"Atrocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expense of the defenseless inhabitants of Africa, those inhabitants would not thereby gain; on the contrary, they would lose, for they would be handed over to the tender mercies of individual traders, operating with armies of reprobate bravos, and committing every atrocity to which the civilized barbarian is prone. The European governments cannot divest themselves of responsibility in regard to Africa. They must govern there, and the best that can be hoped is that ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... humiliate us in the most abominable way. The whole family have sworn to make us blush publicly. Publicly blush! They have written to Mama to come and speak out. Now will you attend to me, Caroline? You do not credit such atrocity? I know it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the horrors that had gone before. We planned a little what was to be our future course; but even for that we did not look forward long; how could we, when every day we scarcely knew if we should see the sun go down? For Amante knew or conjectured far more than I did of the atrocity of the gang to which M. de la Tourelle belonged; and every now and then, just as we seemed to be sinking into the calm of security, we fell upon traces of a pursuit after us in all directions. Once I remember—we must have been nearly three weeks wearily ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... himself Philippe Egalit'e, and become a member of the National Convention, in giving his vote for the death of his kinsman, had read these words:—"Exclusively governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for death!" The atrocity of this vote occasioned great agitation in the -assembly; it seemed as if, by this single vote, the fate of the Monarch was irrevocably sealed. On the 6th of November, in the same year, the Duke was ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... were no allied soldiers at all, but only civilians, men, women and children, twenty thousand of them, penned like rats in a trap, without possibility of escape. Says one correspondent, describing that horror: "Words cannot depict the plight of the unhappy victims of this crowning German atrocity. Incendiary shells fired the hospital, and by the glare of a hundred fires the wounded were carried to a shelter of cellars where the whole ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... speculation, were guilty of the same crime; that Rousseau, better than they, did not erect his own criminality into a social theory, but was tolerably soon overtaken by a remorse which drove him both to confess his misdeed, and to admit that it was inexpiable; and that the atrocity of the offence owes half the blackness with which it has always been invested by wholesome opinion, to the fact that the offender was by and by the author of the most powerful book by which parental duty has been commended in ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of my native state, but soon after, on the way east, we heard of an atrocious murder committed by two Ohio men. This turned the tables on my native state, and I was compelled to confess that bad men came from Ohio as well as from other states; but, if so, Ohio people excelled in the atrocity of their crimes as well as in the excellence of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... of natives would be receivable in a case of this kind, in palliation of the offence. Although it is more than questionable how far such evidence would weigh against the white man's oath; but for the purpose of obtaining redress for a wrong, or of punishing the cruelty, or the atrocity of the European [Note 115 at end of para.], no amount of native evidence would be of the least avail. Reverse the case, and the sole unsupported testimony of a single witness, will be quite sufficient to convict even unto death, as has lately been the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... cordon of fire, but a conflagration was to be lighted which should consume every patriot's dwelling. It was an able but pitiless and bloodthirsty plan, for it would let loose upon the settler every savage atrocity and make his worst foes those of his own household. If successful, it would have strangled in fire and blood the spirit of independence in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... service this last allowed himself, while seated gloomily at dinner with the Commandant de Place, to say of his lifelong adversary: "This man does not love the emperor,"—and as his words were received in profound silence Colonel Feraud, troubled in his conscience at the atrocity of the aspersion, felt the need to back it up by a good argument. "I ought to know him," he said, adding some oaths. "One studies one's adversary. I have met him on the ground half a dozen times, as all the army knows. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... converting their sorrow into rage, follow Brutus as their leader, who from that time ceased not to solicit them to abolish the regal power. They carry Lucretia's body from her own house, and convey it into the forum; and assemble a number of persons by the strangeness and atrocity of the extraordinary occurrence, as usually happens. They complain, each for himself, of the royal villany and violence. Both the grief of the father moves them, as also Brutus, the reprover of their ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... of a hundred leagues was a nightmare. "Robberies, murders, and all kinds of atrocity were perpetrated before, behind, and on both sides" of them; but they passed through it all as if travelling along an English highway. Even when met at the entrance of the Black Pass by a man, his face covered with blood, who besought him not to enter the pass, where he had just ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... not till the ardour of his flight had abated, that Alfred could fully realise that his unhappy brother was committed to a deed of scandalous atrocity, and the discovery was hard for him to bear. The strong impression which his dream had made upon him—an impression that he was to be the means of saving his brother from some great sin— came upon him now with greater force than ever, and was of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... crime is committed in some place, attracting public attention either through the atrocity of the case or the strangeness of the criminal deed—for instance, one that is not connected with bloodshed, but with intellectual fraud—there are at once two tendencies that make themselves felt ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... atrocity!" cried Hulot, who in his fury would have given his wife's diamonds to stand in the Duc ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... written, the incredible history of Holy Russia, the history of its rulers and people—the mad caprices and horrid deeds of the Romanoffs, who, in centuries gone by, surpassed in restless melancholy and atrocity the insane Caesars, and were more to be pitied, as well as detested, than Tiberius or Nero—the nature of the landscape, the waste of steppes, the dreariness of winter, and the loneliness of summer—the barbaric extravagance of aristocratic life—the red tape, extortion, and cruelty of officers—the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... to the realization that he still lay up here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... king, and what would Choo Hoo do? How long would it be before the emperor's army could be got together again to come sweeping back and exact a dire vengeance for its defeat? Where was the weasel? What was the last atrocity Ki Ki had committed? Had anybody heard anything more of Kauc, the crow? Had Prince Tchack-tchack arrived? Had the rooks made up their mind?—and so on, till Bevis shook his head and held his hands to his ears, so tremendous ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the gifts of Heaven are inscrutable as mysterious, and education gives no clue to them. The business of the hour went on, and my attention was soon wholly taken up in the development of the gigantic guilt of the wretched culprit before me. I could not have conceived of such atrocity as I heard brought home to him, and to which, miserable man! he listened, now with a smile, now with perfect unconcern, as crime after crime was exhibited and proved. His history was a fearful one even from his boyhood; but of many offences of which he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... act of mercy, Quesada shot every prisoner he had, wounded or not. Amongst others, a Captain Bayona, who had received two desperate wounds, and was at the point of death, was dragged from his bed and shot on the public square of the village of Lacunza. Zumalacarregui might have repaid this atrocity by the slaughter of the Christino prisoners who were still in his power, but having promised them their lives, he would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... coaches, and voted for Bung. The captain's arguments, too, had produced considerable effect: the attempted influence of the vestry produced a greater. A threat of exclusive dealing was clearly established against the vestry-clerk—a case of heartless and profligate atrocity. It appeared that the delinquent had been in the habit of purchasing six penn'orth of muffins, weekly, from an old woman who rents a small house in the parish, and resides among the original settlers; on her last weekly visit, a message was conveyed to her through the medium of the cook, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... We had earnestly desired, during two terms of service in the Levant, to visit Egypt, but some untoward event had always prevented us from doing so. A threatened massacre at Damascus, some consul's squabble at Sidon or Haiffa, or some fresh atrocity reported in the course of the Cretan insurrection, or the desire on the part of our minister to have "the flag shown" at Constantinople, had invariably barred us from getting to the south. But here we were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... form a singular sect, whose object is robbery and murder, and who, like the Italian banditti, are prepared to undertake any atrocity for which they are paid. They must not, however, in any case shed blood, and dare only make away with their victim by strangling. The act is not considered as very criminal, and the murderer absolves ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... it; and his proposed second treachery is based on sound policy.—We may observe, in passing, that the self-righteous governor takes no steps to prevent, by a timely warning, the massacre of the enemy's soldiers, availing himself of the atrocity, instead, to secure a victory for his side.—Consequently, when the final doom does fall upon Barabas, we have begun to be vaguely doubtful whether it is altogether deserved. Yet we feel that it is impossible to let him live. Thus the conclusion, however horrible spectacularly, neither excites ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... it is said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the best end by ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... (whom we will now report in the first person), "the man who stands here charged, and, in the minds of nine out of ten of all present, I fearlessly affirm, justly charged, with a murder, to the deliberate atrocity of which scarce a parallel can be found in the world's black catalogue of crime,—this man, I say, is a ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... a partiality for filthy dungeons, placed the two young sons of the Duke de Nemours (beheaded in 1477), ordering, besides, that they should be taken out twice a week and beaten with birch rods, and, as a supreme measure of atrocity, he had one of their teeth extracted every three months. It was Louis XI., too, who, in 1476, ordered the famous iron cage, to be erected in one of the towers of the Bastille, in which Guillaume, Bishop of Verdun, was ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... crime was ever in her thoughts; it rose before her in all its horror and atrocity. She knew that she was lying upon her bed, at Courtornieu; and yet it seemed as if she was there in Chanlouineau's house, pouring out poison, then watching its effects, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... England began her battle against it even before the beginning of the century. The work of the philanthropists, begun as far back as 1786-87, when the Quakers, under the leadership of Clarkson and Sharpe, began to cry out against the atrocity of human bondage, now reached the public authorities, and ministers found it necessary to take heed of what the people were saying and doing. Both Pitt and Fox became abolitionists before the close of the eighteenth century. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... published, like so many flies with pins stuck through them, fastened to the paper. Poor Charles Lamb stands there, bloodless, fleshless; but we think scarcely the less of gentle Elia as we look upon him, but far less of the cruel perpetrator of the atrocity. Leigh Hunt, too, has a pin quite through his warm heart; and Stuart Mill, and many others. One wonders sometimes if Froude himself escaped, or if he were there too, like a giant bluebottle, desiccated as the rest; and was that ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... character is afforded by the action he took among the volunteers in Poydras Street. His presenting himself at their rendezvous, getting enrolled in the corps, and offering as a candidate for the captaincy, were all done under instructions, and with a design which, for wickedness and cold-blooded atrocity, was worthy of Satan himself. Had he succeeded in becoming the leader of this ill-fated band, for them the upshot might have been no worse; though it would not have been better; since it was his intention to betray them to the enemy ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... so as to leave no trail by which they could be farther traced. They had of course to give over the pursuit; and returned home, to provide more effectually against the perpetration of similar acts of atrocity and darkness. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... could see that the courthouse was filled to overflowing, and this increased my feebleness. The case was one that had occasioned considerable excitement in the community, It was one of no ordinary atrocity. This was a sufficient reason why the audience should be large. There was yet another. There were two new debutants. In a community where popular eloquence is, of all others, perhaps the most desirable talent, this circumstance was well calculated to bring many listeners. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... "The Roman Catholics," p. 375. The atrocity of such a plot seems incredible. We should have classed it at once with the Maria Monk story, and other fabulous horrors of Dr. Brownlee's Protestant Society, but that we find it in the sober and dispassionate pages of Bishop O'Gorman's History, which is derived from original sources ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... with common sense and ordinary probability, extorted also by torments of the mind or body, or both, Captain Gabriel Towerson, and nine other English merchants of consideration, were executed; and, to add insult to atrocity, the bloody cloth, on which Towerson kneeled at his death, was put down to the account of the English Company. The reader may find the whole history in the second volume of Purchas's "Pilgrim." The news of this horrible massacre reached King James, while he was negociating with the Dutch ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... that we are making war for the purpose of forcing the Government of China to admit opium into that country, and that, therefore, we richly deserve to be censured. Certainly, Sir, if we had been guilty of such absurdity and such atrocity as those gentlemen impute to us, we should deserve not only censure but condign punishment. But the imputation is altogether unfounded. Our course was clear. We may doubt indeed whether the Emperor ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... success with five hundred white troops and about the same number of Indians, led by Colonel Procter, whom Brock had placed in command of the fort at Amherstburg. Procter's name is infamous in the annals of the war. The worst traditions of Indian atrocity, uncontrolled and even encouraged, cluster about his memory. He was later promoted in rank instead of being degraded, a costly blunder which England came to regret and at last redeemed. A notoriously incompetent officer, on this one occasion of ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... describe but to whose filth and slime no words can begin to do justice—was in this case solitary. Once a day, of an afternoon and always at the time when all the men were upstairs after the second promenade (which gave the writer of this history an exquisite chance to see an atrocity at first-hand), Lena was taken out of the cabinot by three plantons and permitted a half-hour promenade just outside the door of the building, or in the same locality—delimited by barbed wire on one side and the washing-shed on another—made famous ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... young man, who was in love with the girl, grew jealous of the monk, who was allowed to converse so familiarly with her, whilst he, her lay admirer, could only have stolen glimpses of her as she passed to church or to public spectacles. He set about the ruin of his supposed rival with cunning atrocity; and, finding that the young woman was infirm in health, suborned a physician, as worthless as himself, to declare that she was pregnant. Her credulous father, without inquiring whether the intelligence was true or false, went to the superior of the convent, and accused Augustin, who, though ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... protection to the weak, seeks to overturn all law and order, and pandering to the worst passions of an ignorant and ferocious populace, goads them, by the most unfounded and mischievous statements, to the commission of crime, and then adduces the atrocity of their acts as a proof of the injustice of their treatment. Every murder is palliated, because it arises from "the occupation of land." Every brutal assassination is paraded as "a fact" for Lord Devon, and is recommended to that nobleman's attention; not that the helpless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... his insatiable stomach to the pond in which turtles are kept; and so proud were they of his deeds, that they even gave a name of honor to the bodies brought for his consumption, calling them the "Contents of the Turtle-pond." ... One man gained a great name among his people by an act of peculiar atrocity. He told his wife to build an oven, to fetch firewood for heating it, and to prepare a bamboo knife. As soon as she had concluded her labors her husband killed her, and baked her in the oven which her ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... was returning with his brother and eight or nine servants, late one night from supper. Both the brothers and the greater part of their suite were killed: but Don Pietro was caught. He revealed the atrocity of his mistress; and she was sent to prison. Incapable of proving her innocence, and prevented from escaping, in spite of 15,000 golden crowns with which she hoped to bribe her jailors, she was finally beheaded. Thus did a vulgar ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... incidents ever depicted by him in the whole range of his voluminous contributions to imaginative literature. The passages selected to this end from his famous story of Oliver Twist were those relating more particularly to the Murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes. A ghastlier atrocity than that murder could hardly be imagined. In the book itself, as will be remembered, the crime is painted as with a brush dipped in blood rather than pigment. The infamous deed is there described in language worthy of one of the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... were totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house; though it is in evidence before you, that to remove a woman from her own house to another house without her consent is an outrage of the greatest atrocity, on account of which many women have not only threatened, but have actually put themselves to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case of Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as the last degree of outrage that could be offered. These women offered to go from house ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... freebooting by accounting it a religious duty, looking upon every one against their faith as an Infidel, and therefore common property. These bandits could offer no such excuse, for they plundered people of their own faith and blood. They were Mexicans, a hybrid mixture of Spanish atrocity and Indian cruelty. They numbered from ten to twenty, and for several months terrorized the Mexican inhabitants on both sides of the river. On the American side they were particular never to molest any one except those of their own nationality. These they robbed with impunity, nor did ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... reprehensible than any of these inaccuracies. We allude to the practice of affixing an r to the end of certain words, in order to make them rhyme with other words which terminate in that letter. Writers who are guilty of this atrocity are not merely to be condemned as bad rhymesters: they are to be blamed on the far more serious ground that they give the sanction and authority of print to one of the vilest vulgarisms which pollutes the oral language of certain provincial societies. What makes the practice so offensive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... statement. It certainly is not sustained by any evidence which would secure conviction in a court of justice. It is quite contrary to the well-established humanity of De Soto. There can be no possible excuse for such an act of barbarity on the part of any civilized man. If De Soto were guilty of the atrocity, it would, indeed, indicate that ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... exerted its rigor in vain. The brigands were too numerous And powerful for a weak police. They were countenanced and cherished by several of the villages; and though now and then the limbs of malefactors hung blackening in the trees near which they had committed some atrocity; or their heads stuck upon posts in iron cages made some dreary part of the road still more dreary, still they seemed to strike dismay into no bosom but that of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... knees. Poor S., who joined me at the fire, states that he believed himself to be tied in knots, and that he should return afoot to Washington. Our horses looked no worse, for that would have been manifestly impossible. We were made the butts of much jesting at breakfast; and S. said, in a spirit of atrocity, that camp wit was quite as bad as camp "wittles." I bade him adieu at five o'clock A. M., when he had secured passage to the city in a sutler's wagon. Remounting my own fiery courser, I bade the Colonel a temporary farewell, and proceeded in the direction of Meade's and Reynold's ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... world; and from interests which are immediately selfish to those which relate to the past, the future, and the remote. These effects have sometimes been produced by the worst superstitions that ever existed; but the Catholic religion, even in the time of its utmost extravagance and atrocity, never wholly lost the spirit of the Great Teacher, whose precepts form the noblest code, as His conduct furnished the purest example, of moral excellence. It is of all religions the most poetical. The ancient superstitions furnished ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and the means whereby it had been hoped to accomplish it, including the murder of the six chiefs who, it was believed, were powerful enough to render the scheme abortive. As the full, cold-blooded atrocity of the conspiracy became revealed, murmurs of anger and detestation, low at first, but louder as the story proceeded, began to run round the line of chiefs, while those who sat next the parties implicated edged away from them on either side as far as possible, until they crouched, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... his fierce blackened face and rolling eyes, looked vindictive enough then to be guilty of any atrocity as he seemed to be ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... you stand convicted on the most conclusive evidence of a crime of inexpressible atrocity—a crime that defiles the sacred springs of domestic confidence, and is calculated to strike alarm into the breast of every Englishman who invests largely in the choicer vintages of Southern Europe. Like the serpent of old, you have stung the hand of your protector. ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... shook the British empire to its centre, and sent a thrill of horror to the heart of that empire, followed by a fierce thirst for vengeance. For the Indian mutiny had broken out, the horrors of Cawnpore had been enacted, the stories of sepoy atrocity had been told by every English fireside, and the whole nation had roused itself to send forth armies for vengeance and for punishment. Dread stories were these for the quiet circle at Chetwynde Castle; yet they had been spared its worst pains. Guy had been sent ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... that skill in martial exercises, which distinguished the chivalry of the region beyond the Loire, and were ill fitted to face enemies who, in every country from Ireland to Palestine, had been victorious against tenfold odds. A war, distinguished even among wars of religion by merciless atrocity, destroyed the Albigensian heresy, and with that heresy the prosperity, the civilization, the literature, the national existence, of what was once the most opulent and enlightened part of the great European family. Rome, in the meantime, warned by that fearful danger from which the exterminating ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... against his noble son by the whisperings of a malignant and envious minister—a snake in the grass—a fly in the ointment of Prince Ahmad's beatitude! And to think of the old witch gaining access to the fairy palace— it was nothing less than an atrocity! And the tasks which she induces the king to set Prince Ahmad to perform—but they are all accomplished for him by his fairy bride. The only thing to regret—the fatal blemish in the tale—is the slaughter of the old king. Shabbar did right well to dash into the smallest ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... The atrocity of this slander was too much. With a little cat-like yowl she went for him, dropping the broken photograph ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... will perceive that this relates to the atrocity committed by the Infant Don Juan of Castille, who, while in revolt against his brother, Sancho IV., appeared before the city of Tarifa with an army, chiefly composed of Mahometans; finding the infant son of the governor, Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, at nurse ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... different eyes from the time when I had come before him as a captive in his hands, when I had viewed him as a powerful tyrant, invested with all the horror of his recent crimes, and especially of that never-to-be-forgotten atrocity of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Now, on the last occasion on which I was ever to confront him, I did so as the emissary of one whose power was yet greater than his own, as the agent of an intrigue that menaced his throne and perhaps his life. And beneath the surface ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... this atrocity the editor is not responsible; for its adoption he is. A thousand years of purgatorial fire would be insufficient expiation for the criminal on whose deaf and desperate head must rest the original guilt of defacing the text of Shelley with this ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of the Faith) Abul Kasim Mahmud, the son of Sabaktagin! May God have mercy upon him!' The Ghuznevide dynasty founded by Mahmud lasted for more than a century after his death, though with greatly restricted dominions. Finally, it was extinguished in 1152 by one of those awful acts of atrocity which are fortunately recorded only in the East. Allah-ud-din, Prince of Ghore, a town in the north-western hills of Afghanistan, marched upon Ghuznee to avenge the death of two of his brothers. The king was slain in battle, and the city given ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... feeling of any kind, and, indeed, with a certain air of gratification, as though they were performing some peculiarly high and sacred duty. The mildness and benevolence of their faces seemed actually heightened, and the perpetration of this unutterable atrocity seemed to affect these people in the same way in which the performance of acts of humanity might ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... absorbed in listening to the villainous plot that Lord Vincent was unfolding to his companion. It was the very same plot that he had communicated to his valet, the atrocity of which had shocked even that cut-throat. It did not shock Faustina, however. She listened with avidity. She co-operated with zeal. She suggested such modifications and improvements for securing the success of the conspiracy, and the safety of the conspirators, as only her woman's ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... these men are Australians, and I ask again, can such things be tolerated in the country of sunshine and gladness, of freedom and justice? In another country we know Judge Lynch would preside at their trial. And we here shall shew these two that such an atrocity will not be permitted here solely because a girl has shewn one man that she can like him better than another, with whom she has become entangled. I ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... Tunis, where he had been sent to expostulate with the dey upon the impolicy of his supporting the revolutionary government of France. Nelson represented to him the atrocity of that government. Such arguments were of little avail in Barbary; and when the Dey was told that the French had put their sovereign to death, he drily replied, that "Nothing could be more heinous; ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... to remain with him, but those defensive works had greatly alarmed him, for they made him believe that the captain feared that some of the Rackbirds might come back. He had had a great deal of talk with the other negroes about those bandits, and he was fully impressed with their capacity for atrocity. It grieved his soul to think that the captain would stay here alone, but the captain was a man who could defend himself against half a dozen Rackbirds, while he knew very well that he would not be a match for half a one. With tears in his eyes, he begged Captain Horn not to stay, for Rackbirds ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... foundation of almost all modern codes. With all their discernment of justice and love of order, the Romans, however, were too often hard and cruel. Their history is stained here and there with acts of unexampled atrocity. In private life, too, when the rigor of self-control gave way, they sunk into extremes of vulgar sensuality. If, compared with the Greeks, they stood morally at a greater height, they might fall to a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 6, 1831. It is an indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... his execution, Lady Cochrane was awoke by loud lamentations beneath her window. On sending to ascertain the cause, the wretched wife of the criminal was found imploring her Ladyship's intercession that her husband should not be deprived of the benefits of confession and absolution. Forgiving the atrocity of the act, Lady Cochrane, on the following morning used all her influence with the authorities, not for this alone, but to save the man's life, and at length wrung from them a reluctant consent to commute his punishment ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... now, from sich atrocity and impudence!" laying down the cloaks and bundles, and facing the Indian, with an appearance of great indignation—"Did a body ever hear sich a liar! Why, Misther Ould Nick, Madam Willoughby wouldn't let the likes of ye touch the ind of her garments. You wouldn't get the liberty to walk ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Winter's Tale between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest Evans's examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that Shakespeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the most hateful atrocity—that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror—I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... ill-treated he would execute two thousand Spaniards and send him their heads. Drake never wasted thought about reprisals or made frothy apologetic speeches as to what would happen to those with whom he was at religious war if they molested his fellow-countrymen. He met atrocity with atrocity. He believed it to be his mission to avenge the burning of British seamen and the Spanish and Popish attempts on the life of his virgin sovereign. That he knew her to be an audacious flirt, an ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... am," said Eveline, "you cannot doubt that this atrocity will be avenged—you must know by whose banner my lands ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all participants ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... well, and caused no trouble. They either entered the service of the South or held their peace. I can recall but one instance of a Northern man who had breathed the free air of Minnesota going over to the South, and the atrocity of his case was aggravated by the fact that he was an officer in the United States army. I speak of Major Pemberton, who at the breaking out of the war was stationed at Fort Ridgely in this state, in command of a battery of artillery. He was ordered to Washington to aid in the defense of the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... abolition of the punishment of death presented to Adrien Duport an opportunity to pronounce in favour of the abolition one of those orations which survive time, and which protest, in the name of reason and philosophy, against the blindness and atrocity of criminal legislation. He demonstrated with the most profound logic that society, by reserving to itself the right of homicide, justifies it to a certain extent in the murderer, and that the means most efficacious for preventing murder and making it infamous was ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... madam," said he, addressing Miss Dorothy, "think so meanly of your sex as to imagine that such atrocity can exist in the female heart as could give birth to ruinous and unprovoked calumnies against an innocent man. I cannot suspect the Misses Dundas of such needless guilt, particularly poor Euphemia, whom I truly pity. Lady Dundas forced me to read her verses, and they were too ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... blew out the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody scourging. Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of these instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity—as follows:—"Shooting a slave.—We learn, upon the authority of a letter from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city, that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and whose ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... virtues of his countrymen; and it is much to their honor that they have accepted him in the love of his art for the sincerity of his dealing with their conditions. In Sangre y Arena his affair is with the cherished atrocity which keeps the Spaniards in the era of the gladiator shows of Rome. The hero, as the renowned torrero whose career it celebrates, from his first boyish longing to be a bull-fighter, to his death, weakened by years and wounds, in the arena of Madrid, is something ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... must have A more potential draught of guilt than this With more of wormwood in it! ... ... Courage, Firmilian! for the hour has come When thou canst know atrocity indeed, By smiting him that was thy dearest friend. And think not that he dies a vulgar death— 'Tis ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... hinterland sciences, it is a happy hunting-ground for adventurers. Just as in the early days of British Somaliland, rascals would descend from nowhere in particular upon unfortunate villages, levy taxes and administer atrocity in the name of the Empire, and even, I am told, outface for a time the modest heralds of the government, so in this department of anthropology the public mind suffers from the imposition of theories and assertions claiming to be "scientific," which have no more relation to that ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of the atrocity committed by the Grimaldi, in firing the house and leaving their enemy to perish in the ruins, the kinsmen of Orso Paolo assemble and rush to Monte d'Olmo, threatening vengeance on the perpetrators. The Grimaldi rally round Ruggero to shield him from his exasperated ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... whom Mr. Lindsay was hastening. Deeply interested in the condition of a people whose welfare was so dear to his heart, she had eagerly read all the mission reports, and thus imbibed a keen aversion to the Sepoys, who had become synonymous with treachery and ingenious atrocity. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... crevices come foaming down, And turned to rest me in the herdsmen's cots, Where I was host and guest, until I gain'd The cheerful homes and social haunts of men. Already through these distant vales had spread The rumour of this last atrocity; And wheresoe'er I went, at every door, Kind words saluted me and gentle looks. I found these simple spirits all in arms Against our ruler's tyrannous encroachments. For as their Alps through each succeeding year Yield the same roots,—their streams flow ever on In ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... for the atrocities, for each separate atrocity, is Leopold. Had he shaken his head they would have ceased. When the hue and cry in Europe grew too hot for him and he held up his hand they did cease. At least along the main waterways. Years before he could ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... again reconciled. [17] The mischievous right of private war was repeatedly recognized by statute. It was claimed and exercised in its full extent, and occasionally with circumstances of peculiar atrocity. An instance is recorded by Zurita of a bloody feud between two of these nobles, prosecuted with such inveteracy that the parties bound themselves by solemn oath never to desist from it during their ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... were swimming across the river to escape from death, Charles IX. from a window of this palace, was firing at them with his arquebuse. During that period of the revolution, when all means were employed to excite and strengthen the enmity of the people against their kings, this act of atrocity was called to their mind by an inscription placed under the very window, which looks ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... slaughter and destruction, loading the bodies of free-born men with chains, and crushing some with fetters, while patching up all kinds of accusations far removed from the truth. And to this man is owing one especial atrocity which has branded the time of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... contended with each other in ceaseless discord. It was that Druidic discipline which combined a priestly constitution with civil privileges, and with a very peculiar doctrine of a political and even moral purport. We might be tempted to suppose that the atrocity of human sacrifice was first introduced among them by the Punic race. For they were from primeval times connected with the Carthaginians and Phoenicians, who were the first to traverse the outer sea, and sought in the island ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... store. (55) I have known two brothers, (56) heirs to equal fortunes, one of whom has enough, more than enough, to cover his expenditure; the other is in absolute indigence. And so to monarchs, there are not a few, I perceive, so ravenous of wealth that they will outdo the veriest vagrants in atrocity. Want (57) prompts a thousand crimes, you must admit. Why do men steal? why break burglariously into houses? why hale men and women captive and make slaves of them? Is it not from want? Nay, there are monarchs who at one fell swoop destroy whole houses, ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... now evident that a large part of the Congo atrocity was a German scheme. The head and front of the expose movement was Sir Roger Casement of London. He sought to foment a German-financed revolution in Ireland and was hanged as ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... sympathies (while he was waiting for his trial) of every person who saw him, including even the persons employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and gentlemen coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road. Judges of physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me on the near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place of residence. I looked out of the window and saw a group of honest laborers (whose only crime was poverty) ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the persons mentioned by the narrator have been printed in full, except those of Capt. I—— and his wife, and that of Mr. D——, to whom conduct of peculiar atrocity is ascribed. These three individuals are now gone to answer at a far more awful tribunal than that of public opinion, for the deeds of which their former bondwoman accuses them; and to hold them up more openly to human reprobation could no longer affect themselves, ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... her arms. She herself was almost scorched to death; but, with the presence of mind and humanity of her sex, she was about to put the little babe out of the window. The Captain noticed this, and, with characteristic atrocity, thrust, with a sharp bayonet, the little innocent, along with the person who endeavored to rescue it, into the red flames, where they both perished. This was the work of an instant. Again he approached the man: "Your child is a coal now," said he, with deliberate mockery; "I pitched it in myself, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... doubtless, as regards merely the treatment of convivial or purely social communication of ideas, (which also is a great art,) this practice is right. I admit willingly that an uncultured brute, who is detected at an elegant table in the atrocity of absolute discussion or disputation, ought to be summarily removed by a police officer; and possibly the law will warrant his being held to bail for one or two years, according to the enormity of his case. But men are not always enjoying, or seeking to enjoy, social pleasure; they ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... whole it seemed they had not misused the women. I heard no tales of actual atrocity, though some of brutal passion. But many women shrugged their shoulders when I questioned them about this and said: "They had no need to use violence in their way of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... horrors in all their atrocity. A burning thirst, one of the tortures of crucifixion,[1] devoured him, and he asked to drink. There stood near, a cup of the ordinary drink of the Roman soldiers, a mixture of vinegar and water, called posca. The soldiers had to carry with them their posca on all their expeditions,[2] ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... necessary features. A relation founded purely on force can be maintained only by terror. And where the proportion of whites is very small, as in most of the West Indies, they must compensate by the atrocity of their inflictions for the weakness of their numbers. On the 20th of April, 1856, there fell a rain of uncommon violence in the parish of St. Andrew, in which I was then residing. For six hours it seemed as if Niagara ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and quit with plenty left. From the very first they treated South Carolina as her acts of treason and atrocity deserved. Nearly every house all over the country was fed on the flames of Yankee vengeance. When their houses were burnt, the proud chivalry were obliged to seek refuge in negro shanties—an awful condescension, but scores of them have had ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... used for many years to prepare one speech, in each session, in which he went over the political issues of the two parties in a violent and extreme fashion. He would give us the whole history of the year and point out the imperfections and weakness and atrocity of the party in power in a most unsparing fashion. This speech he would frank home to Missouri. He seemed to think his duty as a Democratic politician was done, and he would betake himself to statesmanship the rest of the year. I think he has of late discontinued ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Orbajosa in the character of a delegate or instrument of the central power. The soldiers were held in such disrepute there that, whenever the old people told of any crime, any robbery, assassination, or the like atrocity, they added: "This happened when ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... I was the first politician to make a speech upon the Bulgarian massacres, [Footnote: See reference to Eugene Schuyler's letter in speech of August, 1876, p. 207.] I afterwards refused to follow Mr. Gladstone into what was called the "atrocity agitation," because I feared that we should find ourselves plunged into a war with Turkey in alliance with Russia, of which I should ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Here we'd come thousands of miles just to get into the middle of atrocities! For a moment the word conveyed nothing to me. I had been getting into the way of thinking the Corydon was by way of being something of an atrocity, but I knew that was not what my shipmates meant. I'm not sure even now that there ever had been any atrocities in that part of the world. I read about them in a book once; but the things that get into books have always eluded me. Already ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... window which possibly hasn't been opened for a century or two, groaning in pain at being forced into action again! Can't sleep in this beastly room—haven't closed my eyes yet—and when I did get out of that Victorian atrocity over there and take to the sofa by the window, why, the first thing I saw were those flames flickering out across the horizon like signal-fires, or something! I've been watching them for the past twenty minutes and ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... hand. I muttered the word "farewell," but without offering to exchange the salutation. The stories of cruel atrocity connected with the name of this man came into my mind at the moment, and I felt a loathing for him. His arm remained in its outstretched position, while a strange expression began to steal over his countenance, as he ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Brutus. They found the ravished beauty in agonies of shame and revenge, and after she had revealed the scandalous facts, she plunged a dagger in her own bosom and died, invoking revenge. Her relatives and friends carried her corpse to the market-place, revealed the atrocity of the crime of Sextus, and demanded vengeance. The people rallied in the Forum at Rome, and the assembled Curiae deprived Tarquin of his throne, and decreed the banishment of his accursed family. On the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... horror at the atrocity of the deed; not from any of the officers who were present, but from the soldiers, who were not used to warfare ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... for past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make piety responsible. At most we may blame piety for not availing to check our natural passions, and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with the pretext usually couples some restriction; and when the passion gust is over, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... sighed sententiously. "It was such a comfort to me. I'd been feeling so grumpy because my own was horrid compared to yours, but when I saw that grey flannel atrocity I felt I ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the Sullan party at this time was Lucius Sergius Catiline, an aristocrat, who, during the proscription, behaved with fiendish atrocity towards those of the opposite party, torturing and killing men with the utmost recklessness. His early years had been passed in undisguised debaucheries and unrestrained vice, but in spite of all his acts, he made political ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... now definitely joined these forces, and the whole of the country south of Recife fell once more into the hands of the Portuguese. During this period the bitterness between the two armies was still further accentuated by the massacre of Portuguese by the Tapuya Indians at Cunhau. This atrocity, as a matter of fact, was perpetrated on the initiative of the Indians alone, but at the time the Dutch—unjustly, as it turned out—were blamed for it. This circumstance induced retaliation, and eventually caused many barbarous acts to be done ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... edge of the shining haze, on a sort of pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in studios and, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... course patent to the distracted count that a fiendish atrocity of some sort had been committed, but it was quite impossible to gather any particulars or even the most meagre hint from the poor demented girl by his side; he therefore made the best of his way back to the chateau, whence immediately upon his arrival he ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... routed and fleeing for the Danube. It is no business of ours to follow them on this retreat, over which the police were so obliging as to preside paternally. Thus relieved from what he loved to refer to as the Bulgarian Atrocity, Mr. Wickham returned to London with the most unbounded and embarrassing gratitude and admiration for his saviour. These sentiments were not repaid either in kind or degree; indeed, Michael was a trifle ashamed of his new client's friendship; it had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but in America and on the continent of Europe. Hannah More wrote for the lower classes, and in a style of great clearness and simplicity. Her admirable dialogue, called "Village Politics," by Will Chip, a country carpenter, exposed the folly and atrocity of the revolutionary doctrines then in vogue. Its circulation was immense. The Government purchased several thousand copies for distribution. It was translated into French and Italian. Similar in spirit was the tract ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... them, under ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the neighbourhood at ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... centers of crime, we daily hear of murders; their frequency and remoteness leave us undisturbed. Our sympathies can only be deeply moved either by some scenic peculiarities investing the crime with unusual romance or unusual atrocity, or else by the more immediate appeal of direct neighborly interest. The murder which is read of in the Times as having occurred in Westminster, has seldom any special horror to the inhabitants of Islington or Oxford Street; but to the inhabitants of Westminster, and especially ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the murdered woman and who could have committed the horrible atrocity? These were questions which were on the lips of every one, and for the answer of which a most thorough and searching investigation was at once begun. The best detective talent was immediately put to work. The people were thoroughly aroused and determined upon having the headless ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... not been commenced by the aristocracy, but by the democracy. It broke out in the towns of Brescia and Bergamo, and the senate, in its turn, raised the mountaineers and the anti-revolutionary peasants, who proceeded to every species of atrocity: their watchword being "Death to Frenchmen and Jacobins." On Easter Monday more than four hundred Frenchmen are said to have been massacred at Verona. But the knell of Venice itself was rung. Napoleon having ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... occurrence in the Press prove conclusively that the newspapers of the Witwatersrand, the atrocity-mongering tactics of which constitute a share of the organised campaign against the Republic and its Government, have been compelled to resort to mendacious criticisms on imaginary instances of maladministration, which were often simply invented. Where the Press is forced to adopt such methods, ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... ultimate perfection in egotism and crowning complacency in crime is wanting to his brother in atrocity, the most notable villain who figures on the stage of Webster's latest masterpiece. Bosola is not quite a possible Bonaparte; he is not even on a level with the bloody hirelings who execute the orders of tyranny and treason with the perfunctory ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to the unmistakable trend of the evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most un-Christian war of recorded history and in which human atrocity has reached a point that leaves us vaguely groping for a rational explanation of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than twenty nations involved have been forced into measures and methods before unknown and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of governments. ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... cattle-market, a huge pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive; for thus they took possession of the soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occasion of the disaster at Cann, the same atrocity was again committed, at the same place and for the same cause. And by a strange contrast, there was at the committing of this barbarous act, "which was against Roman usage," says Livy, a secret feeling of horror, for, to appease the manes of the victims, a sacrifice was instituted, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the natural restraint of a family, was looked upon as a singular felicity. Plutarch correctly touched the point when he said that the Romans married to be heirs and not to have heirs. Of offences that do not rise to the dignity of atrocity, but which excite our loathing, such as gluttony and the most debauched luxury, the annals of the times furnish disgusting proofs. It was said, "They eat that they may vomit, and vomit that they may eat." At the taking of Perusium, three hundred of the most distinguished citizens were solemnly ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Of this atrocity an American officer, a Major McFarland, writes:—"The militia and Indians plundered and burnt every thing. The whole population is against us; not a foraging party but is fired on, and not infrequently returns with missing numbers. This state was to be anticipated The militia have ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... once begun in the cities, those who followed carried the revolutionary spirit further and further, and determined to outdo the report of all who had preceded them by the ingenuity of their enterprises and the atrocity of their revenges. The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... which their crimes brought about their own punishment. No foreign interposition was necessary, no avenging angel was required to vindicate the justice of divine administration. They fell the victims of their own atrocity, of the passions which they themselves had let loose, of the injustice of which they had given the first example to others The Constitutionalists overthrew the ancient monarchy, and formed a limited government; but their imprudence in raising popular ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... an atrocity by writing to an overworked man on a subject which may seem to him of secondary importance. Still, to the soldiers out here, the said subject means encouragement or discouragement coming to them through the medium of their home letters,—so vital ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... partial plan after another gets itself accepted, this and that ancient landmark perish, builders grow rich, and architects infamous, and some Tower Bridge horror, some vulgarity of the Automobile Club type, some Buckingham Palace atrocity, some Regent Street stupidity, some such cramped and thwarted thing as that new arch which gives upon Charing Cross is added to the confusion. I do not see any reason to suppose that this continuous muddle of partial destruction and partial rebuilding ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... plunder had been the principal object; at Badajos lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; but at San Sebastian the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes—one atrocity, of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity... a Portuguese adjutant, who endeavored to prevent some wickedness, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... pieces of cane off the chair upon which she was sitting, and shoved them down the child's throat. She was, as my wife described her, a pretty, innocent, timid-looking creature, to whom no one would ever have dreamt of attributing such an atrocity. The boy was made extremely delicate for several months by this misadventure, as his digestion had been ruined for the time being, but eventually he ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... caught sight of me and shouted to his companions to give chase. Fortunately most of them were too drunk to make much headway, but seeing that some of them were coming, I judged it prudent to run on and warn you, for I suspect that they are ready for any kind of atrocity." ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... blame him for that; what would one be one's self? If the tables could once be turned, and it could be that it was the black race which violently and lastingly triumphed in the bloody revolution at Wilmington, North Carolina, a few years ago, what would not we excuse to the white man who made the atrocity the argument ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of Augustus were perhaps equal in atrocity to any which are recorded; and the equivocal apology for those acts (one which might as well be used to aggravate as to palliate the case) is, that they were not prompted by a ferocious nature, but by calculating policy. He once actually slaughtered ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Rasiglia's wife, whom her husband flung from the battlements. Corrado then butchered the men, women, and children of the Rasiglia clan, to the number of three hundred persons, accomplishing his vengeance with details of atrocity too infernal to be dwelt on in these pages. It is recorded that thirty-six asses laden with their mangled limbs paraded the streets of Foligno as a terror-striking spectacle for the inhabitants. He then ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... discovered when he wanted to commit a criminal offense against his eight-year old daughter. Fortunately the atrocity was able to be prevented at the last moment. The child, frightened in heart and mind, was placed in the care of the madman's brother, the excellent Moriz von Mondmilch, a first-class administrative officer. The last word of the dying art-historian ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... disputation in the emphasis imposed by the necessity of roaring out his immutable opinions in an exceeding loud voice, retorted that so far as he was informed the "cow-drivers" on the Keowee were not certain who it was that had committed this atrocity, unless perhaps their messenger during his sojourn at Blue Lick Station had learned the name from "X." But this uncertainty, Mivane argued, was the very point of difficulty. It was the maddest folly to dispatch to angry men, smarting under a grievous injury, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... very same time that Robespierre was establishing the new worship, he was desolating France with massacres of incredible atrocity, and ruling by a terrorism unparalleled since the most frightful days of Rome. With all power gathered in his hands, he overawed all opposition and dissent by the wholesale slaughters of the guillotine. The prisons of Paris and of the departments were filled with suspected persons, until ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... The Crusades were a bloody blot in the none too peaceful times of the Middle Ages. Christianity hurled itself at Mohammedanism in expedition after expedition for nearly three centuries. Millions of men perished in battle, hunger, and disease, and every atrocity the imagination can conceive of disgraced the warriors of the cross. When one crusade failed, a papal bull instigated the next. Taxes were imposed to defray the expenses, and Europe was so drained of men and money that it was threatened with ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... retirement, and before reconstruction set in, and that the Fifteenth Amendment was brought on by their own doings: when have two wrongs made a right? And to place the negro above these people was an atrocity. You cannot expect them to inquire very industriously how magnanimous this North meant to be, when they have suffered at her hands worse, far worse, than France suffered from ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... countenances bore the expression of the strongest enmity as we walked along their line, and we frequently heard them mutter among themselves, in the most emphatic manner, Sacre Dieu, voila des Anglois!—Whatever the atrocity of their conduct, however, might have been, to the people of their own, as well as every other country, it was impossible not to feel the strongest emotion at the sight of the veteran soldiers whose exploits had so long rivetted the attention of all who felt an interest in the civilized world. These ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... thine to show me severance face, ''twas only mine to see: I'll leave thee for that first thou wert of me to take thy leave * And patient bear that parting blow thou borest so patiently: E'en as thou soughtest other love, so other love I'll seek, * And make the crime of murdering love thine own atrocity." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Church at that time consider as martyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the pagan Scandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous idolatry showed its hatred of truth and holiness in always manifesting a peculiar atrocity when coming in contact with the Church of Christ and her ministers. And, our chief object in speaking of the stand made by the Irish against the pagan Danes is, to show how the clan-system became in truth the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the author of "Jean Christophe,"—the book of all books most penetrated by the spirit of race distinctions—appalled by the atrocity of the war, calls upon us to substitute the Ideal of Humanity for the ideas of the various tribes of men, he is really (in re-action from the dreadful scenes around him) renouncing those flashes of prophetic insight which ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Ireland would offer nothing equal in atrocity to what I can prove relative to one small town in America: that of Augusta, in Georgia, containing only a population of 3,000, in which, in one year, there were fifty-nine assassinations committed in open day, without any notice being taken ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... will not look further into the original causes of the crime. Let us consider matters as we know them, with all their real or apparent atrocity. In order to nourish herself the Philanthus levies tribute upon the crop of the bee. This being granted, let us consider the method of the aggressor more closely. She does not paralyse its captives according to the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... you? It may be as you say, but how is one to tell? When one has been deceived like that, one is apt to be suspicious, Miss Carbury.' Here was one who had spent his life in lying to the world, and who was in his very heart shocked at the atrocity of a man who had lied to him! 'You are not plotting another journey to Liverpool;—are you?' To this Hetta could make no answer. The insult was too much, but alone, unsupported, she did not know how to give him back scorn for scorn. At last he proposed ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... another story of Medea almost too revolting for record even of a sorceress, a class of persons to whom both ancient and modern poets have been accustomed to attribute every degree of atrocity. In her flight from Colchis she had taken her young brother Absyrtus with her. Finding the pursuing vessels of AEETES gaining upon the Argonauts, she caused the lad to be killed and his limbs to be strewn over the sea. AEETES on reaching the place found these sorrowful traces of his murdered ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions, Maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation, for she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection, by the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim. She could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human mind. She had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however joyless, was not to be indolently resigned, or misery endured without ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, la Franaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity can hardly be controlled. It seems as if M. Feydeau, by collecting in one individual all the qualities which most excite his abhorrence and contempt, had succeeded in giving us, in Fanny's husband, a very tolerable specimen of a gentleman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... here suggests that it was Jane who was faithful forever, not Frederic. That indeed makes the title appropriate, but does not relieve the atrocity ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... has no action but through its ultima ratio, the penalties of the law. In every grade of this descending scale are men to whom are committed all the legal powers of a husband. The vilest malefactor has some wretched woman tied to him, against whom he can commit any atrocity except killing her, and, if tolerably cautious, can do that without much danger of the legal penalty. And how many thousands are there among the lowest classes in every country, who, without being in a legal sense malefactors ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... here we are making ourselves out as white as angels, and yet we are, taking it all in all, capable of any kind of polite atrocity the moment glory, gold, or women are concerned—So you are a sculptor, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg |
