"Assassin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a pistol handy I would blow out his brains, and if not I would give him my purse and call him a scoundrelly assassin." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... off conquerer? There is only one answer to that question, for the battle is one between the pigmy and the giant. The contest grows sharper as the months go on, and the people are in constant alarm. Murders are common, and even Buckingham, the favorite minister, dies at the point of the assassin's knife, and the murderer goes to the Tower and the scaffold accompanied by the tumultuous cheers of London. Soon comes the Parliament of 1629, in which the popular leaders make their great remonstrance against the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... The assassin was marvellously nimble; although Jack made a dart after him pistol in hand, meaning to wreak summary vengeance upon him, the ruffian ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Fernand, but he blinked as he spoke. "For a feat of imagination as great as that I have only a silent admiration. But, if you have some insane idea that John Mark, a gentleman I know and respect greatly, is lurking like an assassin outside ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... assassin appropriation run out? Have the assassins struck for higher wages, or are you simply careless?" demanded the First Consul. "I warn you, sir, that I wish no excuses, and I will add that unless an attempt is made on my life before ten o'clock to- night, you lose your place. The French people must be ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... by no means the implacable character of an assassin; he was only feeble and cowardly; yet he had committed abominable crimes. All his guilt came from the first feeling of envy with which he regarded Sauvresy, and which he had not taken the pains to subdue. Laurence, when, on the day that ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... boy carrying a basket of grapes and peaches, also wine to refill the empty bottles in the boat. On my way down the hill, I stopped at the ruin of a mediaeval castle that belonged to Poltrot de Mr, the assassin of the Due de Guise. All this country of the Angoumois, even more than Prigord, is full of the history of the religious wars of the sixteenth century. The whole of the southwestern region of France might be termed the classic ground of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... bawled me out worse than ever. He said I was not only a wild Welshman and a blockhead, but what is more deadly still, I was a gorilla and an assassin. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... holidays?" said Mrs. Peyton, with uneasy quickness. "John, you surely cannot expect her ever to meet this common creature again, with his vulgar ways. His wretched associates like that Jim Hooker, and, as you yourself admit, the blood of an assassin, duelist, and—Heaven knows what kind of a pirate his father wasn't at the last—in his veins! You don't believe that a lad of this type, however much of his father's ill-gotten money he may have, can be fit company for your daughter? You never could have ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... day of surprises. This tribute from the murdered man to his assassin was one of them. People looked in one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... admitted (it is so admitted, under all governments and all churches) that murder and torture form an indispensable element in the life of all, and that there must always be special men trained to kill their fellows, and that any one of us may have to become such a trained assassin. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Mr. Gladstone was with the Radicals, Dilke and Chamberlain, and against those who wanted to revenge upon the whole Irish nation, the plots of the "Invincibles," then being exposed by the evidence of James Carey, the Phoenix Park assassin, who had ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... mad'm," said he impressively," mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... rain beats on the windows, M. Joyeuse falls into reverie. And suddenly the colossus opposite, whose face is kind after all, is very much surprised to see the little man change colour, look at him and grind his teeth, look at him with ferocious eyes, an assassin's eyes. Yes, with the eyes of a veritable assassin, for at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible dream. He sees one of his daughters sitting there opposite him, by the side of this giant brute, and the wretch has put his arm round her ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... discovered the perfidy of the African magician, she could not help shewing, by marks of the greatest indignation, how much she detested him; and when her son had finished his story, she broke out into a thousand reproaches against that vile impostor. She called him perfidious traitor, barbarian, assassin, deceiver, magician, and an enemy and destroyer of mankind. "Without doubt, child," added she, "he is a magician, and they are plagues to the world, and by their enchantments and sorceries have commerce with the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... New York murder might even at that moment be somewhere taking place; and that no murder of the whole homicidal year could have such proper circumstance; they morbidly wondered what that day's murder would be, and in what swarming tenement- house, or den of the assassin streets by the river-sides,—if indeed it did not befall in some such high, close-shuttered, handsome dwelling as those they passed, in whose twilight it would be so easy to strike down the master and leave him undiscovered and unmourned by the family ignorantly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets: "revolting,"—"inhuman and not to be justified,"—"acts of barbarity and cruelty,"—"acts of atrocity,"—"this course of proceeding dignifies the rebel and the assassin with the sanctity of martyrdom." And he ends by threatening martial law upon all future transgressors. Such general orders are not issued except in rather extreme cases. And in the parallel columns of the newspaper the innocent editor prints equally indignant descriptions of Russian ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... courage. I have shewn myself deliberative and calm in the midst of peril. I have hazarded my own life, for the preservation of another, but now was I confused and panic struck. I have not lived so as to fear death, yet to perish by an unseen and secret stroke, to be mangled by the knife of an assassin was a thought at which I shuddered; what had I done to deserve to be made ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... look at Kanus' hired assassin." The newsmen turned toward Odal, who stood before his booth, quietly chatting with ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... beauty, some of a perverted and monstrous taste. The lords of the Church nodded, looked sleepily or alertly benevolent. At times all alike turned mere populace. Courtesans thronged, the robber and the assassin found their prey. All men and women who might entertain, ever so coarsely, ever so poorly, were here at market. Mummers and players, musicians, dancers, jugglers, gipsies, and fortune-tellers floated thick as May-flies. Voices, voices, and every musical instrument—but all set in a certain range, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... rather than to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. [185] But, in the character of a legislator, he respected the prejudices of the times; and, instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards the Pompeian and Julian, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... since there can exist no excuse or reason in the light of which this sin may appear as a human weakness. Because slander is the fruit of deliberate criminal spite, jealousy and revenge, it has a character of diabolism. The calumniator is not only a moral assassin, but he is the most accomplished type of the coward known to man. If the devil loves a cheerful liar, he has one here to ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... there has come, and with increasing rapidity is coming, into existence a society which includes within its limits the total population of the earth and is so intimately bound together that the speculation of a grain merchant in Chicago may increase the price of bread in Bombay, while the act of an assassin in a provincial town in the Balkans has been sufficient to plunge the world into a war which changed the political map of three continents and cost the lives, in Europe ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... What? did La Fayette fall before my power? And did I conquer Roland's spotless virtues? The fervent eloquence of Vergniaud's tongue? And Brissot's thoughtful soul unbribed and bold? Did zealot armies haste in vain to save them? 60 What! did th' assassin's dagger aim its point Vain, as a dream of murder, at my bosom? And shall I dread the soft luxurious Tallien? Th' Adonis Tallien? banquet-hunting Tallien? Him, whose heart flutters at the dice-box? Him, 65 Who ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "equal shares in all they should pillage and rob," and told them that they should come with him to Jamaica at the end of the cruise. These terms suited the three robbers very well. One of them, "a wicked fellow," "the greatest rogue, thief and assassin among them," who had deserved rather "to be broken alive upon a wheel than punished with serving in a garrison," was the spokesman of the trio. He was the Dubosc of that society, "and could domineer and command over them," "they not daring to refuse obedience." ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Putois. Very well! He has a bad face. You had been very careless, you and your wife, to employ him. I understand physiognomy, and though I only saw his back, I could swear that he is a robber, and perhaps an assassin. The rims of his ears are flat, and that is a sign that never fails.'—'Ah! you noticed that the rims of his ears were flat?'—'Nothing escapes me. My dear Monsieur Bergeret, if you do not wish to be assassinated with your wife and your children, do not let Putois come into your ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... up the steps as in a dream, neither slowly nor fast. No one was ever more unhappy, though he scarcely felt as yet the depths of his own humiliation. It was more like a stab—a numbing assassin-like stab. He could hear the beatings of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... too late. Only a woman and a manservant were found there. The assassin had fled by the back of the house, where a horse was standing in waiting. It is said that the house belongs to the ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the long, dreary farce of the "Peace Commission." And at what a price! There lay the noble Canby prone upon his face, cold and still in death; having breasted the hurricane of many a well-fought field to fall at last by the treacherous, assassin hand of a prowling savage to whom he had come upon a mission of peace and friendship. There was another of the Commissioners, a man of peace, a preacher of the gospel of eternal love, stricken down with ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... to the Court of France, whence he returned to bring the news of the death of the Duke of Anjou to William. At that time the Prince was living with his court in the convent of St. Agata, where he received Balthazar alone in his chamber. The moment was opportune, but the would-be assassin had no arms ready. William gave him a small sum of money and bade him hold himself in readiness to be ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... on my soul, A grave digger, an assassin! Who would kill my daughter after my wife. I hear the jingle of his golden vials, From me let him ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach
... throat. I struggled to free myself, but in vain. His grip tightened. In a few moments I would have been lifeless. But, just at the instant when consciousness was about leaving me, the guardian of the night appeared. With a single stroke of his heavy mace, he laid the midnight robber and assassin senseless upon the floor. ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... the same clothes, as when she saw him last. He had evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly to meet her. But in his haste he stumbled slightly; she reflected suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came over her. And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling around—only this unhappy fugitive. A momentary color came into her cheek; her coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of sauciness in her voice that ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... have several mathematical, astronomical, medical and chemical terms as alcohol, alcove, alembic, algebra, alkali, almanac, assassin, azure, cipher, elixir, harem, hegira, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Marcus Iunius Brutus, the future assassin of Caesar, adopted by his uncle, Q. Servilius Caepio. The father of Lentulus was flamen Martialis (L. Lentulus), in Vat. Sec. 25. Paullus is L. AEmilius ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in his own house, but still survives, and his son was wounded, supposed fatally. It is believed, by persons capable of judging, that other high officers were designed to share the same fate. Thus it seems that our enemy, despairing of meeting us in open, manly warfare, begins to resort to the assassin's tools. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... travellers with an unfavourable opinion of the moral character of the people amongst whom they were then residing, but on this evening of the Sabbath, a Fantee was robbed of his effects, and stabbed by an assassin below the ribs, so that his life was despaired of. The most unlucky part, however, of this tragical affair to Richard Lander, was, that the natives, from some cause, which he could not divine, had imbibed ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Foxe here makes is in saying that the priest was Sir John Cheltham. The would-be assassin harangued his victim before dealing the blow, and then struck home so forcibly that the priest fell as if dead. A tumult arose, the multitude thinking that the Spaniards were attacking them. Flower was apprehended, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the leader of the conspirators, was not himself of a crazy criminal type. He was a fine, soldier-like fellow, who had fought and suffered for his country's independence, and he had many friends in England among lovers of Italy who never suspected that he was the kind of man to turn into an assassin. When it was discovered that the plot had been hatched in London and the bombs made in Birmingham, a feverish resentment seized the whole French Army. Addresses were sent by many regiments congratulating Napoleon on his escape, in which London was described as ce repaire d'assassins ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... in very truth one of Fortune's favorites: five times elected a member of the House of Representatives, three times Governor of his State, and twice elevated to the Presidency. He was the third of our Presidents to fall by the hand of an assassin. His tragic death is yet fresh ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of all, I struck for my King, yet I feel myself an assassin. If I am, indeed, a murderer in Thy sight, wither me where I stand, and crush me to the ground, companion ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... thing. I've come here to tell you what I think of you, and I mean to do it before I go. You've abused such talents as you've been gifted with, sir; gone out of your way to attack a man who never did you any harm. You're a hired literary assassin—that's my opinion of you! I'm not going to take any legal proceeding against you—I'm not such a fool. If I was a younger man, I might take the law, in the shape of a stout horse-whip, into my own hands; ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... warning, if my father comes to a violent end by sword or pistol, or if he dies by the hand of a ruffian, or by the more secret way of poison, I shall not be at a loss to know the first author of it: I shall consider you as the assassin; I shall treat you as such; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's chair; and I tell you it in his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall keep my word." No further attempt was made upon the Duke ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... throng much more cautiously and considerately than his relatives had done, though not, apparently, because he loved the crowd. He used some singularly biting insults to help clear the way, and frowned as though every other man he looked at were either an assassin or—what a good Mohammedan considers worse—an infidel. He reached the long brick wall at last—broke into a canter—scattered the pariah dogs that were nosing and quarreling about the corpse of the Maharati, and drew rein fifteen minutes later by the door of the tiny ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... for this, the same as for everything else outside of the Kaiser. The swell-dressed assassin with the ladies, which writes such beautiful figures and knows offhand how much is thirty-three times eighty, is fast joinin' the list of non-essential industrials. They got a machine now which can count better ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... of Jaffa is said to have pointed the dagger which was aimed at the heart of the English prince by the hand of an assassin. The wretch, as the bearer of letters, was admitted into the chamber of Edward, who, not suspecting treachery, received several severe wounds before he could dash the assailant to the floor and despatch him with his sword. But ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?" What stories did we not believe of him?—what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?—we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, be ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perished caravans in desert sands. History relates, and tradition embalms, a sad incident of the era of the Council of Ten, when an innocent boy was seized, tried and executed for the murder of a nobleman, whose real assassin confessed the crime many years subsequent. In commemoration of the public horror manifested, when the truth was published, Venice decreed that henceforth a crier should proclaim in the Tribunal just before a death sentence was pronounced, 'Ricordatevi del povero Marcolini! remember the poor Marcolini;' ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... irresistible need to massacre that is in us. It is not enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too. Long ago this need was satisfied by human sacrifices. Now the requirements of social life have made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin! But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of death, we relieve ourselves, from time to time, by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... when the Angels met Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw The field Pavilion'd with his Guardians bright; Nor that which on the flaming Mount appeerd In Dothan, cover'd with a Camp of Fire, Against the Syrian King, who to surprize One man, Assassin-like had levied Warr, Warr unproclam'd. The Princely Hierarch 220 In thir bright stand, there left his Powers to seise Possession of the Garden; hee alone, To finde where Adam shelterd, took his way, Not unperceav'd of Adam, who to Eve, While ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... servant Leporello to occupy her attention while he pays court to Zerlina, a peasant girl, who is about to marry an honest clodhopper named Masetto. Donna Anna now recognises Don Giovanni as her father's assassin, and communicates her discovery to her lover, Don Ottavio; Elvira joins them, and the three vow vengeance against the libertine. Don Giovanni gives a ball in honour of Zerlina's marriage, and in the course of the festivities seizes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... down on a rock, took a restrained drink from his canteen, and said everything he knew or could invent that was profane and condemnatory of his luck, of the unseen assassin, of the country and his present predicament. He got up, looked all around him, sniffed unavailingly for some tang of smoke in the thin, crisp air, reseated himself and said everything ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... thousand armed guards. Pausanias indeed was noble, and known to the prince, but Ferdinand of Spain was stabbed in the neck by a poor and miserable Spaniard; and though the wound was not mortal, it sufficed to show that neither courage nor opportunity were wanting to the would-be-assassin. A Dervish, or Turkish priest, drew his scimitar on Bajazet, father of the Sultan now reigning, and if he did not wound him, it was from no lack either of daring or of opportunity. And I believe that there are many who in their minds desire the deed, no punishment or danger attending ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... firmly that she would not divulge anything, a struggle took place for a paper which she picked off a table; and before her attendants could come to her assistance she received a severe cut from a stiletto. The assassin was seized, condemned, and ordered for execution, without the last offices of the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... his family, and friends. Only once had his eye flashed fire and his cheek burned, and his right hand unconsciously sought where his weapon should have hung, when his noble brother was termed a ribald assassin, an excommunicated murderer; but quickly he checked that natural emotion, and remained collected as before. He was silent till the usual question was asked, "If he had any thing to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him?" and then he made a step forward, looked boldly ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... of the Guises frustrated this plan by a most fearful expedient. They easily induced Catherine de' Medici to believe that she was being deceived by Coligny, and an assassin was engaged to put him out of the way; but the scoundrel missed his aim and only wounded his victim. Fearful lest the young king, who was faithful to Coligny, should discover her part in the attempted murder, the queen mother invented ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... bad, the rulers who sprang from the soil, from the peasant stock of Libu[vs]a's choosing, had been of the people and had on the whole served their people's interests. With Wenceslaus III murdered by an unknown assassin while on his way to Poland, the male line of the P[vr]emysl dynasty died out. It continued in the indirect line by the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of Wenceslaus II, with Rudolph, a grandson of the Habsburg who dealt the death-blow to Bohemia's ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... say. These Orientals contrive to surround themselves with such an atmosphere of mystery. But from what I know of Prince Shan," he went on, "I do not think that he is one to shirk danger—even from the assassin's dagger." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guardian angel hesitates; he has just knocked at the door of this house, in order to frighten away a fatal and shameful passion! He inspired Brigitte with the idea of flight; at this moment he may be whispering in her ear his final warning. O you assassin! You murderer! beware! it is a matter of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... instructions to let the wagon train (an especially troublesome one) pass as quietly as possible, but these instructions were not received and Hamblin learned on the way home, of the massacre. The information came personally from John D. Lee, the assassin-in-chief. In Hamblin's autobiography is written, "The deplorable affair caused a sensation of horror and deep regret throughout the entire community, by whom ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... pas, dans la sanglante rage D'un ressentiment inhumain, Souiller sa cause et votre ouvrage. Ah! ne le laissez pas sans conseil et sans frein, Armant, pour soutenir ses droits si legitimes, La torche incendiaire et le fer assassin, Venger ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... information about birth control, and be convicted for the offence, would be legally a criminal. Morally he or she would be a high-minded humanitarian. A man who would throw a bomb at the Russian Czar or at a murderous pogrom-inciting Russian Governor would be considered an assassin, and if caught would be hanged; and in making up the pedigree of such a family, a narrow-minded eugenist would be apt to say that there was criminality in that family. But as a matter of fact, that "assassin" may have belonged to ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... infallibly causing, for their own benefit or their own pleasure, a certain annual number of human deaths; that, therefore, the choice given to every man born into this world is, simply, whether he will be a labourer, or an assassin; and that whosoever has not his hand on the Stilt of the plough, has it on ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... glass, An oval mirror framed in ebony: And, dim and deep,—investing all the room With ghostly life of woven women and men, And strange fantastic gloom, where shadows live,— Dark tapestry,—which in the gusts—that twinge A grotesque cresset's slender star of light— Seems moved of cautious hands, assassin-like, That wait the hour. She alone, deep-haired As rosy dawn, and whiter than a rose, Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love, Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon, Like Danae within the golden shower. Seated beside her aromatic rest, In rapture musing on her loveliness, Her ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... brutally unjust and unkind, expressed in blood-curdling cartoons representing the Socialist as a bomb-throwing assassin. According to the one view, Socialists were all sordid, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... myself to remind your majesty that had M. d'Herblay wished to carry out his character of an assassin, he could very easily have assassinated your majesty this morning in the forest of Senart, and all would have been over." ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... way of compromise to banish those whose lives were threatened; armed men were in the very palace of government, and we ourselves at their mercy. Accident, however, effected at a stroke what we could have done only slowly and with difficulty. An assassin attempted the life of a carbineer; his companions, inflamed with anger, pursued him and caught him in a church. They then volunteered their most resolute efforts at repression. They were ordered to sally forth, arrest and disarm the ruffians. The dragoons seconded them; young Pepoli, commandant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... other, "and I knew before I came that it might be urged against me here; but I did not think that Lord Portland would urge it. However that may be, I came fully prepared to do what I think right, and as nothing, not even the cause to which I am most attached, would induce me to become an assassin or to wink at cold-blooded murder, so, sir, nothing on earth will induce me to betray others to the death which I do not fear myself. At all events, the truth of what I have told may be positively relied upon; and that I ask no ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the vicious habits and abandoned character of Major Sanford to have more pernicious effects on society than the perpetrations of the robber and the assassin. These, when detected, are rigidly punished by the laws of the land. If their lives be spared, they are shunned by society, and treated with every mark of disapprobation and contempt. But, to the disgrace ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... began to detest her lover and to seek out every possible pretext for hating him more. And her thoughts recurred to her daughter, to the loss of her child, to the cause of her death, and she persuaded herself that he had killed her. She looked upon him as an assassin. She conceived a horror of him, she avoided him, fled from him as from the evil genius of her life, with the terror that one has of a person who is ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... motives both of suspicion and of 64 hatred (Dolabella had married his divorced wife Petronia), summoned Dolabella by letter to avoid the crowded thoroughfare of the Flaminian road and to turn off to Interamnium,[364] where he gave orders for his murder. The assassin found the journey tedious; discovered his victim sleeping on the floor at a wayside inn, and cut his throat. This gave the new government a very bad name. People took it as a specimen of what to expect. Triaria's shameless behaviour was further emphasized by the exemplary behaviour of her relative ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... to strike a blow, he skulked behind the protection of his position. He made of the judicial robe an assassin's disguise. On the bench, he was free to sate his thirst for others' sufferings—adding to a sentence five undeserved years here, ten there; slipping into his instructions to juries a phrase that would ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... told him how it had happened and we had a hearty laugh. He was the most lovable of men. That such a man should have fallen a victim to the blow of an assassin defies explanation, as did the murders of Lincoln and Garfield, like McKinley, amiable, kindly men giving never cause ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... that Jennariello deserved to die. The prayers of Liviella were all unavailing to soften the heart of the King, who said, "You do not love me, wife, for you have more regard for your brother-in-law than for my life. You have seen with your own eyes this dog of an assassin come with a sword that would cut a hair in the air to kill me; and if the bedpost (the column of my life) had not protected me, you would at this moment have been a widow." So saying, he gave orders that justice ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... and they tremble and cower, and stab as they lurk from behind, Like shapes from a pit Acherontic by hatred and horror made blind. These are not the soldiers of Freedom; the hearts of her lovers grow faint When the name of assassin is chanted as one with the name of a saint. And thou the pale poet of Passion, who art wanton to strike and to kill, Lest her wrath and her splendour abash thee and scorch thee and crush thee, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... had not gone four steps before he heard the voices mentioned by the dervish, though he could see nobody. Some said: "Where is that fool going? Where is he going? What would he have? Do not let him pass." Others: "Stop him, catch him, kill him:" and others with a voice like thunder: "Thief! assassin! murderer!" while some in a gibing tone cried: "No, no, do not hurt him; let the pretty fellow pass, the cage and bird ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... The assassin hurried away like a man driven mad with grief upon grief; and Dante now beheld a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for the testimony of a good conscience—that best of friends, which gives a man assurance of himself under the breastplate of a spotless innocence[36]—he should be ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... danger— perhaps is already no more! oh, speed for his aid! rescue him, if possible; if too late, avenge him! if he still lives, I suspect the place of his confinement, and can guide you thither: if this bloody deed is already accomplished, at least let us punish the crimes of his assassin, the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... anywhere, those who had murdered Aaron Norman were lurking in the cellar. But the trap-door would not open, and then she remembered that it was closed by a bolt underneath. She could not reach the midnight assassin that way. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... sweetly beautiful as the little vivid beauty he had left in the other room. The man of the world paused and instinctively exclaimed in wonder. He had been told that it was a little gamin who had saved his daughter from the assassin's bullet, but the features of this child were as delicately chiseled, his form as finely modeled, his hair as soft and fine as any scion of a noble house might boast. He, like the nurse, had the feeling that a young god lay before him. It was so that ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... under Fairly Park, I did not know you. I can give you a medical certificate that since then I have been in the doctor's hands. I know you now. I call upon you to meet me, with what weapons you like best, to prove that you are not a midnight assassin. The place shall be where you choose to appoint. If you decline I will make you publicly acknowledge what you have done. If you answer, that I am not a gentleman and you are one, I say that you have attacked me in the dark, when I was on horseback, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... countenance. He had escaped most narrowly. The coachman, happening to be intoxicated, drove more rapidly than was his custom.[38] The engine exploded half a minute after the carriage had passed it—killing twenty persons, wounding fifty-three (among whom was St. Regent, the assassin who fired the train), and shattering the windows of several houses on both ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... tiny hands in supplication, kneels on a cushion. The age of the children shows the picture to have been painted about 1496. The fate of Ludovico il Moro is well known: perhaps the blessed Virgin deemed a traitor and an assassin unworthy of her protection. He died in the frightful prison of Loches after twelve years of captivity; and both his sons, Maximilian and Francesco, were unfortunate. With them the family of Sforza and the independence of Milan were ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... but as though the matter were utterly indifferent to him. "Has he killed anybody, the assassin?" The journalist ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... with the racket, me dear, for ye did howl after all. We heard you right up in the schoolroom. You're not the hero you thought yourself, to mistake an innocent gentleman for a midnight assassin." ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of Afghans, had, by their extraordinary valor, gained the greatest advantages over the Lesghis; and Nadir was hastening by the way of Mazandaran to their support, when, pursuing his march through one of the forests in that country, a ball from an assassin, who had concealed himself behind a tree, wounded him in the hand and killed his horse. The Prince, Reza Kuli, who was near him, galloped toward the spot from which the shot had been fired; but neither his efforts nor those of his guards that aided him could succeed in the attempts to seize the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... his blandest manner, "if report be true, a cruel fate has removed him for a while from thy embrace. Young, brave, and amiable, he was the darling of our troops, and fortune seemed to lead our gallant young captain to a brilliant career; but some foul assassin's hand has cut the flower ere it bloomed; destiny, as cruel as it has been mysterious, has darkened his sun ere yet it shone in the zenith ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the son of his only brother, a person entirely dependent on his uncle. Lord Lilburne allowed him L1000. a year and kept him always abroad in a diplomatic situation. He looked upon his successor as a man who wanted power, but not inclination, to become his assassin. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the perversion of all ideas, this fearful evil, the corrupting of all notions; vice, in truth, is taken for virtue, virtue counted for vice. At last, in some cities of this unhappy Italy, men have come to make in truth an apotheosis of the cut-throat and the assassin. Praise and honour are lavished on the most villainous of men and actions, while at the same time endurance in the faith and even episcopal resolution in maintaining the holy rights of that faith, and its provident blessings, are stigmatized ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... smiled in a very peculiar way when he had said these words. And, as she recalled this, her heart sank within her, and she felt as if she were going to faint. Was he not capable of anything, the wretched man, who had betrayed him so infamously,—capable even of arming an assassin? ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... I know not the subtleties of the laws, nor the intricacy of pleadings. First, let me assert that I have never robbed; but I have restored unto the plundered: I have never murdered; but I have stood between the assassin's knife and his victim. For this have I been hated and reviled by my associates, and for this is my life now threatened by those laws against which I never have offended. The man who last addressed you has told you that I ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... unexpected and daring, that the laws of the hour like those of Draco, were literally written in blood. While the dash and chivalry of the Irish prevented them from adopting the stealthy dagger of the assassin, and prompted them rather, to bold and open deeds of death, the enactments of "The Pale" as the English patch or district was termed, were absolutely of a character the most demonical. According ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... a seven days' wonder, but no clue was found as to the identity of the would-be assassin. Charlie Jackson had spent the evening with Kent. As the monotony of Levine's convalescence came on, gossip and conjecture lost interest in him. John himself would not speak of ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... thought and feeling, not to say action and aim. Now he found that he had loved a woman who would creep from her chamber, at the cost of great suffering, and almost at the risk of her life, to meet, in the night and the woods, a man no better than an assassin — probably a thief. Had he been more versed in the ways of women, or in the probabilities of things, he would have judged that the very extravagance of the action demanded a deeper explanation than what seemed to lie on the surface. Yet, although he judged Euphra ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... under the shock, swinging half way about, his hands clutching at the railing, a look of anguish and surprise upon his face. The assassin, intent, alert, would have fired again had not a by-stander felled him to the floor. The room filled instantly with excited men eager to strike, vociferous with hate; but Haney, with one palm pressed to his breast, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... sending large forces on all sides to the poor Tyrol. I cannot conceal from you that the enterprise which we are going to undertake, and to which Andreas Hofer invites us, is a dangerous one. Let me tell you that that miserable assassin and ruffian Lefebre, whom they call the Duke of Dantsic, is approaching from the north with twenty-five thousand men, and is already close to Innspruck. General Deroi, too, is coming; he intends to march through the whole Vintschgau, and force his way over the Gerlos Mountains ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... himself and Harriet soon after the event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Shelley was twice attacked upon the night of February 24 by an armed ruffian, with whom he struggled in hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, and Shelley's nightgown was shot through: but the assassin made his escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... matters, and to deliver some despatches into his own hand. While the prince was occupied in examining them, the traitorous messenger drew a dagger from his belt and stabbed him in the breast. The wound fortunately was not deep, and Edward had regained a portion of his strength. He struggled with the assassin, and put him to death with his own dagger, at the same time calling loudly for assistance.[22] His attendants came at his call, and found him bleeding profusely, and ascertained on inspection that the dagger was poisoned. Means were instantly taken to purify the wound, and an antidote was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 1. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. 2. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs and reaches ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions to the driver, but the vehicle set out at a smart pace up Broadway, turning presently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again. It was with a rapidly beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful and gifted assassin, whose analytical genius and superb self-confidence had prompted him to make me the tremendous promise of bringing me into the presence of a murderer and the New York detective in pursuit of him simultaneously. Even yet I ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... of Lord Bellasis. The friendless vagabond's lame story of finding on the Heath a dying man would not have availed him, but for the curious fact sworn to by the landlord of the Spaniards' Inn, that the murdered nobleman had shaken his head when asked if the prisoner was his assassin. The vagabond was acquitted of the murder, but condemned to death for the robbery, and London, who took some interest in the trial, considered him fortunate when his sentence was commuted to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of the company, and in due time the train having passed over it, reached its destination. Here the engine driver and his colleague were found to be in a state of great alarm, in consequence of a supposed attack being made on them by an assassin, who, they said, lay down beside the line of rails on which they had passed, and deliberately fired at them. The efficiency of the means having thus been tested, the apprehensions of the enginemen were removed, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... given me a vague idea of the nature of it, but I want something more than that, of course. I am told that three persons in one family have been done to death in a most mysterious manner, and without any clue to the assassin or his motive; indeed that the hand which strikes strikes even in the presence of others, yet remains unknown and invisible. Frankly, I never heard of but one instance which at all resembles this or—No, Mr. Narkom, it is nothing ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that time,—fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send against him. As lord of Padua he was more incredibly severe and bloody in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Paduans had been latest free, and conspired most frequently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to see, my son, whether you could aid us in discovering the real assassin—whether you can in any way account for his possession of your dagger, for your door being still, as ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... would be worth while remembering, when he had gone, that he had been gentle with her and had spared her the shame of knowing that she had married not only a selfish brute, but a coward and a would be assassin as well. He had only heard rumors of her life since he had last seen her, twelve years before, but he knew enough to be sure that she was aware of Fairfax Detlor's true character. She had known less still of his life, for since her marriage she had never set foot in Louisiana, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... the girl. Then looking up at the marble god, "I don't care for this one at all. I don't believe he knows how to shoot his arrows—no, indeed, he is a coward;—he creeps up like an assassin in the twilight. I don't approve of cowardice," she announced, and turned her back on ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... religious fanaticism to which Henry IV. fell a victim. A young man formed the design of assassinating Napoleon in order to rid Germany of one whom he considered her scourge. Rapp and Berthier were with the Emperor when the assassin was arrested, and in relating what I heard from them I feel assured that I am giving the most faithful account of all the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... that covered the ground rapidly. With a last horrified look in the water, David Cable, craven for the moment, turned and fled through the night along the broken sea wall—fled aimlessly, his eyes unseeing, his feet possessed of wings. He knew not whither he ran, only that he was an assassin ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... ruthlessly, and my people were lifting him to throw him down, when he eluded their grasp, threw himself at my feet, and confessed that his disguise was assumed with the intent to discover the sanctuary of the Baron de Monclar, the assassin of his beloved brother. "It is asserted, madame," added this man, rising, "that the Baron is confided to the Minim Fathers of Chaillot. I imagined that you were informed of it, and that by this means my family would succeed ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... he is even more so. Prowling among the rocks and shooting those who cannot tell whence the bullet comes, there is no wide gap between him and the assassin. His victims never see him, and in the ordinary course he incurs no personal danger. I believe such cases to have been very rare, but if the soldiers have occasionally shot such a man without reference ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and that duty was well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea and land. One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately after his hand had been lopped off for an offence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to fling herself on her knees, bend over the body and gaze into the face already becoming ashen. The next instant she sprang to her feet, her features drawn, her eyes blazing. Pointing to the assassin who was rushing through the crowd she begged someone to stop him, but the big pistol he ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... 1609 Philip III of Spain abandoned his father's attempt to conquer Holland and again enforce a universal religion. In 1610 Henry IV of France, who had brought peace and amity out of the savage religious wars within his own realm, fell under an assassin's knife. These two events may be accepted as marking a turn in the current of the world, a change in the thoughts of men. The next half-century saw wars indeed, bloody and bitter wars, but they were no longer primarily religious. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... depend upon the Koran nor any written code, human or divine, beyond the whim and caprice of the chief (assassin) and his gang of desperadoes. The Sultan of Pontiana has, however, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... centuries, in the struggles of the nation against the Saxon invader, led the hosts of their people to victory, and only succumbed at last when poison and treachery, and chicane had accomplished what force failed to effect; for their valor was powerless against the dagger of the assassin, as were their honesty and open-heartedness against the bad faith of England's perjured tools. Like many a noble and ancient Irish house, its scions are to-day to be found scattered through the world, in every walk of life. But though its banner no longer floats over embattled hosts, there is magic ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... our modern political warfare has equalled, in meanness and moral turpitude, this assassin-stab at the character of a public man. Washington, with proper dignity, treated it as he had done other slanders, with that contemptuous silence which it deserved. But that very silence was construed into an acknowledgment of the truth of the words of the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... no sooner left his mouth than up came a great Swede who was one of the workmen in Lloyd's, and he had Nahum Beals in a grasp as imperturbable as fate. The assassin, even with the strength of his fury of fanaticism, was as a reed in the grasp of this Northern giant. The Swede held him easily, walking him before him in a forced march. He had a hand of Nahum's in each of his, and he compelled Nahum's right hand ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the two detectives held that it had separated the assassin from his victim; that the girl had been chased around it several times before her assailant had thrown it down, suddenly sprung upon her, and delivered the fatal ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... risk—from the knife of an assassin—from the waves. No risk! But, monsieur, I can assure you my gratitude shall be in proportion to your generous gallantry. My heart tells me so;—alas, poor heart! it is filled at ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... stood more people, fierce-eyed, turbaned men, who wore great knives in their girdles. These, as they learned afterwards, were called the fedai, the sworn assassins, who lived but to do the command of their lord the great Assassin. At the end of this chancel were more curtains, beyond which was a guarded door. It opened, and on its further side they found themselves in full sunlight on an unwalled terrace, surrounded by the mighty gulf into which it was built ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... the soldier, the rope for the assassin, the fist for the rowdy; but, by Heaven! it's a ludicrous thing to squander gunpowder when insect powder will accomplish the same results. I told you, I had waited until I had the evidence," he said. "Now you are going ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... character of their published sermons, that The Star stands alone in their defence. More significant still that The Star negates all replies to them, even by a lady. "Put out the light," says the thief. "Put out the light," says the assassin. "Put out the light," says The Star; and verily if these gentlemen had their way, the light would go out in Egyptian darkness. It is wholesome doctrine, in the opinion of The Star, to deny woman's rights and negro's rights and the right of free ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
