doth he really disparage and slur his cause, however good ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... arms of one of Napoleon's generals, and had already opened negotiations with a view of carrying these intentions into effect. The father, unable to resist the daughter's tears, joined with her in endeavouring to extort from Madame V. a reluctant consent; but the latter remained inflexible. After all other arguments had been exhausted in vain, Monsieur M., her daughter and even her husband threw themselves on their knees before her in tears, and entreated her to yield to their wishes. Such a scene was too much ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... is, there is always a latent love of fame, that prompts to this strong devotion of labour; and he who has given a long life to that which he has so much desired, and can never enjoy, might well be excused receiving our insults, if he cannot extort our pity. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and, mounted on a kind of bed-carriage, are drawn about the streets of London by their wives or children; being furnished with a blatant hand-organ of last century's manufacture, whose ear-torturing growl draws the attention of the public to their woful plight, they extort that charity which would else fail to find them out. If there be something gratifying in the fact, that this is the only class of Britons who follow such an inglorious profession, there is nothing very flattering in the consideration, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH, has been abrogated by JESUS CHRIST; and that, under the new covenant, the forgiveness, instead of the punishment, of enemies has been enjoined upon all his disciples, in all cases whatsoever. To extort money from enemies, or set them upon a pillory, or cast them into prison or hang them upon a gallows, is obviously not to forgive, but to take retribution. VENGEANCE IS MINE—I ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... personally visited almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were huddled together in the prisons ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... England, and to build their castles, as they did before Godwin and his sons returned from exile, and the Normans had to fly the land, save those around the person of the king. He may beg so many bishoprics for Norman priests. There is no saying what concessions he may extort. Of all princes in Europe I had rather Harold had fallen into the hands of any other than into ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... enough for Devine. He flashed a glance at his companion. Saunders possessed the huckster's heart, and took pleasure in selling indifferent pork and third-grade flour at the highest prices he could possibly extort. The clink of the dollar was music to him; but it was perfectly clear that he could hold his own, on occasion, with a very tenacious hand. The man was resolutely quiet and evidently quite ready to meet the jumpers ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... opinion. They must be very fortunate as well as unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all. They have more difficulty in obtaining a trial, than any other litigants have in getting a verdict. If they do extort a hearing, they are subjected to a set of logical requirements totally different from those exacted from other people. In all other cases, the burthen of proof is supposed to lie with the affirmative. If ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... arms around her neck, and gave way to tears, such as Cipher could not extort by his pounding. She gave him a good-night kiss,—so sweet that it seemed to lie upon his ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in conversation with me to my expectations; but here, again, he showed no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted—and even did extort, though I don't know how—those references ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... I do aught to injure the child. No, no. Dinah North is not such a fool. If I do it to gratify my own revenge, that's another thing. I have this bad, bold Robert in my power. This secret will be a fortune in itself—will extort from his mean, avaricious soul, a portion of his ill-gotten wealth. Ha, my child! you did well and wisely, and may die in peace, without the stain ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... they would be relieved merely from the parliamentary opposition of other companies and of private individuals. The private owner must be deprived of his present privilege of parliamentary opposition, which gives him the power to extort an exorbitant price for his land—because a company can always oppose in the garb of some private owner ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... marriage on Wednesday. Now, suppose I have got a magistrate's warrant to apprehend you in my pocket? Suppose I have a constable to execute it in the next room? Suppose I bring you up to-morrow—the day before the marriage—charge you only generally with an attempt to extort money, and apply for a day's remand to complete the case? Suppose, as a suspicious stranger, you can't get bail in this ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... on a complaint of kidnapping Bessie Watson, and an attempt to extort money from her father. The evidence, including Dock's letter and the absence of Bessie, was more than enough to hold him, and he was committed for trial. The testimony was strong enough to hold Mr. Fairfield, ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... her own happiness. One kiss from him would be payment for it all. But all his love, all his sweetness, all his truth, all his eloquence should avail nothing with her towards overcoming that spirit of self-sacrifice by which she was dominated. Though he should extort from her all her secret, that would be her strength. Though she should have to tell him of her failing health,—her certainly failing health,—though even that should be necessary, she certainly would not be won from her purpose. It might be sweet, she thought, to ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... prisoner for life was no punishment; the major's powers were, therefore, limited to the cat and the gallows. And as the first gallows had been built to carry only eight passengers, his daily death sentences were also limited to that number. For twenty years torture was used to extort confession— even women were flogged if they refused to give evidence, and an order of the Governor was held to be equal to law. Major Abbott ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... travelling down to Bowood with her, which she insisted upon, naturally enough declined coming all the way down again from London to see her safe home; so not being able to accomplish his fetching her back to town, she contrived to extort from him a letter stating that, owing to the late heavy rains, her journey back to London upon the railroad would probably be both tedious and uncomfortable, and advising her by all means to go home "by land," which, considering that the Great Western is his own road—his iron child, so to speak,—by ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... their mothers' arms; for gold, parents were tortured in their children's presence; for gold, brides were scourged to death before their husbands' eyes. Wherever treasure was suspected, every expedient which ingenuity, sharpened by greediness, could suggest, was employed to extort it from its possessors. The fire, spreading more extensively and more rapidly than had been desired through the wealthiest quarter of the city, had unfortunately devoured a vast amount of property. Six millions, at least, had thus been swallowed; a destruction by which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... idea of wringing from this boy revelations to criminate his unhappy mother. Whether this wretch imputed to the child false revelations, or abused his, tender age and his condition to extort from him what admissions soever he pleased, he obtained a revolting deposition; and as the youth of the Prince did not admit of his being brought before the tribunal, Hebert appeared and detailed the infamous particulars which he had ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... priest—auricular confession—being at that time formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge, or other ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... elstreki. Exquisite rava. Extant ekzistanta. Extempore senprepara. Extend etendi. Extension etendo. Extensive vasta. Exterior eksterajxo. Exterminate ekstermi. External ekstera. Extinct estingita. Extinguish estingi. Extirpate elradikigi. Extol lauxdegi. Extort eltiregi. Extra ekstra. Extract ekstrakti, eltiri. Extract ekstrakto, eltiro—ajxo. Extraction (lineage) deveno. Extraordinary eksterorda. Extravagance malsxparo. Extravagant malsxparema. Extreme ekstrema. Extremely treege. Extremity ekstremajxo. Extricate liberigi. Exuberant ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... know, and being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this little matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. Now I won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall. It was so opposed to your interests. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of a promise of this kind, made in writing or in the presence of witnesses, certain of the more selfish or less manly and honorable class of creditors are ever seeking to extort by fair or foul means, from an unfortunate debtor, who has honestly given up every thing, an acknowledgment of his indebtedness to them, in order that they may reap the benefit of his first efforts to get upon his feet again. Many and many an honest ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... have, all winter, for the asking—if we will but ask ourselves instead of the lawn-mower man—an effect of home, of comfort, cheer and grace, of summer and autumn reminiscences and of spring's anticipations, immeasurably better than any ordinary eye or fancy can extort from the rectangular and stiffened-out nakedness of unplanted boundaries; immeasurably better than the month-by-month daily death-stare of shroud-like snow around houses standing barefooted on the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... is what I said: the atrocity of the action carries you beyond contempt, and hence my sincerity. I wished you to know to what a degree I excelled in my art, to extort from you the admission that I was at least original in my abasement, to rank me in your mind on the line of the great good-for-noughts, and to hail me henceforth—Vivat Mascarillus, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... called themselves clerks, evil-disposed persons who traded under such names as their owners could use no longer on their own account. These prowlers amongst thieves, under the protection of the Law, were permitted to extort what they could from the friends of miserable prisoners under pretence of engaging counsel to defend them. Counsel they would engage after a fashion—sometimes: but not unfrequently they cheated counsel, client and the law at the same time, which is rather ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... variance upon most subjects, were upon this agreed: They would not submit to the tax. They had read the Magna Charta, they knew that the Stamp Act violated its most vital principle. This tax had been framed to extort money from men who had no representation in Parliament, hence ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... time by the will of man, but men spake as if they were inspired by the Holy Ghost:" to the same effect did the Chaldeans answer king Nebuchadonazar on the interpretation of his dream, which he wished to extort from them. "There is not," say they, "a man upon earth who can, O king, satisfactorily answer your question; let no king therefore, however great or potent, make a similar request to any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean; for it is a rare thing that the king requireth, ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... have chosen a very nice way of testifying their respect for their chief: and they have made a mistake which they shall repent having made sooner or later. If you came here upon your own account, with a view to terrify me, or to extort money from me, you have made a mistake. If you think to make a fool of me by any maudlin sentimentality, you make a still greater mistake. I give you fair warning. If you expect any advantage from me, you must make yourself agreeable to me. I am a rich ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... many cases strong enough to kill; it should be strong indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded. "Had you hidden a tapu?" we may conceive him asking: and I cannot imagine the proprietor ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plot known as Ridolfi's was discovered, and it is to be noted that Elizabeth herself ordered the rack to be used to extort information. The result was condemnation of Norfolk to the block. The recalcitrance of Henry of Anjou led to his definitely withdrawing from his courtship, while the young Alencon became the new ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath food, let him do likewise. And there came also publicans to be baptized, and they said unto him, Teacher, what must we do? And he said unto them, Extort no more than that which is appointed you. And soldiers also asked him, saying, And we, what must we do? And he said unto them, Extort from no man by violence, neither accuse any one wrongfully; and be content ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... safety, and that another child had been assassinated in his stead. This rumor overwhelmed the guilty soul of Boris with melancholy. His fears were so strongly excited, that several nobles, who were supposed to be in the interests of the young prince, were put to the rack to extort a confession. But no positive information respecting Dmitri could be gained. The mother of Dmitri was banished to an obscure fortress ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... second time indicted for assaulting John du Cummins, a footman, and taking from him a silver watch, a snuff-box, and five guineas in money. Both of which facts he steadily denied after his conviction, but there was a third crime of which he was convicted, viz., sending a letter to extort money from Simon Smith, Esq., and which ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... plains of Heaven, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost—the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deify his power Who, from the terror of this arm, so late Doubted his empire—that were low indeed; That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... himself a true and faithful confessor and martyr. The Moollahs strove hard to make him recant. They demanded of him: "In the Gospel of Christ, is anything said of our Prophet?"—intending to extort that promise of the Comforter which Mahomet blasphemously applied ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... illuminating. It threw into relief two methods of action which hitherto we had been hazily seeking to combine, seesawing between one and the other, each of us influenced at different times by different motives. One was to rely on independent research; the other to extort the secret from Dollmann direct, by craft or threats. The moral of to-day was to abandon the first and embrace ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which, towards the end, gave place to something bordering upon the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian, a transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek, even forcibly, to extort from me a consent to his wishes, or by means still more horrible, of which I scarcely dared to trust myself to think, to possess himself of ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... presents the English commander in a most contemptible light. Not content with the six hundred thousand dollars which he had already pocketed, as his share of the spoil, he assumed the part of Bull Beggar toward the Bishop, in the hope that he might extort one hundred thousand dollars more from the Church, for his own personal benefit, for the "donation" was not to go into the common stock; and when his threats failed, he turned tyrant at the expense of a venerable officer of the most ancient of Christian churches. What an outcry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... whom all political power was then vested—are facts well attested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved to us. It appears that immediately preceding the time of his archonship the evils had ripened to such a point, and the determination of the mass of sufferers to extort for themselves some mode of relief had become so pronounced, that the existing laws could no longer be enforced. According to the profound remark of Aristotle—that seditions are generated by great causes but out of small incidents—we may conceive that some recent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Bedlam beggar who had crept into this deserted hovel for shelter, and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of those poor lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better to extort charity from the compassionate country people, who go about the country calling themselves poor Tom and poor Turlygood, saying, "Who gives anything to poor Tom?" sticking pins and nails and sprigs ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... episode had a very favorable effect on our hero's amatory enterprise: still, he could never extort anything at all resembling a confession of love; but he had the felicity of living on terms of intimacy with Clelia. Every morning, and often at evening also, there was a long conversation with the alphabets; every evening ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... daughter's life rests literally in your hands; for unless you consent to furnish the money to pay for a surgical operation, which may restore her health, she will certainly die. I am indulging in no exaggeration to extort alms. In this letter is the certificate of a distinguished physician, corroborating my statement. If you, the author of her being, prefer to hasten her death, then your choice of an awful revenge must be settled between your hardened ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... renowned, rich, and happy men, we repine at their felicity, they are undeserving we think, fortune is a stepmother to us, a parent to them. "We envy" (saith [4822]Isocrates) "wise, just, honest men, except with mutual offices and kindnesses, some good turn or other, they extort this love from us; only fair persons we love at first sight, desire their acquaintance, and adore them as so many gods: we had rather serve them than command others, and account ourselves the more beholding to them, the more service they enjoin us:" though they be ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... We continued our march down the river. The people continued to be hospitable, with some few exceptions. Knowing our need of their articles, some of them would extort from us an extravagant price. We chose to live mostly on bread and butter and milk, having but little relish for meat, and supposing it not to be healthy food after fasting ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... protecting our islands. Rather than give up their carrying trade it would be better to give up themselves." The entrepot system herein found additional justification, for not only did it foster navigation by the homeward voyage, confined to British ships, and extort toll in transit, but the re-exportation made a double voyage which was more than doubly fruitful in seamen; for from the nearness of the British Islands to the European continent, which held the great body of consumers, this second carriage ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and ungentlemanlike, and the criticism is chiefly verbal. In the note the reader may peruse an ample specimen of the kind of wit, or rather banter, employed by this facetious person.[20] The letters were written successively at different periods; for Clifford in the last complains that he cannot extort an answer, and therefore seems to conceive that ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... circle of novel readers, it has ever drawn a single tear. The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity has fortunately cleared our streets of the offensive vagrants who used to thrust their mangled limbs and putrid sores into our faces to extort from our disgust what they could not wring from our compassion:—Be it our care to suppress those greater nuisances who, infesting the high ways of literature, would attempt, by a still more revolting exhibition, to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... infanticide, child abandonment and the like. As to the other crimes, few women are burglars or robbers, or guilty of other crimes of violence, except murder. Women steal and poison and blackmail and extort money and lie and slander and gossip, and probably cause as much unhappiness as men; but their crimes, like their lives, are not on so large or adventurous a scale. They do not so readily take a chance; they lack the ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... but one and the same appellation. Whoever is arraigned at her tribunal has heaven and earth against him; the interrogatory is already a species of torture. When the church accuses, she seems already convinced; all her efforts tend to extort the confession of the crime, which, in virtue of her infallibility, she discovers in darkness; from this anticipated conviction of the guilt of the accused are produced all those ambushes and snares laid for the purpose of obtaining, by surprise, the confession ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... really virtuous, well knowing that nine persons out of ten, though really guiltless of any fault, will rather comply with their demands than have their names connected with a scandal. Such persons think that the wretch will not dare to charge them with the offence, or endeavor to extort money a second time, and do not regret the first outlay. They ought never to yield, whether innocent or guilty, for the wretches are sure to make repeated demands upon those who are weak enough to comply with them. The law makes it a crime for any one to endeavor to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Now, as for those in our church who contend for the ceremonies, many of them are led by such argumenta inartificialia, as wealth, preferment, &c., and if conscience be at all looked to by them, yet they only throw and extort an assent and allowance from it, when worldly respects have made them to propend and incline to an anterior liking of the ceremonies. We do not judge them when we say so, but by their fruits we know them. As Pope Innocent VII., while he was ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Pruyn, having practically announced an engagement which did not exist, found himself in a somewhat ludicrous situation. Too proud to extort a promise of secrecy from Mrs. Bayford, he knew the value of his indiscretion—if indiscretion it were—to any purveyor of tea-table gossip; and while Diane and he remained in the same relative positions ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... the recent death of his father, had been put in possession of a splendid fortune, the proposition allured her father, who wrote him a complaisant answer, with an invitation to his house.—He then strove to extort a promise from Melissa, that she would break off all connexion with you, see you no more, and admit the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... The figure is cut out of yellow Roach Abbey stone. The armour is linked. This knight was fined L800 by Richard Coeur de Lion for allowing a French prisoner of consequence to escape from his custody. He married a daughter of a King of Scotland, was Sheriff of Cumberland, helped to extort Magna Charta from King John, and gave much public property to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... States-General, or lose not only the nobles, but the people: undecided as she was, she soon saw that she must do it at once,—that, if she delayed it, her great nobles would raise the cry for it, again and again, just as often as they wished to extort office or money. Accordingly, on the fourteenth of October, 1614, she summoned the deputies of the three estates to Paris, and then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... mistaken, that he aimed at getting every thing he possibly could, and leaving us without the means of making any presents to the Esquimaux, or other Indians we might meet. I resolved, therefore, on steadily refusing every request; and when he perceived that he could extort nothing more, he rose in an angry manner, and addressing his young men, said: "There are too few goods for me to distribute; those that mean to follow the white people to the sea may ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... number of 40,000,—that Naples had every disposition to back his Holiness with 30,000 soldiers, provided any reverse should befall the French in Lombardy,—and, finally, that Alvinzi was rapidly preparing for another march, with numbers infinitely superior to what he could himself extort from the government of Paris;[11] and considering these circumstances, he felt himself compelled to seek strength by gratifying his Italian friends. Two Republics accordingly were organised; the Cispadane ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... have the Gods forgotten,—or is it that subtler mirth The Gods extort of a certain sort of folk that cumber ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... shepherds on the mountains upon a question of cheeses and goats, which the former claimed as annually due to the monastery; it appeared that prior to the British occupation they had been able by threats to extort this demand, but the shepherds had now determined to free themselves from all payments beyond those which the law compelled, and they resisted the priestly authority, before which they had hitherto remained as slaves. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Both possessed more than ordinary intelligence and amiability, and for more than two years had been heartily devoted to Christ. "The younger who had left the school," says the report of the mission, "was taken, a few days since, into a room where many of her relatives and a priest had assembled, to extort from her a renunciation of her faith, and was told that she would either have to give up, or die; that they would give her no peace so long as she persisted in her present course. But the Lord sustained her. They resorted to entreaty, and besought ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... verumque beatus amicum. The Piper, who the Pythian Measure plays, In fear of a hard matter learnt the lays: But if to desp'rate verse I would apply, What needs instruction? 'tis enough to cry; "I can write Poems, to strike wonder blind! Plague take the hindmost! Why leave me behind? Or why extort a truth, so mean and low, That what I have ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... part; but in such a way, that it always reached my ears. She played a pious, modest, reserved part, in order to excite my curiosity. And at last, to-day she plays the prude. She refuses my forgiveness, in hopes by this generous device, to extort ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... formed that habit on Earth. Only they carry it further there—swindle their brothers, deceive their parents, oppress the weak, extort from the poor; work, toil, plot, cheat, rob, yes, even kill! in order to lay up a store of something they can never take away with them, and which renders them unhappy oftener than happy while they ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... You temptress! You force me to speak, though you know already what I have to say! That I love you, love you! And that you love me! That your whole life leaps to mine as mine to yours! You know all this; if I were stricken dumb, you could read it in my face, but you will have it spoken—you will extort from me the whole secret of my madness!—yes, for you to take a cruel joy in knowing that I AM mad—mad for the love of you! And you cannot be too often or too thoroughly assured that your own passion finds its ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... of rape are very often made. The motive may be to extort blackmail, revenge, or mere delusion. On examining such cases bruises are seldom found, but scratches which the woman has made on the front of her body may be discovered, and the local injuries to the generative organs are slight, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... a last alternative. Caiaphas might put Jesus on His oath, and extort from His own lips the charge on which to condemn Him; but he was evidently reluctant to do it, and only availed himself of this process as a last resource. It was well known to this astute and cunning priest that Jesus on more than one occasion had claimed, not only to be the long-expected ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... market-place, where he again proclaims his displeasure as before; and removes to different parts of the town, until he thinks all the town are informed of the man's behaviour; and after endeavouring to extort a fine from the party, which he sometimes does, all repair to a public-house, to regale themselves at his expense. Unless the delinquent can ill afford it, they take his "goods and chattels," if he will not surrender his money. The origin of this usage I am ignorant of, and shall be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... The [Greek: nomos], the [Greek: Zeus pantokrat'or], seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... co-operate with them in an effort to expel Daisy from Gedingooma; for until Daisy should be vanquished or humbled they considered that they could neither return to their native towns nor live in security in any of the neighbouring kingdoms. With a view to extort money from these people by means of this treaty, Ali despatched his son to Jarra, and prepared to follow him in the course of a few days. This was an opportunity of too great consequence to me to be neglected. I immediately applied to Fatima, who, I found, had the chief direction in all affairs ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... passages declarations of the individual? Winding himself up with twopenny-worth of cheese! Pleading for the additional penny for the waitress, whose personal charms and obliging disposition must be considered to extort the amount! And above all, unable to conceive any motive, except aversion to trouble, for disliking to carry "his chop" upon a skewer through the streets of London. How every line revels in the recollection ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... bearing their lantern. This, Cicero mentions, as being the habit of Catiline upon his midnight expeditions; and when M. Antony was accused of a disgraceful intrigue, his lantern-bearer was tortured, to extort a confession whither he had conducted his master.[4] One of these machines, of considerable ingenuity and beauty of workmanship, was found in Herculaneum in 1760, and another, almost exactly the same, at Pompeii, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... however, that this melancholy position began, in June, 1852, to extort some sighs from the sorrowful personages who form a portion of the concern. The report of the commission on the budget will remain in the memory of men, as one of the most heart-rending masterpieces of the plaintive style. Let us repeat those ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... they had enjoyed, were thrown into prison. Every mode of torture was put in practice, and the court, as well as city, was polluted with many bloody executions. But as it was found impossible to extort any discovery of this mysterious transaction, it seems incumbent on us either to presume the innocence, or to admire the resolution, of the sufferers. A few days afterwards Galerius hastily withdrew himself from Nicomedia, declaring, that if he delayed his departure ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... compounded of habitual respect for the person, and conventional submission to his station; the young master must, therefore, effect a change in his footman's manner of thinking and speaking by violent means; he must extort that tribute of respect which he has neglected so long, and to which, consequently, his right is disputed.[35] He is sensible, that his superiority is merely that of situation, and he, therefore, exerts his dormant prerogatives with jealous insolence. No master is so likely to become the tyrant ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... lawyer, whose signature the widow Morin tried to extort. She also attempted his assassination, and was condemned, January 11, 1812, on the evidence of a number of witnesses, among others that of Poiret, to twenty years of hard labor. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... increased, and he stammered out awkwardly, "Just for the moment, you see, I began to wonder whether after all I had not been right before; whether after all any woman would or could baulk herself of a fraction of any man's admiration, supposing that it would only cost a trick to extort it. And while I was wondering she herself stooped, picked up the fan, and good-humouredly dropped me a curtsey for my lack of manners. Esteban presented me to her that evening. There followed two magical months in Paris and a June ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... foolish view to fleeting aristocratic splendor, but simply to the luxury of rapid motion. But Lord Altamont was firm in resisting this petition at that time. The remote consequence was, that by way of redressing the violated equilibrium to our feelings, we subscribed throughout Wales to extort six horses from the astonished innkeepers, most of whom declined the requisition, and would furnish only four, on the plea that the leaders would only embarrass the other horses; but one at Bangor, from whom we coolly requested eight, recoiled from our demand as from a sort of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... rack. Wild horses should not tear it out of my heart; boiling lead, falling on me drop by drop, should not extort it ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... blunder; and the blunder is so broad and palpable, that it implies instant forgetfulness both in the writer and the reader. The idea which furnishes the basis of the passage is this: that the conduct ascribed to Addison is in its own nature so despicable, as to extort laughter by its primary impulse; but that this laughter changes into weeping, when we come to understand that the person concerned in this delinquency is Addison. The change, the transfiguration, in our mood of contemplating ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... contentions with the people; but the people, having no means of combining together or otherwise organizing their resistance, were almost always compelled to submit. They were often oppressed and maltreated in the most cruel manner. The great object of the government seems to have been to extort money from them in every possible way, and to this end taxes and imposts were levied upon them to such an extent as to leave them enough only for bare subsistence. The most cruel means were often ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... no notion of having any thing for the Inscription[452]. I hope you don't think I kept it to extort a price. I could think of nothing, till to day. If you could spare me another guinea for the history, I should take it very kindly, to night; but if you do not I shall not think it an injury.—I am almost ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... any concern in such a paltry transaction. The more I think, the more it disquiets me; so I will say no more about it. It is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to such shifts to extort praise, or deprecate censure. It is anticipating, it is begging, kneeling, adulating,—the devil! the devil! the devil! and all without my wish, and contrary to my express desire. I wish Murray had been tied to Payne's neck when he jumped into the Paddington ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... gratification of his carnal instincts. Another man, in exactly similar circumstances, but too conscientious to assume responsibilities which he cannot carry, and in which failure must compromise the comfort and tax the purses of people from whom he has no right to extort luxuries, forbears to marry; but, feeling the passions of his sex, and being imbued with the prevalent errors on such matters, resorts for relief to unlawful coition. At the wedding of the former, pious friends ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... was considerate enough to go out into the hall to question him; but no information of value was gained by the man's answers. He declared that the gentleman had hired him at twelve o'clock, hoping by this means to extort pay for five hours' driving, which, joined to the liberal gratuity he could not fail to obtain, would remunerate him handsomely for his day's work. Living is dear, it should be remembered, and a fellow makes as much ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... keep your place." "But surely," said Rochester, "the plain meaning of all this is that I must turn Catholic or go out." He put many questions for the purpose of ascertaining whether the communication was made by authority, but could extort only vague and mysterious replies. At last, affecting a confidence which he was far from feeling, he declared that Barillon must have been imposed upon by idle or malicious reports. "I tell you," he said, "that the King will not dismiss me, and I will not resign. I know ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... injudicious in more respects than one, for princes love not to see their subjects approach them with an air conscious of deserving, and thereby seeming desirous to extort, acknowledgment and recompense for their services; and Louis, the most jealous monarch that ever lived, was peculiarly averse and inaccessible to any one who seemed either to presume upon service rendered or to ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Ladder of Ropes. She tells him she has so great a Confidence in his Virtue and Love, that she will refuse him nothing, tho' it would be a very bold Venture for a Maid, to trust her self with a passionate young Man, in silence of Night: and tho' she did not extort a Vow from him to secure her, she expected he would have a care of her Honour. He swore to her, his Love was too religious for so base an Attempt. There needed not many Vows to confirm her Faith; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... through cursed treason, Would make my hopes mount heaven, which cannot skip; My fancy still requireth at my hands Such things as are not, cannot, may not be, And my desire although my power withstands, Will give me wings, who never yet could flee. What then remains except my maimed soul Extort compassion from love-flying age, Or if naught else their fury may control, To call on death that quells affection's rage; Which death shall dwell with me and never fly, Since vain desire seeks that hope ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... commercial system. Finally, by the stipulation for an indemnity which it was beyond the power of Turkey to discharge, and by the reference of the mode of payment or guarantee to a later settlement, Russia had placed it in its power either to extort yet larger cessions of territory, or to force Turkey into engagements subordinating its policy in all things to that of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a petit verre with me. You see I don't stand on ceremony with you; I say whatever comes into my head, because I know you to be a fair-minded man. Now I tell you your prefet is all wrong in trying to extort those forty-two thousand francs from the city. Just think once of all our losses since the beginning of the war. In the first place, before the battle, we had the entire French army on our hands, a set of ragged, hungry, exhausted men; ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... good to me in their kooky ways, the actors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of my situation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on a button or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not one of the boys has made a pass I didn't at least seem to invite. And when my crush on Sid was at its worst he ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... admiring the preparations, had stood a silent spectator of their progress. He obeyed; and it was not until he found his neckcloth removed, and hat thrown aside, that he took the alarm. But he had so often resorted to a similar expedient to extort information, or plunder, that he by no means felt the terror an unpracticed man would have suffered, at these ominous movements. The rope was adjusted to his neck with the same coolness that formed the characteristic of the whole movement, and a fragment ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... hundred and seventy followers, hardy Corsican mountaineers, and had they landed with him, General Pepe is of opinion that he would soon have raised a force sufficiently strong to maintain the campaign, and extort favourable conditions from Austria, as far, at least, as regarded his life and liberty. But the six small vessels in which he left Ajaccio were scattered by a tempest, and he was driven, with but a tithe of his followers, to the very last port he ought to have made. The inhabitants ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... little the night before; her mind was in an eddy of emotions. It seemed dreadful that Carnac should fight his own father, repeating what Fabian had done in another way. Yet at the bottom of her heart there was a secret joy. Some native revolt in her had joy in the thought that the son might extort a price for her long sorrow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... handsome tenor is nought. The audience seemed to me both indulgent and discriminating. They applauded the pretty prima donna con furor; they praised the bass when he deserved it, the tenor when it was possible; but where he sang false, nothing could extort from them a solitary viva. This discrimination makes their applause worth having, and proceeds less from experience or cultivation, than from ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was over—there was no second course—they left the table. Joel Barton made a fresh attempt to extort a small sum from his wife, but was met with an inflexible refusal. Mrs. Barton proved deaf alike to entreaties and threats. She was a strong, resolute woman, and not one to ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... Father Waite; "grant, then, that there is such Scriptural warrant; I would nevertheless know that the existence of purgatory was wholly incompatible with the reign of an infinite God of love. And, knowing that, I have ceased to extort gifts of money from the ignorance of the living and the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... so long a tenure of power; with the same exception, no one ever held office at so critical a time.... Lord Liverpool is the very last minister who has been able fully to carry out his own political views; who has been so strong that in matters of general policy the Opposition could extort no concessions from him which were not sanctioned by his own deliberate judgment. The present work is founded almost entirely on the correspondence left behind him by Lord Liverpool, and now in the possession of Colonel and ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... like decent preparation could be made for the ensuing entertainment; and they were left to their unassisted endeavours by Clara, who, during both the Tuesday and Wednesday, obstinately kept herself secluded; nor could her brother, either by threats or flattery, extort from her any light concerning her purpose on the approaching and important Thursday. To do John Mowbray justice, he loved his sister as much as he was capable of loving any thing but himself; and when, in several arguments, he had the mortification to find ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... much treasure, as he expected to procure the whole for himself. It was then proposed in the army, that Guatimotzin and the prince of Tacuba, his most confidential counsellor, should be put to the torture, to extort confession of where the treasure was secreted; this horrid act was certainly greatly against the inclination of Cortes, yet he was forced to leave the unfortunate king and the lord of Tacuba at the disposal of those avaricious wretches, who alleged that our general objected to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Lal to an investigation that would, at least, extort a confession as to his ability to allude ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... who have lately entered the world, or have yet had no proofs of its inconstancy and desertion, are cut off, by this cruel interruption, from the enjoyment of their prerogatives, and doomed to lose four months in inactive obscurity. Many complaints do vexation and desire extort from those exiled tyrants of the town, against the inexorable sun, who pursues his course without any regard to love or beauty; and visits either tropick at the stated time, whether shunned or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... ask you about your father to extort this confession; I pray God give you repentance for it, and forgive you that and all your other sins; but I asked you, because I see that, though you have not much learning, yet you are not so ignorant as some are in things that are good; that you have ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... people of the United States pay an almost unbelievable usurious interest for loans. These banking statutes were so worded that nominally the interest did not appear high; in reality, however, by various devices, the bankers, both national and international, were often able to extort from twenty to fifty, and often one hundred per cent., in interest, and this on money which had at some time or somehow been squeezed out of exploited peoples in the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... before this man came, selling us Fowls and Syrup as fast as they could bring these things down. From this and other Circumstances we were well Assured that this was all the Dutchman's doing, in order to extort from us a sum of Money to put into his own pocket. There hapned to be an old Raja at this time upon the beach, whose Interest I had secured in the Morning by presenting him with a Spy-glass; this man I now took by the hand, and presented ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... to extort, or the hire of the venal to buy, that engagement which the Tartar comes under to his prince, when he promises, "That he will go where he shall be commanded; that he will come when he shall be called; that he will kill whoever is pointed out to him; and, for ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... you getting actual benefit from the money which you have earned by your many years of conscientious industry. To me there is no other spectacle in the world so humiliating as that of people laying themselves out to extort money from others. Do tear yourself away from the sponges. You and Miss Eva ought to have a quiet winter in a congenial climate. I hope you will go to Florida, and, after doing Jacksonville and St. Augustine, why not rent a little furnished cottage and keep house for the winter? ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Mme. de Marville, who, moreover, had formed a tolerably correct estimate of her husband. A temper naturally shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old, but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping as a file. Caustic to excess she had few friends among women; she surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, who lent each other mutual support, and people stood ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... engage to exert our utmost influence to support and vindicate each other, and any person or persons who may be likely to suffer for any noble efforts they may have made to save their country, by defeating the operations of the British Parliament, expressly designed to extort a revenue from the Colonies against ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... excluded, the victim lay extended upon the rack, until death itself became a welcome relief; and upon its walls were arranged, in dreadful order, all the infernal instruments of torture, by which the cruelty of man endeavoured to extort from the wretched prisoners a confession of crimes, perhaps never committed, and of conspiracies, existing only in the guilty imaginations of their oppressors. A little court within the precincts of the building was pointed out to me as having frequently ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... vote a "reform" ticket. To stand for a programme of reform has become one of the recognized roads to popularity. The political leaders with the largest personal followings are some kind of reformers. They sit in presidential chairs; they occupy executive mansions; they extort legislation from unwilling politicians; they regulate and abuse the erring corporations; they are coming to control the press; and they are the most aggressive force in American public opinion. The supporters and beneficiaries of existing abuses ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... upon Mistress Maud to enter, and then had but little difficulty in forcing upon her some of the confections, though all his efforts could not extort a compliment ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... who have (so far) reduced opinion to reason, and power to law, who are the cause that we no longer burn witches and heretics at slow fires, that the thumb-screws are no longer applied by ghastly, smiling judges, to extort confession of imputed crimes from sufferers for conscience sake; that men are no longer strung up like acorns on trees without judge or jury, or hunted like wild beasts through thickets and glens, who have abated the cruelty ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... take them, and extort By any kind of torment the truth from them. —Our present business is, I take it, this: That I should win the wife of Pamphilus To return home; which so I but effect, I sha'n't regret the same of having done What others of my calling ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... or no, is uncertain; but he seems to have sent a pretty numerous body of horse to the support of the "Liberators" against their antagonists. Perhaps he trusted to obtain from the gratitude of Cassius what he had failed to extort from the fears of Pompey. Or, perhaps, he was only anxious to prolong the period of civil disturbance in the Roman State, which secured his own territory from attack, and might ultimately give him an opportunity of helping himself to some portion of the Roman ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... contributor, and to every other person. Where it is otherwise, every person subject to the tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gatherer, who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some present or perquisite to himself. The uncertainty of taxation encourages the insolence, and favours the corruption, of an order of men who are naturally unpopular, even where they are neither ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... support of the opposite cause, was proclaiming the sternest doctrines of a renovated Catholicism. A spell which acted so widely and so marvellously could not be altogether unfelt by a mind whose peculiar property it was to yield itself to every influence in order to extort its secret and comprehend its power. Beyond this point the magic failed. "In all my transitions,"—thus he has written of himself,—"I have never alienated my judgment and my will; I have never pledged my belief. But I had a power of comprehending persons and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... confine themselves to blackmailing the countries and petty states that tremble before the shadow of Rome; the courts of the secondary kings of the Orient, the court of the Ptolemies at Alexandria,—all are invaded by a horde of insatiable senators and knights, who, menacing and promising, extort money to spend in Italy and foment the growing extravagance. The debts pile up, the political corruption overflows, scandals follow, the parties in Rome rend each other madly, though hail-fellow-well-met in the provinces to plunder ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... this permission to extort money from the obedient portion of the provinces. An assembly of deputies was held at Brussels on the 7th of June, 1574, and there was a tedious interchange of protocols, reports, and remonstrances. The estates, not satisfied with the extinction of a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I replied; "and no torture shall ever extort a consent from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I have answered you; you may torture me, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness' itself as therefore ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... is to be found in Coxe's Life of Walpole. After dwelling on the offence given to the Government by Pasquin, the writer goes on to say that Giffard, the manager of Goodman's Fields, brought Walpole a farce called The Golden Rump, which had been proposed for exhibition. Whether he did this to extort money, or to ask advice, is not clear. In either case, Walpole is said to have "paid the profits which might have accrued from the performance, and detained the copy." He then made a compendious selection of the treasonable and profane passages it contained. ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... surround a house whose defenders have been warned of their coming, and attempt to starve them into submission. In the old days it was not uncommon for a strong party of Kayans to descend upon a settlement of the more peaceable coastwise people, and to extort from them a large payment of brass-ware as the price of their safety. If the unfortunate household submitted to this extortion, the Kayans would keep faith with them, and would ratify a treaty of peace by making the headman of the village ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... neither of the East nor of the West but rather international in its universality, yet India is specially fitted to make great contributions. {FN8-5} The burning Indian imagination, which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, is held in check by the habit of concentration. This restraint confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the practice of the law, which he had abandoned since his father's death, and thus earn money enough not to be a burden to Peggy. In the meantime something might turn up. Perhaps another of Gadgem's thumb-screws could be fastened on some delinquent and thus extort a drop or two; or the bank might begin paying ten per cent.; or another prepayment might be squeezed out of a ground rent. If none of these things turned out to his advantage, then Gadgem and Pawson must continue their search for customers who would have the rare ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his future dealings, by promising to reveal to one or other of them a matter of importance and probable money-value, and he could use it also as a perpetual threat to hold over Colonel Kelmscott, if ever it should be needful to extort blackmail from the possessor of Tilgate, or to thwart his schemes by ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences. Lastly, it would facilitate and foster the baneful practice of secessions; a practice which has shown itself even in States where a majority only is required; a practice subversive ...
— The Federalist Papers
... lend, to give, to aid, and to help his wronged neighbor secure justice. Laws made for restraint of the outward man are directed only toward evil works, which they prohibit and punish. Good works are left to voluntary performance. Civil law does not extort them by threats and punishment, but commends and rewards them, as does ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... executing his revengeful plans, to the quarries of Thebais, and to send the Ethiopians back to their native country. He then hurried to the high-priest of Neith, to inform him how much he had been able to extort from the king, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is impossible to extort such a sense from the words of the commandment; seeing that the reason for which the command itself was originally given, namely, as a memorial of God's having rested from the creation of the world, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... wrench; expression, squeezing; extirpation, extermination; ejection &c 297; export &c (egress) 295. extractor, corkscrew, forceps, pliers. V. extract, draw; take out, draw out, pull out, tear out, pluck out, pick out, get out; wring from, wrench; extort; root up, weed up, grub up, rake up, root out, weed out, grub out, rake out; eradicate; pull up by the roots, pluck up by the roots; averruncate^; unroot^; uproot, pull up, extirpate, dredge. remove; educe, elicit; evolve, extricate; eliminate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the instruments of the very laws they violate, the pretext which steels their conscience, hardens their heart. Not content with receiving from us, outlaws of society (let other women talk of favours) a brutal gratification gratuitously as a privilege of office, they extort a tithe of prostitution, and harrass with threats the poor creatures whose occupation affords not the means to silence the growl of avarice. To escape from this persecution, I once ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... showed himself a true and faithful confessor and martyr. The Moollahs strove hard to make him recant. They demanded of him: "In the Gospel of Christ, is anything said of our Prophet?"—intending to extort that promise of the Comforter which Mahomet blasphemously applied ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was vexed by the insolence of this Jewish dog, that I was not, as he imagined, a beggar: that I had the means of paying him my just debt, but that I hoped he would not extort from me all that exorbitant interest which none but a Jew could exact. He smiled, and answered that if a Turk loved opium better than money this was no fault of his; that he had supplied me with what I loved best in the world, and that I ought ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... chamber, where the rack, the thumb-screw, the hot irons, the whip, and other survivals of the Inquisition were applied. When the officers had extorted what they wanted, or had made sure there was nothing to extort, the poor, white wreck of a human being was delivered by the judges to an executioner, and a merciful death ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Rohatzek, however, was a mere trifle compared with the ordeal by which the tribunal of Paris tried in vain to extort a confession of the would-be regicide, Damiens. Robert Damiens, a native of Arras, had been exiled as an habitual criminal, and returning in disguise made an attempt upon the life of Louis XV, January 5, 1757. His dagger pierced the mantle of the King, but merely grazed his neck. Damiens, who had ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... march down the river. The people continued to be hospitable, with some few exceptions. Knowing our need of their articles, some of them would extort from us an extravagant price. We chose to live mostly on bread and butter and milk, having but little relish for meat, and supposing it not to be healthy ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... it in each other. No services, no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude, admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue. The childless uncle, the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance. We leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns at the table of the First Lord. Yet, from whatever cause, this ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the inhabitants of the Old World may have been as numerous as those of China are now,—a number estimated by the recent authorities at more than three hundred and fifty millions,—and the admission is certainly greatly larger than there is argument enough on the other side to extort,—a comparatively partial deluge would have been sufficient to secure their destruction. In short, it may be fairly concluded, that if there be a show of reason against the theory of a flood merely local, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... speeches, they got up petitions to extort this boon; on what terms it was made they ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Sparta he exercised almost uncontrolled authority in the cities he had reduced, including Athens itself. But it was soon discovered that, instead of the freedom promised by the Spartans, only another empire had been established, whilst Lysander was even meditating to extort from the subject cities a yearly tribute of one thousand talents. And all these oppressions were rendered still more intolerable by the overweening pride ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... Catholics. She herself had never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother, or her husband. When at last her father had let drop some words leading her to believe that that was the fact, she tried desperately to extort the promise from Edward. She encountered an unexpected obstinacy. Edward was perfectly willing that the girls should be Catholic; the boys must be Anglican. I don't understand the bearing of these things in English society. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... dealing with a profoundly dangerous crisis were of course but the most wretched palliatives. The Catholic bigots would permit no dallying with the heretics. In 1567 they were strong enough to secure the disgrace of L'Hopital and in the following year to extort a royal edict unconditionally forbidding the exercise of the reformed cult. The Huguenots again rebelled and in 1569 suffered two severe defeats [Sidenote: Huguenots defeated] at Jarnac and at Moncontour. The Catholics were jubilant, fully believing, as Sully says, that at last the Protestants ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... his arms around her neck, and gave way to tears, such as Cipher could not extort by his pounding. She gave him a good-night kiss,—so sweet that it seemed to lie upon his lips ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... so clearly a minor issue that to break up a great country upon it would have gone beyond the limit of solemn frivolity, and Calhoun must be taken to have been forging an implement with which his own section of the States could claim and extort concessions from the Union. A protective tariff had been passed in 1828. The Southern States, which would have to pay the protective duties but did not profit by them, disliked it. Calhoun and others took the intelligible but too ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Yanceyville at the time of the tragedy," declared that he had information regarded by him as altogether reliable, that Wiley was not in the room when Stephens was killed, but had arranged to get him from the court-room, to extort from him a promise to leave the county; and the promise not being given Stephens was killed. According to the "gentleman of intelligence," Wiley was "very angry" with the men who had slain Stephens—a lame excuse, it must be admitted; although ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... don't; I cannot bear it—and I am not worth it," he protested. "I ought never to have told you. I was a selfish brute to extort your sympathy by the miserable recital of my own misfortunes; I have ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "Because I am a younger man and a stronger." They sat down again, and discussed the person's information But Sir Robert afterwards had reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention of assassination, but had hoped, by intimidating, to extort money from him. Yet if no real attempt was made on his life, it was not from want of suggestions to it: one of the weekly journals pointed out Sir Robert's frequent passing a Putney bridge late at night, attended but by one or two servants, on his way to New Park, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... old lady in their family whom they abuse in the most shocking manner. She is very rich, and they by threats and ill-treatment extort large sums of ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... his past life, of his errors and his follies, confessing even the worst of his actions; as, for instance, having abused his mother's and sister's affection to extort from them all the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... his left hand. On account of this he is said to have been named Scaevola, which means left-handed. He then said that though he did not fear Porsena, he was conquered by his generosity, and out of kindness would tell him what torture would have failed to extort: "Three hundred young Romans like-minded with myself are at present concealed in your camp. I was chosen by lot to make the first attempt, and am not grieved that I failed to kill a man of honour, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Death............................................... G Grangeneuve "Although many Of my colleagues have manifested "sentiments ill agreeing with the impartiality of a "court of judicature; and have employed all "possible means of influence, in order to extort "from the national convention a sentence of death; "I vote for confinement only." ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... determined to question her and extort the truth. But when, an hour later, she quietly entered the parlor, he saw at a glance that the cold, proud, self-possessed woman before him would not submit to the treatment accepted by the little Christine of former days. The wily man read from her manner and the expression of her eye ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... course of school studies without a plan, even for the moment, and enter upon life the slaves of chance, the victims of what they call fortune, while they might by industry, system and firmness of will, rise superior to circumstances, and extort a measure of success not unworthy ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... could subject Ram Lal to an investigation that would, at least, extort a confession as to his ability to allude ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... cabman who drove me from my hotel to the station. I said to myself that I would do something that would surprise him, and I gave him his fee and nearly a franc over; but it was I who was surprised, for he ran after me into the station, as I supposed, to extort more. He was holding out a franc toward me, and I asked the guide who was bothering me to take him to Pompeii (where there are swarms of guides always on the grounds) what the matter was. "It is false," he explained, and this proved true, though whether the franc was the one I had given ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... disdainfully. "I thought it was time for the flattery. As if I couldn't extort that from any man. It's the A B C of our education. But the truth about one's self—the unpalatable, bitter truth—there's a sting of unexpected ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... smiling; 'not flattering, Selah, simply truthful. You always extort the truth from me with your sweet face, Selah. Nobody can look at it and not forget the stupid conventions of ordinary society. But please, dear, don't call me Mr. Walters. Call me Herbert. You always do, you know, when you write ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... all winter, for the asking—if we will but ask ourselves instead of the lawn-mower man—an effect of home, of comfort, cheer and grace, of summer and autumn reminiscences and of spring's anticipations, immeasurably better than any ordinary eye or fancy can extort from the rectangular and stiffened-out nakedness of unplanted boundaries; immeasurably better than the month-by-month daily death-stare of shroud-like snow around houses standing barefooted on the frozen ground. It may be by hearty choice that we abide where we must ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... again, Millicent," suggested Leslie with an uneasy laugh. "These heroics hardly become you—and nobody can extort a great deal in return for—nothing better than you. In any case, it's no use now debating whether one or both of us were foolish. I'm speaking no more than the painful truth when I say that if I can't get the man ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... with the Soldan to assist him with their councils and to carry his orders into execution. The Mameluke government is exceedingly oppressive to the merchants and even to the other Mahometan inhabitants of Damascus. When the Soldan thinks fit to extort a sum of money from any of the nobles or merchants, he gives two letters to the governor of the castle, in one of which is contained a list of such as he thinks proper to be invited into the castle, and in the other is set down what sum the Soldan is pleased to demand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... extremes of the Austrian district. Bonaparte affected to believe that the Venetians had permitted Beaulieu to occupy Peschiera before he seized upon Brescia himself. He uttered terrifying threats to the envoys who came from Venice to excuse an imaginary crime. He was determined to extort money from the Venetian Republic; he also needed a pretext for occupying Verona, and for any future wrongs. "I have purposely devised this rupture," he wrote to the Directory (June 7th), "in case you should wish ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... mind: but his tardy assent did not allay the indignation which his opposition had kindled, and his subsequent repentance for that assent closed the door to forgiveness. Henry had flattered himself with the hope that he should be able to extort the approbation of the "customs" either from the gratitude of Alexander, whom he had assisted in his necessities, or from the fears of that Pontiff, lest a refusal might add England to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... occupation was mysterious and obscure. Was it a grave that he was digging? Was his purpose to explore or to hide? Was it proper to watch him at a distance, unobserved and in silence, or to rush upon him and extort from him, by violence or menaces, an explanation of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... self-aggrandisement, and the acquisition of personal wealth. Careful enquiry has established the fact that no less than 60,000l. is annually paid in fees, penances, and gifts to the Church by the Roman Catholic section of the population; and we may fairly infer that the Greek priests extort an equally large sum. Of late schools have been established in different parts of the province, but the subjects of education are too confined to work any salutary change in the rising generation. Nor is it probably intended that such should ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... had some reluctance to tell her the cause of my tristesse; for I knew her zeal, and I dreaded her plunging into some hazard with the authorities. But who has ever been able to keep a secret, where it was the will of the sex to extort it? Juliet obtained mine before she left the ward for the night; and desired me to give her a letter, which she pledged herself to transmit to my regiment. But this I determined to refuse, and I kept my determination. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... trade it would be better to give up themselves." The entrepot system herein found additional justification, for not only did it foster navigation by the homeward voyage, confined to British ships, and extort toll in transit, but the re-exportation made a double voyage which was more than doubly fruitful in seamen; for from the nearness of the British Islands to the European continent, which held the great body of consumers, this second carriage could be done, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... poor darling! strange that with all my care and watchfulness you should have been subjected to such a trial. Some ruffian has been trying to extort money from you, I presume, by threatened violence to yourself, Travilla, and ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before the supreme court of Hongkong on April ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... He did come. Came to extort money, goods—I don't know what else. Wanted to set up as a trader—the swine! I kicked his hat into the courtyard, and he went after it, and that was the last of him till he showed up with Abdulla. How could I know that he could ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... combined to make kings and aristocracies wary of all organizations and associations of plain folk. And when we add to this the favor which the new employing class, the industrial masters, were able to extort from the governing class, because of their power over foreign trade and domestic finance, we can understand the compulsory laws at length declaring against ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... monastic orders—of Gosains, who are disciples of Siva, and Bairagis, who are disciples of Vishnu; and any Muhammadan may become a Fakir; and Gosains, Bairagis, and Fakirs, can always secure, or extort, food from the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a drought has lasted a long time, people drop the usual hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek by threats and curses or even downright physical force to extort the waters of heaven from the supernatural being who has, so to say, cut them off at the main. In a Japanese village, when the guardian divinity had long been deaf to the peasants' prayers for rain, they at last threw down his image and, with curses loud and long, hurled ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the tropic, the sailors made ready a tub on deck to baptize the passengers, after the villanous practice of the time; but La Salle refused to permit it, to the disappointment and wrath of all the crew, who had expected to extort a bountiful ransom, in money and liquor, from their victims. There was an incessant chafing between the two commanders; and when at length, after a long and wretched voyage, they reached St. Domingo, Beaujeu showed clearly that he was, to say the least, utterly indifferent to the interests of the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... with calm indifference, they had listened to the deserted wife, the betrayed maiden, to the woman, who implored the withheld blessing of children, to the anxious mother, the forlorn widow,—and sought only to take advantage of sorrow, to extort gifts for the Goddess, or better still for their own ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... market-place like a viper or a scorpion, with his sting up- lifted, hastening here and there, and looking out for someone whom he may bring into a scrape, or fasten some calumny or mischief upon, and put in alarm in order to extort money." [Footnote: Demosth. in Aristogeit. A. 62.—Translated by ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... tracts of forest were laid waste—not plundered—in accordance with a well concocted plan. The trees were hewn down and the trunks were intentionally left to lie and rot, or the forest was burnt down in order, with each day's quota of burned forest, to extort the concession of a new "popular demand." The old legend of the "War about the Forest" had become, once more, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... spite of my painful position and rigorous treatment, I have not uttered a complaint; all that has been tried to extort avowals from me has failed to make me compromise my sovereign. However, although persuaded that my constancy and discretion will facilitate my release from my present position, the friends of the cardinal make me fear I shall become his ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... England that it would be well to give Mr. Washington his proper title. A small question, apparently, this of the form of address, especially to a lover of facts, and yet it was in reality of genuine importance. To the world Washington represented the young republic, and he was determined to extort from England the first acknowledgment of independence by compelling her to recognize the Americans as belligerents and not rebels. Washington cared as little for vain shows as any man who ever lived, but he had the highest sense of personal dignity, and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... was chief of the Stanley Pool District in the early eighties. He demanded and received a large quantity of goods for the permission to establish a station here. After the explorer had camped within ten miles of the Pool the old pirate pretended that he had not received the goods and sought to extort more. Stanley refused to be bullied, whereupon the chief threatened to attack him in force. Let Stanley now tell the story, for it is an illustration of the way he combated the usury and cunning of ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... if he himself knew them, he was never known to maintain the same moral temperament for a week together. Never did there exist a being so capricious and unstable. At one time, you found him all ingenuousness and candor; at another, no earthly power could extort a syllable of truth from his lips. For whole days, if not for weeks together, he dealt in nothing but the wildest fiction, and the most extraordinary and grotesque rodomontade. The consequence was, that no reliance could be placed on anything he said ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... preceded by a slave bearing their lantern. This Cicero mentions as being the habit of Catiline upon his midnight expeditions; and when M. Antony was accused of a disgraceful intrigue, his lantern-bearer was tortured to extort a confession whither he had conducted his master. One of these machines, of considerable ingenuity and beauty of workmanship, was found in Herculaneum, and another almost exactly the same, at Pompeii a few years after. In form it is cylindrical, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... dreamed of a personal action. She longed to tear him with her nails, outrage him in people's eyes and make him suffer in his flesh; but that passed: she knew she could not do it. A man was needed to extort punishment from Raymond. But no man existed who would undertake the task. She must then find such a man. She even sought him. But she did not find him. The search led to bitter discoveries. If women could forgive her betrayer; if women could say, as presently they said, that she did not ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... and revealed the extent of the carnage, with which the plains were heaped for miles, the successful allies saw also and respected the resolute attitude of their antagonist. Neither were any measures taken to blockade him in his camp, and so to extort by famine that submission which it was too plainly perilous to enforce with the sword. Attila was allowed to march back the remnants of his army without molestation, and even ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... warrant for every concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn,—so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... unmistakable evidences of foul play. Conceive my position: I am ruined through this man, whom I never saw; I might very well desire revenge or compensation; and I think you will admit I have the means to extort either." ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... and the torture of "picketings;" to say nothing of houses burned, and farms laid waste—things which were done daily, and under military orders; the purpose avowed being either vengeance for some known act of insurrection, or the determination to extort confessions. Too often, however, as may well be supposed, in such utter disorganization of society, private malice, either personal or on account of old family feuds, was the true principle at work. And many were thus driven, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ornamented with jet fruit and crape leaves. As she stepped slowly and carefully forward she had the dignified, important look of a provincial woman who has always been accustomed to deference in her native town, and whose income is ample enough to extort obsequiousness from the vulgar of all ranks. But immediately she caught sight of Matthew, her face changed. She became simple and naive. She blushed slightly, smiling with a timid pleasure. For her, Matthew ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... seems still in as bad a condition as ever. How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about 'devil's seats,' 'death's heads,' ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... In dealing with trusts, monopolies in trade, and labor monopolies, we are in danger, on the one hand, of sanctioning oppressive interference with private business, and on the other of permitting a license in the conduct of private business which encourages its managers to continue to extort unjust gains from the public. In the face of this difficulty, which careful consideration shows to be very serious, and in the dread of other evils, such as the government proving incompetent to safely undertake these new and strange responsibilities, ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it. When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... given by that officer, Pottinger presented himself to the Serdar. But instead of affording him the necessary help for the prosecution of his journey, that functionary, discontented with the small present Pottinger offered him, found means to extort from him a pair of pistols, which would have been of great use ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the arms of his father. If, then, Elspat was repelled, rudely when she demanded anything necessary for her wants, or the accommodation of her little flock, by a churlish farmer, her threats of vengeance, obscurely expressed, yet terrible in their tenor, used frequently to extort, through fear of her maledictions, the relief which was denied to her necessities; and the trembling goodwife, who gave meal or money to the widow of MacTavish Mhor, wished in her heart that the stern old carlin had been burnt on the day ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... that I firmly believe it. To prove to you that I am disposed to trust you, I tell you without reserve, that we propose to extort the secret, whatever it may be, from the fear of this man Monks. But if—if—' said the gentleman, 'he cannot be secured, or, if secured, cannot be acted upon as we wish, you must ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... dinner he took a dry delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in conversation with me to my expectations; but here, again, he showed no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted—and even did extort, though I don't know how—those references out of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... power in the state, and by the claim to the regency which Antoine of Bourbon-Vendome, King of Navarre, might justly assert. To establish herself in opposition to all these, her sagacity taught her was impossible. To prevail by allying herself to the most powerful and those from whom she could extort the best terms seemed to be the most politic course. Her choice was quickly made. It was unfortunate for France that her prudence partook more of the character of low cunning than of true wisdom, and that, in seeking a temporary ascendancy, she ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... apportionment of goods and credit which the individual members of the rich nations, the owners of the surplus, would not make upon their own account. The edge of this issue should not be blunted. If the people and government of America were only concerned to let their individual citizens extort the highest prices they could get for their surplus in the best markets, they would let Central and Eastern Europe starve. If, however, they also take into account the social, political, and economic reactions of a starving ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... inconstancy and desertion, are cut off, by this cruel interruption, from the enjoyment of their prerogatives, and doomed to lose four months in inactive obscurity. Many complaints do vexation and desire extort from those exiled tyrants of the town, against the inexorable sun, who pursues his course without any regard to love or beauty; and visits either tropick at the stated time, whether shunned ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Hajjee Ali has very kindly offered to take Marie down to Cairo and start her off to Alexandria, whence Ross's people can send her home. If she wants to stay in Alexandria and get placed by the nuns who piously exhorted her to extort ninety francs a month from me, so much the better for me. Ali refuses to take a penny from me for her journey—besides bringing me potatoes and all sorts of things: and if I remonstrate he says he and all his family and all ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... never try to practice. Lawyers and judges are all dishonest swindlers caring nothing for honor and justice and seeking only their fees; physicians and surgeons are pitiless wretches who scare their patients in order to extort money from them; men in office are waiting, lurking, hunting for chances to graft, eager to steal from their constituents at every opportunity. He expects every thing, every animal, every man, every woman to get the best of him—and, as a rule, he is not disappointed. For we can ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... will I do aught to injure the child. No, no. Dinah North is not such a fool. If I do it to gratify my own revenge, that's another thing. I have this bad, bold Robert in my power. This secret will be a fortune in itself—will extort from his mean, avaricious soul, a portion of his ill-gotten wealth. Ha, my child! you did well and wisely, and may die in peace, without the stain ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... of crowds wield a very despotic authority, and this despotism indeed is a condition of their obtaining a following. It has often been remarked how easily they extort obedience, although without any means of backing up their authority, from the most turbulent section of the working classes. They fix the hours of labour and the rate of wages, and they decree strikes, which are begun and ended at the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... had passed had given him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious melancholy as he could never have gathered from books; and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him not only to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter words of horrible impiety in the pulpit.[4] Bunyan was finally relieved from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... all the swaggering Arabs and Arab camel-drivers are here very quiet and civil amongst their masters, the Touaricks. I frequently bully them now about their past boasting and present cowardice. Two of the Arabs who had attempted to extort a present from me I met at Haj Ibrahim's house. I lectured them roundly, telling them I would report them to the Pasha, for they were greater banditti than the Touaricks. This had a salutary effect. I was not troubled afterwards with these ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... saying that he had seen a spirit. But upon examination this spirit proved to be nothing more than a poor Bedlam beggar, who had crept into this deserted hovel for shelter, and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of those poor lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better to extort charity from the compassionate country people, who go about the country, calling themselves poor Tom and poor Turlygood, saying, "Who gives anything to poor Tom?" sticking pins and nails and sprigs of rosemary into their arms to make them bleed; and with such horrible actions, partly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... judge he had put twenty sequins into it. Upon which the judge called me before him; "Come, young man," said he, "confess the truth. Was it you that took the gentleman's purse from him? Do not wait for the torture to extort confession." Then with downcast eyes, thinking that if I denied the fact, they, having found the purse upon me, would convict me of a lie, to avoid a double punishment I looked up and confessed my guilt. I had no sooner made ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... passion. In a certain sense, he was to be pitied. Love of this kind begins as a gift; but a woman of this temperament does not leave it so. She promptly turned it into a debt, and the more she loved the debtor, the more oppressively and inexorably did she extort the uttermost penny from him. About this time she was introduced to an eminent medical specialist in mental diseases, who, by some inexplicable means, was induced to give a certificate of her insanity. Then her cousins took her before a justice, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... last ships were provided, and the army passed by sea to Sinope—a Grecian colony—where the men were hospitably received, and fed, and lodged. From thence the army passed by sea to Heracleia, where the soldiers sought to extort money against the opposition of Xenophon and Cherisophus, the latter of whom had nobly seconded the plans of Xenophon, although a Spartan of superior military rank. The army, at this opposition, divided ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... before any thing like decent preparation could be made for the ensuing entertainment; and they were left to their unassisted endeavours by Clara, who, during both the Tuesday and Wednesday, obstinately kept herself secluded; nor could her brother, either by threats or flattery, extort from her any light concerning her purpose on the approaching and important Thursday. To do John Mowbray justice, he loved his sister as much as he was capable of loving any thing but himself; and when, in several arguments, he had the mortification to find that she ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... come here to-day to seek such remuneration; if it were not that, by your verdict, you may prevent those little innocent defrauded wretches from becoming wandering beggars, as well as orphans on the face of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask this verdict from your mercy; I need not extort it from your compassion; I will receive it from your justice. I do conjure you, not as fathers, but as husbands:—not as husbands, but as citizens:—not as citizens, but as men:—not as men, but as Christians:—by all your obligations, public, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... (which are generally the ruling factors world-wide), and would have at an early date derived a just "power from the consent of the governed," did not history record the unnecessary and inhuman means resorted to to extort it, the obliquity of which can be erased only by according him the rights of an American citizen. Mutual hostility, opposition on the one hand to the assumption and exercise of these rights, and consequent distrust by the freedman, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... feeling that he was in rather a critical position. A man whose business it was to kidnap young children in order to extort money from their friends was not likely to be very scrupulous, and the fear of having his secret divulged might ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Before a year was over he had personally visited almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... to try and extort a confession from Laleli herself? How in the world do you mean to do it? It is a ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Carrie, a sweet girl of thirteen, had shed many tears for her, and had used all her eloquence to bring about a reconciliation, apparently in vain, but finally she had so far prevailed with her mother as to extort a promise from her that she would write to her, which fact she straightway communicated to Lizzie, who was, at the opening of our story, looking anxiously for this promised letter, which might contain words of love, perhaps forgiveness. But she had looked so long and had been ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... must mean so! You deny them as yours; what can they be but forgeries? There is no other explanation. I think the whole matter a conspiracy to extort money; but I may be wrong—let that pass. If it be, on the contrary, an imitation of both our signatures that has been palmed off upon these usurers, it is open to other treatment. Compensated for their pecuniary loss, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... by the recent death of his father, had been put in possession of a splendid fortune, the proposition allured her father, who wrote him a complaisant answer, with an invitation to his house.—He then strove to extort a promise from Melissa, that she would break off all connexion with you, see you no more, and admit ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... of the individual? Winding himself up with twopenny-worth of cheese! Pleading for the additional penny for the waitress, whose personal charms and obliging disposition must be considered to extort the amount! And above all, unable to conceive any motive, except aversion to trouble, for disliking to carry "his chop" upon a skewer through the streets of London. How every line revels in the recollection of having dined, and speaks how seldom! while the well-buttered bread infers the usual fare. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "he had nothing to complain about. One more question, my friend. When the lady escaped hurriedly on Wednesday night, what was it that she left behind and what price are you trying to extort from her for ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... like any other attempt to extort money by swindling, and the Marquis will be sent to prison for two months, and the money paid for shares returned to the dupes, and that, I think, is all that I have to tell you, except that by to-morrow ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the poor fugitive entreated and asserted her intention of taking the vows. She could extort no other answer, and the portress withdrew, leaving her sitting on a wooden bench desolate, heart-sick. For two hours she remained motionless, with her eyes fixed upon the grating, but it continued closed. Even the dreary refuge of this poor and obscure convent was denied her. Even the house ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... advice to you, and going up to the table, pushed the papers hurriedly into a drawer. As he did so, I guessed what had been his mysterious occupation, for he seemed to have covered quires of paper with the closest writing. Ah, Charley, you're a lucky fellow to be able to extort such long letters from our dear father. You know how difficult he finds it to write even the shortest note, and you remember his old favourite expression, "I would rather skin a wild buffalo bull alive than ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... merit and excellence be which can extort this from us, freelivers, like yourself, and all of your just resentments against the rest of her family, and offered our assistance to execute your vengeance on them? But we cannot think it reasonable ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... illegitimate purposes, it is really robbery, just as much as if these men were to stand with pistols by the roadside and empty the wallets of people passing by. They make a dishonest use of their high position as members of government, and extort money for which they make no return in the shape of services to the public. History is full of such lamentable instances of misgovernment, and one of the most important uses of the study of history ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... promising to reveal to one or other of them a matter of importance and probable money-value, and he could use it also as a perpetual threat to hold over Colonel Kelmscott, if ever it should be needful to extort blackmail from the possessor of Tilgate, or to thwart his ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... 'Happiness,' it is often said, is too vague a word to be the keystone of an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness' ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... two ways. Self condemnation may be merely an attempt to extort praise from the bystanders, by leading them to deny our statements, or defend our conduct. Or, it may be an attempt to set ourselves off as abounding in self knowledge; a kind of knowledge which is universally admitted to be difficult of attainment. I have heard ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... inconsistency of the supposition that so just and moral a people as the primitive Christians are assumed to have been, should have been the first to provoke the Roman Government to depart from its universal maxims of toleration, liberality, and indifference.... The use of the torture to extort confession.... The choice of women to be the subjects of this torture, when the ill-usage of women was, in like manner, abhorrent to the Roman character" ("Diegesis," pp. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... surveillance; but you do not mention who and what he is—whether he is a prisoner under sentence, or a free agent, or of what caste and profession. Some men make these offers in order to have opportunities of escape, while engaged in the pretended search after associates in crime; others to extort money from those whom they may denounce, or have the authority and means to arrest. He should be made to state distinctly the evidence he has against persons, and the way he got it; and all should be recorded against the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... were made manifest, for those who came nigh his barrow were cut off by a kind of sudden death; and after his end, he spread such pestilence that he seemed almost to leave a filthier record in his death than in his life: it was as though he would extort from the guilty a punishment for his slaughter. The inhabitants, being in this trouble, took the body out of the mound, beheaded it, and impaled it through the breast with a sharp stake; and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the nobles now combined to extort from the king some of the despotic feudal privileges which existed in the twelfth century. They thought that in this hour of reverse Henry would be glad to purchase their powerful support by surrendering many of the prerogatives of the crown. After holding ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... proved worthy of the trust, I am proud to say, we neither broke the knees nor the wind of the spirited animal which had us in tow, nor did we smash the ketureen; on the contrary, we arrived at our journey's end with both in such excellent condition as to extort a compliment upon our skilful driving from our somewhat surprised but by no means disconcerted hostess. We also faithfully delivered the message anent the saddle-horse, and then, feeling that we had done our whole duty manfully, we dropped into the wake of the two black servants who had shouldered ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... or less than a proposal to hand over to these men the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would probably contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... a little paler. He knew well the horrible tortures which would, in such an instance, be inflicted to extort the names of those who ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... also a stupendous hiding-place. All the treasures of the kings, increasing from century to century, all the gold of France, all that they extort from the people, all that they snatch from the clergy, all the booty gathered on the battle-fields of Europe lie heaped up in the royal cave. Old Merovingian gold sous, glittering crown-pieces, doubloons, ducats, florins, guineas; and the precious stones and the diamonds; and ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... relinquish his plan. Till that hour, I never believed him so utterly devoid of principle; but he then laid bare his heart, hoping to make me a convert to its baseness. He exulted in the power we should obtain over this sensual prelate, and the sums which by these means we might extort. He looked with transport forward, to the opening which this would afford for projects still much deeper. The vices of the great, with which he might thus become intimate, afforded a field ample as his own vice ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... undoubted fidelity who in this way extort from their feeling husbands cashmere shawls, diamonds, the payment of their debts, or the rent of a box at the theatre; but almost always vapors are employed as decisive weapons in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... England, in order to establish a claim upon her for concessions advantageous to France in some other quarter. With these views, Vergennes secretly aimed at delaying the negotiations; for as long as hostilities were kept up, he might hope to extort from his American allies a recognition of the Spanish claims and a renouncement of the fisheries, simply by threatening to send them no further assistance in men or money. In order to retard the proceedings, he refused ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... occurs, of glass being thus employed. The rich were preceded by a slave bearing their lantern. This, Cicero mentions, as being the habit of Catiline upon his midnight expeditions; and when M. Antony was accused of a disgraceful intrigue, his lantern-bearer was tortured, to extort a confession whither he had conducted his master.[4] One of these machines, of considerable ingenuity and beauty of workmanship, was found in Herculaneum in 1760, and another, almost exactly the same, at Pompeii, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... religious joy, and all the other sweet and sacred things which belong to the silent life of the spirit in God, unless, side by side with these, there is the doing of the common deeds which the world is actually able to appraise in such a fashion as to extort, even from them, the confession, 'We find no ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to think it more painful than I thought it then. I can only say—God have mercy upon us all. I feel it my duty to take the child away, but I shall take him straight from your house to the best school in Southampton; and I give you my honor that I will extort nothing from his innocent simplicity which can in any manner—I mean," he said, breaking off abruptly, "I mean this. I will not seek to come one step nearer the secret through him. I—I am not a detective officer, and I do not think the most ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... an easy arrangement; and he was really, generally speaking, sceptical on the subject of severe virtue in either sex, and apt to consider it as a veil assumed by prudery in women, and hypocrisy in men, to extort a ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... landlady miscarried, partly through surprise at the event itself, and partly from terror at the-hideous grimaces which attended this unusual cachinnation. The only effect which the discovery of such impositions produced upon this saturnine personage was, to extort an ejaculation of "Prodigious!" or "Very facetious!" pronounced syllabically, but without moving a muscle ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... how he thrives With perpetual trouble: How he cheats and how he strives, His estate t' enlarge and double; Extort, oppress, grind and encroach, To be a squire and keep a coach, And to be one o' th' quorum; Who may with's brother-worships sit, And judge without law, fear, or wit, Poor petty thieves, that nothing get, And ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... not to extort the tenderest acknowledgment from me that I was capable of. I told him his care of me was so obliging, that I knew not what return to make him, but if he pleased to leave me to my choice I desired no greater ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Roderigo. My father was that Sebastian of Messaline whom I know you have heard of. He left behind ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... the Cevennes (M. Fabre tells us) the meal is what nature meant it to be—a few moments for self-recovery after fatigue, a short space of silence of a quite elevated character, almost sacred. The poor human creature has given the sweat of his brow to extort from an ungrateful soil his daily bread; and now he eats that well-savoured bread ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... instructing my agent to extort from the woman, Fry, the address to which she forwarded letters received by her for Mrs. Vernon. The lady's death, news of which will now have reached him, will no doubt be a lever, enabling my representative ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr. Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age. She could behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir of gallantry in his proper heart, ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... readers, it has ever drawn a single tear. The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity has fortunately cleared our streets of the offensive vagrants who used to thrust their mangled limbs and putrid sores into our faces to extort from our disgust what they could not wring from our compassion:—Be it our care to suppress those greater nuisances who, infesting the high ways of literature, would attempt, by a still more revolting exhibition, to terrify or nauseate us out ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a just regard to their safety, fled to the seat of Government, it being avowed that the motives to such outrages were to compel the resignation of the inspector, to withstand by force of arms the authority of the United States, and thereby to extort a repeal of the laws of excise and an alteration ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... of this odious traffic the exact image of himself in the garb and harness of a slave, dragged and whipped about like a beast: place this image also before him, and paint it as that of one without a ray of hope to cheer him; and you would extort from him the reluctant confession, that he would not endure for an hour the misery, to which he condemned his fellow-man for life. How dared he then to use this selfish plea of interest against the voice of the generous sympathies of his nature? But even upon this narrow ground the advocates ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... to commence the action. It was then perceived that the British right was advancing in line; and as Stevens led on his brigade in good order, Colonel Williams advanced in front with a few volunteers, intending by a partial fire to extort that of the enemy at some distance, and thereby diminish its effect on the militia. The experiment did not succeed. The British rushed forward with great impetuosity, firing and huzzaing at the same time; and the terrified ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Further, earthly princes violently extort many things from their subjects: and this seems to savor of robbery. Now it would seem a grievous matter to say that they sin in acting thus, for in that case nearly every prince would be damned. Therefore in some cases robbery ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... buckets. The figure is cut out of yellow Roach Abbey stone. The armour is linked. This knight was fined L800 by Richard Coeur de Lion for allowing a French prisoner of consequence to escape from his custody. He married a daughter of a King of Scotland, was Sheriff of Cumberland, helped to extort Magna Charta from King John, and gave much public ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the alarm. "No," said, "I will not extort your reasons. It is a shame of me. Your bare will ought to be law in this house; and what reasons could reconcile me to losing you so suddenly? You are the joy of our eyes, the delight of our ears, the idol of all our hearts. You will leave us, and there will be ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... extort this out of the Pentateuch is a question of interest, but one on which I cannot delay. Suffice it, that while he thus showed his reverence for the traditions of his race, his whole aim is to fire philosophy with religious devotion. But he was not, in ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... not the work. It was not the suffering of the world. It was the pain in their own hearts, and the awful chasm that his holy vows had put between them. They stood so only an instant. He was trembling in the extort to master himself, and in a second she felt the hot blood rising to her face. Her woman's wit was the first to break the hopeless situation. She turned, and hailed a passing car. "I cannot walk any farther. Good-night." And ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on the only Christian people in the East. We converted a war of glory into a war of shame. We vulgarized the American flag. We introduced perfidy into the practice of war. We inflicted torture on unarmed men to extort confession. We put children to death. We established reconcentrado camps. We devastated provinces. We baffled the aspirations of a ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... very natural that the French Government, after having failed to extort concessions upon the Turkish Question, by menaces of foreign war, should now endeavour to obtain those concessions, by appealing to fears of another kind, and should say that such concessions are necessary in order to prevent revolution in France; but Viscount Palmerston would submit ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... contempt will for the most part be systematically misplaced; that though the beneficent and disinterested spirit of Christianity, and her obvious tendency to promote domestic comfort and general happiness, cannot but extort applause; yet that her aspiring after more than ordinary excellence, by exciting secret misgivings in others, or a painful sense of inferiority not unmixed with envy, cannot fail often to disgust and offend. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... to me for a guard Or sweeper of my stalls, or to supply 270 My kids with leaves, he should on bulkier thewes Supported stand, though nourish'd but with whey. But no such useful arts hath he acquired, Nor likes he work, but rather much to extort From others food for his unsated maw. But mark my prophecy, for it is true, At famed Ulysses' house should he arrive, His sides shall shatter many a footstool hurl'd Against them by the offended princes there. He spake, and drawing nigh, with ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... action, rather than of reflexion, he knew that he must do more to satisfy himself, for his suspicions were aroused. He had expected to find Bosio jubilant. From what he had seen, he had understood well enough that there was some mysterious trouble. He could not hope to extort any information from Macomer or his wife, and he had no means of reaching Veronica, nor could he have asked direct questions if he ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Italy, Spain, Germany, and the S. of France, for the trial and punishment of heretics, of which that established in Spain achieved the greatest notoriety from the number of victims it sacrificed, and the remorseless tortures to which they were subjected, both when under examination to extort confession and after conviction. The rigour of its action began to abate in the 17th century, but it was not till 1835, after frequent attempts to limit its power and suppress it, that it was abolished in Spain. Napoleon suppressed it in France in 1808, and after an attempted ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... while occupied in anticipating the explanation which he had resolved to extort from his doctor, the sultan, like his courtiers, had forgotten his favourite; but now the meeting was most cordial on both sides. The sultan seemed determined to make up for his neglect; and the favourite to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... Norman influence in these realms. He knows that in you he receives the most powerful man in England; that your detention alone would convulse the country from one end of it to the other; and enable him, perhaps, to extort from Edward some measures dishonourable to us all. But against me he can harbour no ill design—my detention would avail him nothing. And, in truth, if Harold be safe in England, Gurth must be safe in Rouen? Thy presence here at the head of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... told upon Mme. de Marville, who, moreover, had formed a tolerably correct estimate of her husband. A temper naturally shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old, but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping as a file. Caustic to excess she had few friends among women; she surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... replied, "Because I am a younger man and a stronger." They sat down again, and discussed the person's information But Sir Robert afterwards had reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention of assassination, but had hoped, by intimidating, to extort money from him. Yet if no real attempt was made on his life, it was not from want of suggestions to it: one of the weekly journals pointed out Sir Robert's frequent passing a Putney bridge late at night, attended but by one or two servants, on his way to New Park, as a proper place; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that I must always concur in what he said. At times however I was obliged to dissent from his sayings, and then would follow a little controversy. Those controversies were never very profitable, in consequence of his constant desire to force his own opinions on me, and to extort from me assent to his whimsical and foolish observations. Yet he still continued ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... not come to extort a confession from you, Mr. Graumann," Muller replied gently, "but to help you establish your innocence, ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... us, and walking in us. How can the love of God, and of Christ, and of the Spirit be in us, if these perverse praters against the power of godliness, provoke us not to emit a practical declaration to the world, and extort a testimony to his grace by our way, from the enemies thereof? Improve, therefore, this his special help to that purpose, which in a most seasonable time is brought ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... an allied state, who, in confidence that their exclusive trade with America will be continued, while the principles and power of the British Parliament be the same, have indulged themselves in every exorbitance which their avarice could dictate, or our necessities extort; have raised their commodities called for in America, to the double and treble of what they sold for, before such exclusive privileges were given them, and of what better commodities of the same kind would cost us elsewhere; and, at the same time, give us much less for what we carry ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... who having amassed wealth makes it over (for safe keep) to his treasury officers and guards, and then commences again to plunder his kingdom, saying unto his officers, 'Do ye bring me as much wealth as you can extort from the kingdom,' and who spends the wealth that is thus collected at his command under circumstances of fear and cruelty, in the performance of sacrifices, should know that those sacrifices of his are never applauded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... rather abashed, dropped into the cold green tub, splashed, rubbed down, dressed, and sat down to breakfast. As he ate his waffles, though, out of the blue breakfast set which Dolly's charming, puzzle-browed economy had managed to extort from the recalcitrant family budget, his usual glowing loquacity of after-the-bath was lacking. His eyes wandered furtively about the little encumbered room; thoughts, visibly, rolled within his head which did not find his ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... Mr. Hardie, shrugging his shoulders. He then looked Skinner full in the face, and said, "Nobody was ever seized with apoplexy in my office. Nobody ever gave me L. 14,000. And if this is the probable tale with which you come here to break the law and extort money, leave my house this instant: and if ever you dare to utter this absurd and malicious slander, you shall lie within four stone walls, and learn what it is for a shabby vagabond to come without a witness to his back, and libel a man of property ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... am master? As far as your eye can reach, there is nothing here but people who are torturing one another. Groaning the conquered come and leave their gold. They hate and threaten, but they obey. And the desires of the victors grow wilder the more gold they can extort. What are Denmark's king and his soldiers but my servants, at least for this one day? To-morrow they will go to church, or sit in peaceful mirth in their inns, or also perhaps be good fathers in their own homes, but to-day they serve me; to-day ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... train of friends and relations. But in his opinion of the step taken by his son he remained unalterably firm. At the entertainment which was given in the convent to the young priest, the latter tried to extort from him a friendly remark upon the subject, by asking him why he seemed so angry, when monastic life was such a high and holy thing. His father replied in the presence of all the company, 'Learned brothers, have you not read in Holy Writ, that a man must honour father and mother?' And on being ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... additional camel-drivers from Kaleebah, who, of course, endeavoured to extort more than they had agreed for. When we had squabbled with them a little, we had the honour of receiving Sheikh Omer, of Mizdah, in the tent. He came with about thirty notables of the place, the greater part of whom sat outside the doorway, whilst he stroked his beard within, indulging ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... receive the pardon which was promised by the King. But no such confession was made. All the prisoners denied the charges brought against them. Then the usual mediaeval expedient was resorted to, and torture was used to extort acknowledgments of guilt. The unhappy Templars in Paris were handed over to the tender mercies of the tormentors with the usual results. One hundred and forty were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... inhabitants of the Old World may have been as numerous as those of China are now,—a number estimated by the recent authorities at more than three hundred and fifty millions,—and the admission is certainly greatly larger than there is argument enough on the other side to extort,—a comparatively partial deluge would have been sufficient to secure their destruction. In short, it may be fairly concluded, that if there be a show of reason against the theory of a flood merely local, it has not yet been exhibited. Even Dr. Kitto, with all ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... I'm ashamed of you! I don't know when I've been so—so umpressed with the badness of this family. How often, my hearers, do you 'spect me to stop my dressing to extort you! I didn't mean to preach no more sermons this week, but you do behave so awful bad, ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... all, even the children, convicted, and sent to the Lock Hospital for the indecent examination, in order to determine if they were in proper health to practice vice. Afterwards the Registrar concluded that the case had been got up by the watchman to extort money from the women. But the establishment of their innocence did not put them right again. Think of the horrible ordeal and the dirty court details through which these young girls had been put, ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... sleep, and dispatched messengers to his friends. No answers were returned; and upon that he went personally with a small retinue to their hotels. But he found their doors every where closed; and all his importunities could not avail to extort an answer. Sadly and slowly he returned to his own bedchamber; but there again he found fresh instances of desertion, which had occurred during his short absence; the pages of his bedchamber had fled, carrying with ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... was not that highest sort of fortitude which is derived from reflection and from selfrespect; nor had nature given him one of those stout hearts from which neither adversity nor peril can extort any sign of weakness. His courage rose and fell with his animal spirits. It was sustained on the field of battle by the excitement of action. By the hope of victory, by the strange influence of sympathy. All such aids were now taken away. The spoiled darling of the court and of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spoken contumeliously of the Scots' intention in coming to England to establish their Church-government, in which Cromwell said he would draw his sword against them; also against the Assembly of Divines; and has threatened to make a party of Sectaries, to extort by force, both from King and Parliament, what conditions they thought meet. This fire was long under the emmers; now it's broken out, we trust, in a good time. It's like, for the interest of our nation, we must crave ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. Puffing and pretension may win the ear of the outside public, and extort praise from the press, but inside the rooms of a Sotheby, a Puttick, or a Hodgson, these foolish persons count for nothing, and their names are seldom heard. Were an author to turn the pages of Book Prices Current, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... or, what is the same thing, to be pitied. Man wishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. The roadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations is something more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. True alms is pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the material hardships of life. The beggar shows little gratitude for alms thrown to him by one who hurries past with averted face; he is more ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... it was the most natural thing in the world for them thus to meet, and that she for her part would be enchanted to play propriety, and to be her dearest Ida's companion on all such occasions, nor would thumbscrew or rack extort from her ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... pretensions, and to submit to those necessary and reasonable reforms against which they have so bitterly inveighed, and so resolutely fought. We are disgusted and shocked at reading Croly's account of the scandalous conduct of the Catholic clergy in Ireland, with regard to the emoluments they extort from their miserable flocks, and at the systematic desecration of holy things which they countenance and practise; but when the difference is considered between their spiritual condition and their moral ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... butcher's daughter of Gloucester, mother of the Colonel, and afterwards Countess of Berkeley. Such a character as Molloy, otherwise Westmacott, was bound to get sometimes into trouble (in these days he would probably receive his reward for "endeavouring to extort money by threats"); and if he did not get exactly what he deserved, he did get, on the tenth of October, 1830, a tremendous thrashing from Charles Kemble. References to the memorandum books of this Ishmaelite of the press, in which he entered (for future use) some of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... he answered and said unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath food, let him do likewise. 12 And there came also publicans to be baptized, and they said unto him, Teacher, what must we do? 13 And he said unto them, Extort no more than that which is appointed you. 14 And soldiers also asked him, saying, And we, what must we do? And he said unto them, Extort from no man by violence, neither accuse any one wrongfully; and ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... adjourned after rejecting the treaty by a unanimous vote. The dominant motive for the rejection was greed. An attempt was first made by the dictatorial government that held the Colombian Congress in its mailed hand to extort a large payment from the French Canal Company, whose rights and property on the Isthmus were to be bought by the United States for $40,000,000. Then $15,000,000 instead of $10,000,000 was demanded from the United States. Finally an adroit and conscienceless scheme ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... However, we proved worthy of the trust, I am proud to say, we neither broke the knees nor the wind of the spirited animal which had us in tow, nor did we smash the ketureen; on the contrary, we arrived at our journey's end with both in such excellent condition as to extort a compliment upon our skilful driving from our somewhat surprised but by no means disconcerted hostess. We also faithfully delivered the message anent the saddle-horse, and then, feeling that we had done our whole duty manfully, we dropped into the wake of the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... clerks, evil-disposed persons who traded under such names as their owners could use no longer on their own account. These prowlers amongst thieves, under the protection of the Law, were permitted to extort what they could from the friends of miserable prisoners under pretence of engaging counsel to defend them. Counsel they would engage after a fashion—sometimes: but not unfrequently they cheated counsel, client and the law at the same time, which ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... emperors; or speaking of Machiavel, comprehend all statesmen; or in our Sordido, all farmers; and so of the rest: than which nothing can be uttered more malicious or absurd. Indeed there are a sort of these narrow-eyed decypherers, I confess, that will extort strange and abstruse meanings out of any subject, be it never so conspicuous and innocently delivered. But to such, where'er they sit concealed, let them know, the author defies them and their writing-tables; and hopes ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... from the modern improvements of that country, both in arts and agriculture, where premiums obtained long before they were heard of with us. The manners of the wild natives, their superstitions, their prejudices, their sordid way of life, will extort from him many useful reflections. He should also take with him an able draughtsman, for he must by no means pass over the noble castles and seats, the extensive and picturesque lakes and waterfalls, and the lofty stupendous ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... help feeling that he was in rather a critical position. A man whose business it was to kidnap young children in order to extort money from their friends was not likely to be very scrupulous, and the fear of having his secret divulged might lead ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... under the influence of hope and pride, he had resolved to receive no assistance even from her, so that he might wholly claim the credit of regaining all that he had lost; but now, in the recklessness of despair, he proposed not only to ask for all the money he could obtain, but, if necessary, extort it by any means ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... plundering the merchants and travellers. Those who dwelt in the open country they forced into their castles, and after pillaging them of all their visible substance, these tyrants held them in dungeons, and tortured them with a thousand cruel inventions to extort a discovery of their hidden wealth. The lamentable representation given by history of those barbarous times justifies the pictures in the old romances of the castles of giants and magicians. A great part of Europe was in the same deplorable condition. It was then that some gallant ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... silent for a moment. Then with the air of a martyr, from whom the rack can only extort a fuller confession of his faith—though I fear she had no deeper gospel at the root of it than Byron ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... fly? You who have betrayed me? You whom I trusted? You who vowed that not even the rack could extort one syllable from your lips? Base girl, is it thus that thou dost requite my love? Away! Go back to that court whose enticements have caused thee to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... the project has no chance. To obtain that aid, "the Prince" must secretly swear that after four years more he will turn France over to Henry V.; this promise only the last extreme of desperation could extort from him, and then to no purpose, since he could not fulfill it and the Legitimists could not trust him. And thus, alike by its own strength and by its enemies' divisions, the safety of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... a sudden he seemed to see it all. It was a fraud, an imposition, an impudent plot to extort money. But no! As he read the letter again that hope vanished. This was not the letter of an impostor. Had it been, there would have been more about his rights, more brotherly affection, a greater anxiety to appear in good colours. As it was, the writer wrote in the reckless ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... and took the whole blame upon himself. Surprised at this magnanimity, the Viceroy—who is described in Don Quixote as "the homicide of all human kind"[74]—sent for him, and found him as good as his word. No threats of torture or death could extort from him a syllable which could implicate any one of his fellow-captives. His undaunted manner evidently overawed the Viceroy, for instead of chastizing he purchased Cervantes from his master for ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... are enabled to undergo any pain or peril, when prudentially deemed expedient. This virtue is equally distant from rashness and cowardice, and should be deeply impressed upon the mind of every Mason. It is a safeguard or security against the success of any attempt, by force or otherwise, to extort from him any of those valuable secrets with which he has been solemnly intrusted, and which were emblematically impressed upon him on his first admission into the lodge, when he was received on * * * which refers to * ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... making soldiers' clothes.—Houses were likewise not unfrequently abandoned by the servants through fear of sharing the fate of their masters, and sometimes exposed equally by the arrest of those who had been left in charge, in order to extort discoveries of plate, money, &c. the concealment of which they ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... we made enemies was because Richard found it necessary to inform the Jews that he would not aid and abet them in their endeavours to extort unfair usury from the Syrians. Some of the village Shaykhs and peasantry, ignorant people as they were, were in the habit of making ruinous terms with the Jews, and the extortion was something dreadful. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... comes back," continued Arthur, "Morgan, who knows his secret, will use it over him—and having it in his possession, proposes to extort money from us all. The d——d rascal supposed I was cognisant of it," said Pen, white with anger; "asked me if I would give him an annuity to keep it quiet; threatened me, me, as if I was trafficking with this wretched old Begum's misfortune, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... immediately reported to Richelieu, who, delighted to maintain the coldness which had grown up between the mother and son, hastened to insinuate to Marie de Medicis that Louis had expressed his gratification at her refusal, and to assure her that should she suffer the Prince to extort her consent to such an act of wilful revolt against the royal command she would inevitably ruin ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... insult me directly I set foot upon British ground, they have chosen a very nice way of testifying their respect for their chief: and they have made a mistake which they shall repent having made sooner or later. If you came here upon your own account, with a view to terrify me, or to extort money from me, you have made a mistake. If you think to make a fool of me by any maudlin sentimentality, you make a still greater mistake. I give you fair warning. If you expect any advantage from me, you must ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... able to persuade Mr. Orden to restore the packet, our task with him is at an end. We are not his gaolers—or perhaps he would say his torturers—for pleasure. The Council has ordered that we should extort from him the papers you know of and has given us carte blanche as to the means. If you others can persuade him to restore them peaceably, why, do it. We are prepared ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... station. I said to myself that I would do something that would surprise him, and I gave him his fee and nearly a franc over; but it was I who was surprised, for he ran after me into the station, as I supposed, to extort more. He was holding out a franc toward me, and I asked the guide who was bothering me to take him to Pompeii (where there are swarms of guides always on the grounds) what the matter was. "It is false," he explained, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... privately married to another man? Was this woman—with the voice of a lady, the look of a lady, the manner of a lady—in league (as Geoffrey had declared) with the illiterate vagabond who was attempting to extort money anonymously from Mrs. Glenarm? Impossible! Making every allowance for the proverbial deceitfulness of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... cannot possibly be passed by any out of a public character. The desert woods of Servia, are the common refuge of thieves, who rob fifty in a company, so that we had need of all our guards to secure us; and the villages are so poor, that only force could extort from them necessary provisions. Indeed the janizaries had no mercy on their poverty, killing all the poultry and sheep they could find, without asking to whom they belonged; while the wretched owners durst not ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... other sweet and sacred things which belong to the silent life of the spirit in God, unless, side by side with these, there is the doing of the common deeds which the world is actually able to appraise in such a fashion as to extort, even from them, the confession, 'We find no occasion against ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... relieved merely from the parliamentary opposition of other companies and of private individuals. The private owner must be deprived of his present privilege of parliamentary opposition, which gives him the power to extort an exorbitant price for his land—because a company can always oppose in the garb of some private owner ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... appointment or caught the train, nay, even the bore of pulling off one's gloves and pulling out one's wallet with the mercury below zero, tries the traveler's temper. The emancipation of highways from all taxes levied upon wayfarers is a mark of modern civilization. The mediaeval plan was to extort a toll from every luckless traveler in the name of baron or bandit. In our day Algerine corsairs, Italian brigands, Chinese pirates and Mexican guerillas have continued the thievish custom of "tributes," and not long ago even Montana Indians established themselves on the leading roads and levied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... be as though they had never been. He had been brutally attacked, and had thought it best to say nothing on the subject. He would not allow his secret, such as it was, to be wormed out of him. Scarborough was endeavoring to extort from him that which he had resolved to conceal; and he determined at last that he would not become a puppet in his hands. "I don't see why you should care a straw ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would probably contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's nominees. The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Jacob, an' he has told them where we are," I said on the impulse of the moment, not meaning to cast reproach upon the lad, but knowing what fiendish means those wretches employed in order to extort information. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... realized. It is quite obvious that something more than the mere possession of ideals is required to make a life significant in any sense that claims the spectator's admiration. Inner joy, to be sure, it may have, with its ideals; but that is its own private sentimental matter. To extort from us, outsiders as we are, with our own ideals to look after, the tribute of our grudging recognition, it must back its ideal visions with what the laborers have, the sterner stuff of manly virtue; it must multiply their sentimental surface by the dimension ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... touchstone of truth and lay it upon your most secret heart. Do not be afraid to discover how double-minded and deceitful your heart is. Hunt your heart down. Track it to its most secret lair. Put its true name, and continue to put its true name, upon the main motive of your life. Extort an answer by boot and by wheel, only extort an answer from the inner man of the heart, to the torturing question as to what is his treasure, his hope, his deepest wish, his daily dream. Watch not against any outward enemy, keep all your eyes and all your ears to your ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... for that it would only bring trouble and discredit on me if she was no impostor, and be a very foolish thing if she was. He says that he had mentioned to my father, when he was making his will, that in all probability the widow, if left out of the will, would come upon the heir, and extort something very handsome from him; but that Mr. Hogarth had said sternly that she could not do it, for she had not a scrap of evidence that she dared bring forward to prove that she had ever been his wife. That he had no objection to provide handsomely for ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... supporters to rally around him. It was a late hour for such a call, but the Catholic nobles generally, all over the kingdom, were instantly in motion. Many Protestant nobles also attended the assembly, hoping to extort from the emperor some measures of toleration. The emperor was so frightened that he was ready to promise almost any thing. He even crept from his secluded apartments and presided over the meeting in person. The Protestant ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... attributes of the house of Waverley. With a grace and delicacy worthy the hero of a romance, Sir Everard withdrew his claim to the hand of Lady Emily. He had even, before leaving Blandeville Castle, the address to extort from her father a consent to her union with the object of her choice. What arguments he used on this point cannot exactly be known, for Sir Everard was never supposed strong in the powers of persuasion; ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... promises went beyond their desires. Her performance followed close upon her promise. She did not treat the nation as an adverse party, as a party which had an interest opposed to hers, as a party to which she was to grant as few advantages as possible, and from which she was to extort as much money as possible. Her benefits were given, not sold; and, when once given, they were never withdrawn. She gave them too with a frankness, an effusion of heart, a princely dignity, a motherly tenderness, which enhanced their value. They ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Curzon Street: longing to say something that would still, at the last moment, gain her John's approval, or his understanding at least. But she could think of nothing to say. He had promised to manage it all for her: he had not reproached her; and yet not content with that she wanted to extort a favourable word from him before he should go. But she could not find a word to say. He it was only who spoke. He asked when she was going to return home, with his hand upon the ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... sanctuary and also a stupendous hiding-place. All the treasures of the kings, increasing from century to century, all the gold of France, all that they extort from the people, all that they snatch from the clergy, all the booty gathered on the battle-fields of Europe lie heaped up in the royal cave. Old Merovingian gold sous, glittering crown-pieces, doubloons, ducats, florins, guineas; and the precious stones and the diamonds; ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... toward Prussia, and still it has permitted Napoleon to halve my states; to take much more than he was entitled to by the treaty of Tilsit; to leave his troops in my states, in spite of the express stipulations of the treaties; to impose contributions on Prussia and extort their payment. Public opinion deplored it as a terrible calamity that I should be, as it were, a prisoner here in the capital of my own monarchy, and at the palace of my ancestors, and live under the cannon of Spandau, a fortress unlawfully occupied by the French. Public opinion, I say, deplored ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... sense of the word,—what is not sacrificed? Peace, honesty, truth, virtue,—all to keep up appearances. We must cheat, and scrub, and deceive, and defraud, that "the world" may not see behind our mask! We must torment and enslave ourselves, because we must extort "the world's" applause, or at least obtain "the world's" ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the fellow, although in some respects to be pitied, was obviously a dangerous rascal, embittered and robbed of all scruples by injustice. There was something malignant in his face that testified against him, and, worse than all, he had come there resolved to extort money as the price of his connivance ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... assessed the sums to be brought into the treasury by indirect taxation as so much per cent on each individual share. A tax is a levy of money on things or persons under disguises that are more or less specious. These disguises, excellent when the object is to extort money, become ridiculous in the present day, when the class on which the taxes weigh the heaviest knows why the State imposes them and by what machinery they are given back. In fact the budget is not a strong-box to hold what is put into it, but a watering-pot; ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... kind; but as to those who administer but one,—there is the knot. The Synod of Basil conceded the whole sacrament to the Bohemians, on condition that they would acknowledge that it may, with propriety, be taken and received in one kind only. This confession they also wish to extort from us. Eckius says he contends for this point, merely because the people cannot be retained in the discharge of duty, unless we also release their consciences in regard to the sacrament (that is, unless the reformers would admit, that its reception in one kind was also allowable). ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... verre with me. You see I don't stand on ceremony with you; I say whatever comes into my head, because I know you to be a fair-minded man. Now I tell you your prefet is all wrong in trying to extort those forty-two thousand francs from the city. Just think once of all our losses since the beginning of the war. In the first place, before the battle, we had the entire French army on our hands, a set of ragged, hungry, exhausted men; and then along came your rascals, and their ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... tribute, and to extort it from mankind (envious and ignorant as they are) they must be ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... seemed to him that the question was so clear that even Judge Bramber could not hesitate. The evidence of Dick Shand was quite conclusive,—if credible. It was open, of course, to strong doubt, in that it could not be sifted by cross-examination. Alone, it certainly would not have sufficed to extort a pardon from any Secretary of State,—as any Secretary of State would have been alive to the fact that Dick might have been suborned. Dick's life had not been such that his single word would have been regarded ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the chronometers, twice: this was a misfortune, as it altered the rates, as was seen by the first comparison of them together in the evening. No food at Motuna's village, yet the headman tried to extort two fathoms of calico on the ground that he was owner of the country: we offered to go out of his village and make our own sheds on "God's land," that is, where it is uncultivated, rather than have any words about it: he then begged ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... tax him, which is only one mode of inflicting a fine or penalty for an act, the right to do which we have acceded. In the strong language of the Committee of Correspondence of Maryland:[94] "The object of Masonry never was to extort, nolens volens, money from its votaries. Such are not its principles or teaching. The advocating such doctrines cannot advance the interest or reputation of the institution; but will, as your committee fear, do much to destroy its ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... method adopted by the Americans. Water was poured down the throat of the victim until the stomach was distended to the full; then it was pressed out again and the operation repeated. The pretext for this mode of torture was to extort confession; but it was quite inefficacious; because the victim was usually disposed to say anything, true or false, for his own salvation. The "water-cure" operation, in vogue for awhile all over the Islands, proved fatal in many cases. It is now a ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... has been filled with visionary hopes of liberty; insurrections have been planned, and, worse still, insurrections have been imagined. In fear for life and property, torture worthy of the worst days of the Inquisition has been resorted to, to extort confession from those who had nothing to confess. Some died silent martyrs; others, in their agony, accused falsely the first negro whose name came to their memory; thus, injustice bred injustice, and it is estimated that not less than a thousand wretched victims have closed ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... he may be, he seems himself, sincerely to believe in them. He is now suffering for those opinions, and suffering with a firmness, which to those who think him wrong, is stubbornness; and, thus, he affords another proof of the extreme impolicy of attempting to impose silence by prosecutions, and extort from the mind the abjuration of opinions by external and physical force. It never succeeds; but, on the contrary, works the very opposite effect to that which is its object. As the author from whom I have just now cited says, with extreme force and equal beauty, "a kind of maternal ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... scenes if she were alive; now I can not. The only reflection that assuages the anguish of retrospection is, that she now rests far away, where no spotted-faced executioner can fill her heart with terror; where no unfeeling magistrate can extort the scanty pittance which she had preserved through every risk to sustain her fettered husband and famishing babe; no more exposed to lie on a bed of languishment, stung with the uncertainty what would become of her poor husband and child when ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... paying Tip money, and Tip knows it's blackmail?" muttered the sophomore. "That can mean just one thing then. When Tip held his tongue before and at his trial, last year, he was looking ahead to the time when he could extort money by threatening Fred. And now Tip's doing it. That must be the way he gets his living. Whew, but Ripley must be allowed a heap of spending money if he can ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... metaphysical equivalent. And yet, if I have correctly presented its principles, it will probably appear that its primary conception is not altogether consistently carried out in the development of the details. Great as was the intellectual ability of its author—so great as to extort our profoundest, though it may be reluctant admiration—there are nevertheless moments in which it appears that his movement is becoming wavering and unsteady—that he is failing to handle his ponderous weapon with self-balanced ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... once constituted great landed proprietors and absolute masters of a host of poor tenants, with power to punish at discretion those who were so unfortunate as not to be able to pay a rent the amount of which had no limit but that of the power to extort it. It was the middleman system of Ireland transplanted to India; but the results were at first unfavourable to the Zemindars, as the rents, for which they themselves were responsible to the government, were so enormous that all the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... had been admitted in evidence and defense counsel did not thereafter move for its exclusion. Although compulsory processes of justice may be used to call the accused as a witness and to require him to testify, "compulsion by torture to extort a confession is a different matter. * * * The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand."[881] Again, in Chambers v. Florida[882] the Court, with no mention of the privilege against self-incrimination, proclaimed that due process is denied when convictions of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... be called, "the birth, parentage, and education of a remonstrance." On the subject of Falkland's islands, the fine dissuasive from too hastily involving the world in the calamities of war, must extort applause even from the party that wished, at that time, for scenes of tumult and commotion. It was in the same pamphlet, that Johnson offered battle to Junius, a writer, who, by the uncommon elegance of his style, charmed every reader, though his object was to inflame the nation in favour ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... to make with Richard; but would wonder, if they were delights, whether their delightfulness would not seem heartless as laughter in a house of mourning to this woman whose delight lay in a grave, and if they were sorrows, whether coming to a woman who had wept so much they would not extort some last secretion more agonising than ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... which are supposed to serve as benefactors of suffering mankind? They have milliards at their disposal, but use most of it for the maintenance of armies, bureaucracies, police forces. With these vast sums, which they extort from the people, they increase ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... I did not ask you about your father to extort this confession; I pray God give you repentance for it, and forgive you that and all your other sins; but I asked you, because I see that, though you have not much learning, yet you are not so ignorant as some are in things that are good; that you have known more ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... seen her two sisters' heads, could not control her curiosity, and opened the door. She saw her mistress reclining in a beautiful bed. In the evening the lady returned and asked her what she had seen; but she answered: "I have seen nothing." The lady could extort no other answer from her, and finally clothed her in her peasant's dress, and took her back to the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... patron, a theatre, a political paymaster, a prosperous newspaper or a fashionable subscription-list, an independent writer of the mid-eighteenth century, provided that he was competent, could begin to extort something more than a bare subsistence from the reluctant coffers of the London booksellers. For the purpose of such a demonstration no better illustration could possibly be found, I think, than the career of Dr. Tobias Smollett. And yet, curiously ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... distributed should, and would, suffice to maintain all the paupers of the Jews; but the inefficiency of the administration permits them to devote their entire time in successfully preventing one charitable institution from arriving at the knowledge of what they receive from another, and to extort from private sources as much ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... although Mohammedans, are not destitute of virtues; and, as a peculiarly good trait in their character, a Moor never abandons himself to despair; neither sufferings nor losses can extort from him a single murmur; to every event he submits as decreed by the will of God, and habitually hopes for better times. We might learn ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... him, and a resolve to exact vengeance on the man whom he regarded as untrue to his oath. The difficulties in the way of his enterprise were indeed enormous. He could reckon on no support within England itself. At home he had to extort the consent of his own reluctant baronage; to gather a motley host from every quarter of France and to keep it together for months; to create a fleet, to cut down the very trees, to build, to launch, to man the vessels; and to find time amidst all this for the common business of ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... are angry!" cried Morris, who wished immensely that he could extort some flash of passion from her mildness. In that ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... with them in an effort to expel Daisy from Gedingooma; for until Daisy should be vanquished or humbled, they considered that they could neither return to their native towns, nor live in security in any of the neighbouring kingdoms. With a view to extort money from these people, by means of this treaty, Ali dispatched his son to Jarra, and prepared to follow him in the course of a few days. This was an opportunity of too great consequence to me to be neglected. I immediately ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... 45: This Motion, intended to extort a declaration from the House in favour of Free Trade, and describing the Corn Law Repeal as "a just, wise, and beneficial measure," was naturally distasteful to the Ministers. Their amour-propre was saved by Lord Palmerston's Amendment omitting the "odious epithets" and affirming ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Catholic Church, during which it relentlessly crushed every vestige of opposition by means of that hideous monster, the Inquisition. During these three centuries, the same selfish policy actuated the home government towards Mexico as was exercised towards Cuba, namely, to extort from the country and its people the largest possible revenue for the Spanish treasury. Finally came the successful revolution which separated the country from continental Spain and achieved the independence ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Indian once more directed a halt, intimating his own intention to move to the margin of the woods, in order to reconnoitre. Both his companions heard this announcement with satisfaction, for Willoughby was eager to say to Maud directly that which he had so plainly indicated by means of the box, and to extort from her a confession that she was not offended; while Maud herself felt the necessity of letting the major know the melancholy circumstance that yet remained to be told. With these widely distinct feelings ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... has practiced in many cities and has served more than one term in jail. I knew at once what had occurred; the two men fancied they 'had something on' Miss Cavanaugh regarding this murder, and had endeavored to extort money from her. I leave it to you," with a smiling nod toward Nora, "to tell how near I am to ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... James was trying to persuade Louis to rouse himself to be revived by bread-and-cheese and beer, and could extort nothing but a drowsy repetition of the rhyme, in old days the war-cry of the Grammar-school against ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... provided, and the army passed by sea to Sinope—a Grecian colony—where the men were hospitably received, and fed, and lodged. From thence the army passed by sea to Heracleia, where the soldiers sought to extort money against the opposition of Xenophon and Cherisophus, the latter of whom had nobly seconded the plans of Xenophon, although a Spartan of superior military rank. The army, at this opposition, divided into three ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... faculty, and the function of that, is a sickness; the names will not serve them which are given from the place affected, the pleurisy is so; nor from the effect which it works, the falling sickness is so; they cannot have names enough, from what it does, nor where it is, but they must extort names from what it is like, what it resembles, and but in some one thing, or else they would lack names; for the wolf, and the canker, and the polypus are so; and that question whether there be more names ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... one's hand. take from, take away from; disseize^; deduct &c 38; retrench &c (curtail) 201; dispossess, ease one of, snatch from one's grasp; tear from, tear away from, wrench from, wrest from, wring from; extort; deprive of, bereave; disinherit, cut off with a shilling. oust &c (eject) 297; divest; levy, distrain, confiscate; sequester, sequestrate; accroach^; usurp; despoil, strip, fleece, shear, displume^, impoverish, eat out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have paid them the money out of my own pocket with all my heart, but it would only have been giving so much to the aga, who would have taken it from them without any remorse.... The villagers are so poor that only force would extort from them necessary provisions. Indeed the janissaries had no mercy on their poverty, killing all the poultry and sheep they could find, without asking to whom they belonged, while the wretched owners durst not put in their claim for fear of being beaten. When ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... embezzled that money for your business. Rather than be found out, you went to Billy McLoughlin and offered to sell out the Reform campaign for money to replace it. With the aid of the crook, Hanford, McLoughlin's tool, you worked out the scheme to extort money from Travis by forged photographs. You knew enough about Travis's house and library to frame up a robbery one night when you were staying there with him. It was inside work, I found, at a glance. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the key to this land of dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts I shall extort nobler cadences, nobler rhythms, for men to live by, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of questions, her bright quick eyes seeming to extort and gain more than the mere verbal answers. She talked a good deal, throwing more light than Agatha had ever before received on the manners, characters, and history of the Harper family, the Dugdales, and Anne Valery. But there was in her speech a certain reticence, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... ages war costs all that it can. All that can be extorted or borrowed is cast into the melting pot, for the sake of self-preservation or for the sake of victory. If the nations had any more to give war would demand it. The king could extort, but there are limits to extortion. The nation could borrow, and to borrowing there is but one limit, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... In the name of Sparta he exercised almost uncontrolled authority in the cities he had reduced, including Athens itself. But it was soon discovered that, instead of the freedom promised by the Spartans, only another empire had been established, whilst Lysander was even meditating to extort from the subject cities a yearly tribute of one thousand talents. And all these oppressions were rendered still more intolerable by the overweening pride and harshness ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... descend the Point toward the river-bank. As he went, a new desire sprang up within him—to speak with Strangeways; if possible to make a compact and extort some approving sign from that dead man. Stepping into the canoe, he pushed off lightly and set out for the bend. The nearer he drew, the sterner his face became; he was thinking of what he should say, and one has to be careful in what he says in speaking with a man ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... went on Mrs. Wade, "as if Northway really had no intention of using his power to extort money. To be sure, your own income is not to be despised by a man in his position; but most rascals would have gone to Mr. Quarrier.—He is still in love with you, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... rich ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the temple of Coricancha. Indignant at the concealment of their treasures, they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture, and endeavoured to extort from them a confession of their hiding-places. *39 They invaded the repose of the sepulchres, in which the Peruvians often deposited their valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... the conditions of their tenure were such as to preclude both the independence of action and the accumulation of resources which is essential to absolutism. As early as 1282 the nobles were able to extort from the crown a haandfaestning, or charter, and almost every sovereign after that date was compelled, once at least during his reign, to make a grant of chartered privileges. To the Danehof, or ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... French King at Lyons, "to entreat him to explain the cause of these affronts, and to advise him, as a good master, how he had better act." [20] But this somewhat servile proceeding produced no adequate result, as his envoy received only ambiguous answers, and all he could accomplish was to extort a promise from Henri III that on his return to Paris he would discuss the affair with the Queen-mother and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... be allowed for genius. Trefusis warmly replied that genius cost its possessor nothing; that it was the inheritance of the whole race incidentally vested in a single individual, and that if that individual employed his monopoly of it to extort money from others, he deserved nothing better than hanging. The artist lost his temper, and suggested that if Trefusis could not feel that the prerogative of art was divine, perhaps he could understand that a painter was not such a fool as to design a tomb ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... like these stipulations. He had calculated to extort a price for his information only. The proving of his charge was a matter which would entail time and trouble, and something else which he did not care to contemplate; besides, he wanted to get away. His recollection of his recent interview with Iredale ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the papers) All that I could extort from him is as follows.—He will give me time, and this negotiable paper in exchange for stock.—Also notes for forty-seven thousand francs, to be collected from a man named Michonnin, a gentleman broker, not considered very solvent, who may be a crook but has a very rich aunt ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... colonists collect, frequently accumulate in their stores for a year and a half, before it becomes worth the while of the captain of any of the vessels which frequent the colony, to give them ship-room; and even then they do it as a matter of favour, not forgetting, however, to extort an exorbitant return for their kindness and condescension. The owners, indeed, of these vessels are so well aware of the inability of the colony to furnish them with cargoes on freight, that they generally manage before their ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... accounting for the trust funds which the complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... known his business. After bestowing a thousand anathemas upon his red brethren, he informed us that he had left the red man forever, and was willing to join his white brothers, and to wage an exterminating warfare against his own kindred. We strove to extort from him the cause of this ebullition of passion, but he only shook his head in reply to our questions, and uttered a guttural "ough." We at first suspected him of some treacherous plot; but there was such an air of candor ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... another brother, followed the fortunes of the Marquis of Exeter, and was 'a great sufferer for his inviolable fidelity to his noble master.' So firm was his devotion that even torture failed to extort from him a confession that the Marquis and 'the Lady Elizabeth' had been involved in Wyatt's conspiracy. His 'invincible resolution' asserted their innocence, even on the rack, and Queen Elizabeth later recognized this splendid loyalty by making him 'one of the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... madam, that I am wealthy—far wealthier than was ever my Lord Ostermore, as my friends Collis, Stapleton and many another can be called to prove. What need, then, had I to extort?" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... hand with a look of appeal that somehow touched her, for she gave me hers at once, and even eagerly. I held it for a while in mine, and gazed into her eyes. It was she who first tore her hand away, and, forgetting all about her request and the promise she had sought to extort, ran at the top of her speed, and without turning, till she was out of sight. And then I knew that I loved her, and thought in my glad heart that she—she herself—was not indifferent to my suit. Many a time she ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... defenders have been warned of their coming, and attempt to starve them into submission. In the old days it was not uncommon for a strong party of Kayans to descend upon a settlement of the more peaceable coastwise people, and to extort from them a large payment of brass-ware as the price of their safety. If the unfortunate household submitted to this extortion, the Kayans would keep faith with them, and would ratify a treaty of peace by making the headman of the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... trip, others with heavy, slow tread, some shyly. Often you could guess their trades by the look of them. You learnt in what way to put your questions so that they should be understood, you discovered on what subjects nearly all lied, and by what inquiries you could extort the truth notwithstanding. You saw the different way people took the same things. The diagnosis of dangerous illness would be accepted by one with a laugh and a joke, by another with dumb despair. Philip found that he was less shy with these people than he had ever been with others; he felt not ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... difficulties in our path; first, to make the plant itself consent to give its evidence; second, through plant and instrument combined, to induce it to give it in writing. It is comparatively easy to make a rebellious child obey: to extort answers from plants is indeed a problem! By many years of close contiguity, however, I have come to have some understanding of their ways. I take this opportunity to make public confession of various acts ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... crowds wield a very despotic authority, and this despotism indeed is a condition of their obtaining a following. It has often been remarked how easily they extort obedience, although without any means of backing up their authority, from the most turbulent section of the working classes. They fix the hours of labour and the rate of wages, and they decree strikes, which are begun and ended at ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... an eddy of emotions. It seemed dreadful that Carnac should fight his own father, repeating what Fabian had done in another way. Yet at the bottom of her heart there was a secret joy. Some native revolt in her had joy in the thought that the son might extort a price for her long ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... inner town, consisted of thirty-seven thousand houses, and was built on twenty islands, connected by ninety-eight stone bridges. The important privileges which in the course of several centuries this city had contrived to extort from its rulers fostered in its inhabitants a spirit of independence, which not unfrequently degenerated into riot and license, and naturally brought it in collision with the Austrian-Spanish government. And it was exactly this bold spirit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... own sakes, were often obliged to connive at the evasion of laws so extremely severe, and which introduced much difficulty in their dealings with Catholics; but, when any Protestant wished to be revenged upon a Catholic, or to extort money from him, he found in these laws a ready instrument for his purpose. By an additional Act, in 1726, it was ordained that a Roman Catholic priest, marrying a Protestant to a Catholic, should suffer death; ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... l'Abbe Jean Cavelier, MS.] When they crossed the tropic, the sailors made ready a tub on deck to baptize the passengers, after the villanous practice of the time; but La Salle refused to permit it, to the disappointment and wrath of all the crew, who had expected to extort a bountiful ransom, in money and liquor, from their victims. There was an incessant chafing between the two commanders; and when at length, after a long and wretched voyage, they reached St. Domingo, Beaujeu showed clearly that he was, to say the least, utterly indifferent to the interests ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of Korea at this time was simply an organized system of robbery and extortion—wearing not even the mask of justice. The undisguised aim of officialdom was to extort money from the people; and the aim of the high-born Korean youth (or yang-ban) was to pass the royal examination in Chinese classics, which was requisite to make him eligible for official position, and then join the horde of vampires who fed upon the people. At irregular intervals there were ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... an arbitrary break in an action which we see continuing, after the curtain has fallen. And, as in "Fedora," Duse comes into the play resolved to do what the author has not done. Does she deliberately choose the plays most obviously not written for her in order to extort a triumph out of her enemies? Once more she acts consciously, openly, making every moment of an unreal thing real, by concentrating herself upon every moment as if it were the only one. The result is a performance ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... He flashed a glance at his companion. Saunders possessed the huckster's heart, and took pleasure in selling indifferent pork and third-grade flour at the highest prices he could possibly extort. The clink of the dollar was music to him; but it was perfectly clear that he could hold his own, on occasion, with a very tenacious hand. The man was resolutely quiet and evidently quite ready to meet the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... far-famed Edenton Tea Party, held at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King, on October 25, 1774. This famous gathering of the Edenton women was convened for the purpose of protesting against the tax on tea, which England had lately begun to extort from the colonies, and also for heartily endorsing the work of the first people's Convention, which, at the call of John Harvey, had met at New ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... position of despots. They have been despotic because they ruled in an area where they had too much common sense to attempt to be constitutional. You cannot grant a constitution to a nursery; nor can babies assemble like barons and extort a Great Charter. Tommy cannot plead a Habeas Corpus against going to bed; and an infant cannot be tried by twelve other infants before he is put in the corner. And as there can be no laws or liberties in a nursery, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... attracted, having totally subdued that country, built Milan, Verona, Brescia, and several other considerable towns, and governed with such tyrannic sway, especially over the nobility, whose riches they coveted and sought by every means to extort from them, that most of the principal families, joining under the conduct of Rhaetus[F], one of the most distinguished personages among them, retired with the best part of their effects and attendants among the steepest mountains of the Alps, near ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... same time very glorious to the cause of Christianity; declaring, that any Christian who may first come, shall oblige these false gods to confess publicly, that they are but devils; and consenting that this Christian shall be immediately killed, if he does not extort such a confession from the mouth of these gods. Nisi se daemones confessi fuerint Christiano mentiri non audentes, ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite. St. Austin likewise makes frequent mention of this deity. "What is now," says he,(512) "become of Coelestis, whose ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... cases, the buildings and improvements of other proprietors. They then prosecuted these proprietors for having encroached, as they called it, upon the crown lands, and the Star Chamber assessed very heavy fines upon them. The people said all this was done merely to get pretexts to extort money from the nation, to make up for the want of a Parliament to assess regular taxes; but the government said it was a just and legal mode of protecting the ancient and ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... either in their independent systems, or in the systems of the schools, steered clear of the vulgar errors of mythologists. They have in every age introduced into nature active causes without contact, continuity, or proximity; and, even in our days, continue to extort worship towards the unseen and occult powers of attraction or sympathy, and of repulsion or antipathy! It is true, they say that such words only express results or phenomena, and others equivocate by saying there is in no case any contact:—but I reply, that to give ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... hot water stiffened with flour; or I must make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my delicate organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an iron- bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie. While thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... accord with the teachings of Rome. In the absence of overt acts, it was difficult to reach the secret thoughts of the sectary. Trained experts were needed whose sole business it should be to unearth the offenders, and extort ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... these officers, from a just regard to their safety, fled to the seat of Government, it being avowed that the motives to such outrages were to compel the resignation of the inspector, to withstand by force of arms the authority of the United States, and thereby to extort a repeal of the laws of excise and an alteration in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... same as on the previous night, and we were more and more confirmed in our opinion, that, next to the sea or a navigable river, a railway is the pleasantest object in a rural view. As to the impostors who extort thousands of pounds from the unhappy shareholders, on the pretext that the line will be injurious to their estates, they ought at once to be sent to Brixton for obtaining money under false pretences. It gives a greatly increased value to their lands, as may be seen by the superior ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
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