"Brutality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that all these principles are not so ordained in the laws alone. Nature herself has laid them down in her unwritten law, and in the moral consciousness of mankind. Aeschines, then, has so far surpassed all mankind in brutality and in the art of misrepresentation, that he actually denounces me for things which he himself mentioned ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... was an expression such as is found in the eyes of some leashed beast when the butcher approaches, axe in hand. She was tortured by the smoothness of the man from whom she had never once in the last quarter of a century received anything but brutality and scorn, and from whom she had suffered the grossest of humiliations—when no one ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity, and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have had a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and license and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled the strawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, would have been dragged to the earth by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... corners of the south. "We will wear you down by our capacity to suffer," Dr. King warned the nation's majority, and suffer Negroes did in the brutal resistance that met their demands. But it was not in vain, for police brutality, mob violence, and assassinations set off hundreds of demonstrations throughout the country and made civil ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... deeds of darkness—murders, immorality, torturous and heart-rending treatment to their poor slaves of women, beastly and murderous brutality to their poor children. There is a terrible reckoning coming for the "Gipsy man," who can chuckle to his fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own body to sleep upon rotten straw and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Dickens in Bleak House serve as a text for to-day: "There is not an atom of Tom's shrine, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, nor an obscurity or degradation about him, nor an ignorance, nor a wickedness, nor a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution, through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Spain and Portugal was preached. The real cause of the sudden deadly hatred of the foreigner was twofold. The Spaniards were detested because of the ferocious cruelty with which they had driven the Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Portuguese because of the arrogance and brutality of their military colonists in the fortified trading stations of the west coast. And both were feared as ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... methods until the French revolution led to a systematic conscription. The bad side is suggested by Napier's famous phrase, the 'cold shade of our aristocracy'; while Napier gives facts enough to prove both the brutality too often shown by the private soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be characteristic even of the English blackguard. By others,—by such men as the duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston, for example, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... also mention with sincere gratitude the services rendered to us by Italy and Spain in protecting our compatriots in enemy countries. I must also emphasize the care lavished by Sweden on Russian travelers who were the victims of German brutality. I hope that this fact will strengthen the relations of good neighborliness between Russia and Sweden, which we desire to see still more cordial than ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... figures as his Cumaean Sibyl or his Farinata degli Uberti, which have great, if not the greatest, power, dignity, and even beauty, elsewhere condescends to mere swagger,—as in his Pipo Spano or Niccolo di Tolentino—or to mere strength, as in his "Last Supper," or, worse still, to actual brutality, as in his Santa Maria Nuova "Crucifixion." Nevertheless, his few remaining works lead us to suspect in him the greatest artist, and the most influential personality among the painters of the ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... How can I lead the more tender sex through dangers and fatigues, and passages of savage life? A veil shall be thrown over many scenes of brutality that I was forced to witness, but which I will not force upon the reader; neither will I intrude anything that is not actually necessary in the description of scenes that unfortunately must be passed through in the journey ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... night,—the knowledge that Laval's intended resignation must be followed by a new application and appointment. With such a degree of sympathy had the condition of the captive inspired her, that the idea of the bare possibility of cruelty or neglect or brutality assuming the jailer's authority seemed to lay upon her all the responsibility of his future. She must act, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... do not understand the logic of women's minds, nor how they reason, nor why they love. I have seen delicacy mate with coarseness, wit with stupidity, humanity with brutality, religion with the skeptic, aye, goodness with evil. I, too, ask why? The answer ever is the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... 'wisdom', her high civilization, her leadership of all that was most Hellenic in Hellas. The 'Beloved City' of Pericles had become a tyrant, her nature poisoned by war, her government a by-word in Greece for brutality. And Greece as a whole felt the tragedy of it. It is curious how this defeat of Athens by Sparta seems to have been felt abroad as a defeat for Greece itself and for the hopes of the Greek city state. The ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... had produced a very disagreeable impression upon Orsino. Had he not known the worst part of the secret and consequently understood what good cause Maria Consuelo had for not wishing to be alone with Spicca, he would have been utterly revolted and for ever repelled by her brutality. No other word could express adequately her conduct towards the count. Even knowing what he did, he wished that she had controlled her temper better and he was more than ever sorry for Spicca. It did not even cross ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... said about the brutality of the law," she began. "There must be laws, and brutal men who commit brutal crimes must be punished. But there are so many men who are not brutal, although the crimes may be. I knew of one once. We had ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Bengali babu, a dark Italian with flashing eyes and teeth, and a stout person of bovine Teutonic cast—the type that is sage, shrewd, easy-going when unopposed, but capable under provocation of exhibiting the most conscienceless brutality. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... gloomy evidence is thrust upon me, I often say to myself: Think of the frequency of the reasonable man; think of him everywhere labouring to spread the light; how is it possible that such efforts should be overborne by forces of blind brutality, now that the human race has got so far?—Yes, yes; but this mortal whom I caress as reasonable, as enlightened and enlightening, this author, investigator, lecturer, or studious gentleman, to whose coat-tails I cling, does he always represent justice and peace, sweetness of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... herculean figure was clad in a doublet of black leather, and his face, in which could be seen no trace of intelligence, expressed, on the contrary, nothing but vileness and villainy; a great scar, running right across his face and losing itself in a bushy beard, added still further to the natural brutality of his countenance. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... mademoiselle, since the guardian the Queen appointed you has... deserted you, you would do well to return to my mother's roof. Let me assure you that we shall very gladly welcome your return. We blame none but Garnache for your departure, and he has paid for the brutality of his ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... English-folk since the days of their conversion to the Christian faith. It is only by searching and poking among unknown pamphlets and forgotten books that one finds out the actual depths of the English savagery of the last century. And it is not too much to say that for drunkenness, brutality, and ignorance, the Englishman of the baser kind touched about the lowest depth ever reached by civilized man during the last century. What he was in Riverside London has been disclosed by Colquhoun, the Police Magistrate. Here ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... before her who loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two and a tremendous width of shoulder. His eyes were grey, and as honest as a genuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of brutality in its strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were splendid from an intellectual point of view, and the set of the head on the neck, and the neck on the shoulders, perfect. The nose was a good nose, rather broad at the top, with ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... inconvenience, lost minutes, shortened leisure, docked wages, count as less than naught. And the policemen are carelessly sublime, well knowing that magistrates, jails, and the very Home Secretary on his throne—yes, and a whole system of conspiracy and perjury and brutality—are at their beck in case of need. And yet occasionally in the demeanour of the policemen towards the conductor and the driver there is a silent message that says: "After all, we, too, are working men like you, over-worked and under-paid and ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... was disgusted at the brutality of some of the attacks. I am only human, and I cannot stand the persistent malignity of interpretation of all my actions and motives without lashing out occasionally. You will see that I met your letter with an apology. I might complain of its tone, but I ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Saxony, marches into Lithuania, meets with an Instance of Russian Brutality, drives the Czar out of Grodno, and pursues him to the Borysthenes. Horatio, with others, is taken Prisoner by the Russians, and carried to Petersburg, where he suffers the ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... slandered without mercy. Murderers and thieves receive better treatment than Christians. The world regards true Christians as the worst offenders, for whom no punishment can be too severe. The world hates the Christians with amazing brutality, and without compunction commits them to the most shameful death, congratulating itself that it has rendered God and the cause of peace a distinct service by ridding the world of the undesired presence of these Christians. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... I doubt if I shall have the brutality to finish out my idea. She is to have lying on the sand by her a case of Higginson's Hair-wash, stranded from a wreck, and a bottle of it in her hand. See the notion? Her despair consoled ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... distasteful. To persuade the mass of the freeholders was his object, and for such an object there are no political tracts in the language at all comparable to Defoe's. He bears some resemblance to Cobbett, but he had none of Cobbett's brutality; his faculties were more adroit, and his range of vision infinitely wider. Cobbett was a demagogue, Defoe a popular statesman. The one was qualified to lead the people, the other to guide them. Cobbett is contained in Defoe as the less is ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Mme. Cibot, drawing Schmucke into the dining-room, "he just said this—that our dear, darling love lying ill there would die if he wasn't carefully nursed; but I am here, in spite of all your brutality, for brutal you were, you that I thought so gentle. And you are one of that sort! Ah! now, you would not abuse a woman ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Bough, and to understand her you must understand the knock-down-and-drag-out system in vogue on board a good many American ships of that day, and later. A hell-ship was not just the result of senseless brutality on the part of the officers. She was the product of a system. The captain rode high in his owner's esteem when he could point to the golden results of his stern rule at sea; the bucko mates were specifically hired to haze the crew, and ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the fruits of the earth, more than sufficient to supply the wants of thousands of their fellow-creatures; claim authority to manage them like beasts of burthen, and, without superior industry, capacity, or virtue, nay, though disgraceful to humanity by their ignorance, intemperance, and brutality, shall be deemed best calculated to frame laws and to consult ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... declares that these mutinies were caused by terrible brutality toward the prisoners. It is true that no one was hanged in the jail itself, the Potter's Field being more public and also more convenient, all things considered, but the punishments in this New York Bridewell were severe in ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Aunt Sarah had committed her murder with every circumstance of brutality and unpleasantness, the victim being one of our schoolfellows whom ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... was a wicked brute, neither more nor less. I do not want to get into the sailor fashion of using strong terms about trifles, but to call him less than wicked would be to insult goodness, and if brutality makes a brute, he was brute enough in all conscience! Being short-handed at Bermuda, we had shipped a wretched little cabin-boy of Portuguese extraction, who was a native of Demerara, and glad ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... cat after a mouse. He was under no delusion: he knew she was not cowed or nervous, but that the spring of her devotion was pity—pity ever fed anew by his dreadful helplessness: and it was this knowledge that drove him into brutality. The instincts of possession and domination were strong in him, and but for the accident that wrenched his mind awry he would probably have made himself a king to Laura, for, once her master, he would have grown more gentle and more tender as the years went by, while Laura was one of ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and asked if I hadn't some fresher book in mind, and I, somewhat taken aback, told him that I was just finishing Frank Norris's "McTeague" and was about to begin on Mrs. Wharton's "House of Mirth." With a brutality characteristic of editors he asked me whether I didn't care to write a review of Homer's Iliad and the book of Deuteronomy. I told him that I might very well do so if it were a question of writing something he would find personally instructive, and rose to go, with the intention of slamming ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... and abhorred for its own sake, much more than for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue; but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their support, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... perusal of Mad. de B's letter. The behaviour of some of the poorest and least informed class of our countrymen forms a striking contrast with that of the people who arrested her, and even her own friends: the unaffected attention of the one, and the brutality and neglect of the other, are, perhaps, more just examples of English and French manners than you may have hitherto imagined. I do not, however, pretend to say that the latter are all gross and brutal, but ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... but not at all to contemplate truth when found. To observe it with pleasure, we have to see it emerge out of strife. So in the passions, there is pleasure in seeing the collision of two contraries; but when one acquires the mastery, it becomes only brutality. We never seek things for themselves, but for the search. Likewise in plays, scenes which do not rouse the emotion of fear are worthless, so are extreme and hopeless misery, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... John Johnson's right-hand men, organized his Loyal Rangers, a body of irregular troops who adopted, with modifications, the Indian method of warfare. It was against this corps that some of the most serious charges of brutality and bloodthirstiness were made by American historians; and it was by this corps that the Niagara district of Upper Canada was settled after ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... most absurd enormous book?(559) The best thing in it is a bon-mot of Lord Pembroke.(560) "The more one learns of Johnson, the more preposterous assemblage he appears of' strong sense, of the lowest bigotry and prejudices, of pride, brutality, fretfulness, and vanity; and Boswell is the ape of most of his faults, without a grain of his sense. It is the story of a mountebank and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... perceives that the system, in its practical working, must conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty are the means by which weaker races are best kept "subordinated" to stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor. And when we speak ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... done that," I said angrily to the man who, while tying me up, had roused my resentment by his brutality. ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... tenderhearted woman, to whom a daughter would go for consolation in her affliction: nor could that daughter place much confidence in a mother who had once deceived her with a forged letter. To her father, who had treated her with great brutality and had sold her just as he might have sold a beast among his farm stock, she would be still less likely to turn for comfort or for counsel. Add to all this that, as the wife of an official in Prince Charles's household, and as the sister-in-law of the reigning favourite, ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... yielding soil the works of the sculptor are better protected than when standing erect, their upper parts clear, perhaps, of the ruin that covers their feet, and exposed to the weather at least, and, too often, to the brutality of an ignorant population. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... relished the thought that his nephew, who so strongly resembled him in mind and person, should be the undisputed boss—to use a word common in political circles—of the school. He discreetly ignored the conflicts which he knew took place, and if any luckless boy, the victim of Jim's brutality, ventured to appeal to him, the boy soon found that he himself was arraigned, and not the one who ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... were filled once more with tears. The intolerable pity of the whole thing, its awful suddenness swept every other thought out of his mind. He remembered how anxiously she had tried to please him on that last night. He loathed himself for the cold brutality of his chilly affection. Hester came and knelt by his side, but she said nothing. So the ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... actual proof, a sense of intuition, made of it a certainty in his own mind, at least, which left no room for argument. There had been viciously clever work here, as daring and crafty as it was remorseless in its brutality, and—he laughed suddenly, harshly as before, and, rising abruptly from his chair, stepped to the window, pushed aside the portieres, and stood staring down on Fifth Avenue, whose great, wide, lighted thoroughfare seemed a curiously ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Massacre of Scio two years later. This was decried by the classicists, and even Gros called it "the massacre of art." The painter was accused of establishing the worship of the ugly, he was no draughtsman, had no selection, no severity, nothing but brutality. But Delacroix was as obstinate as Ingres, and declared that the whole world could not prevent him from seeing and painting things in his own way. It was thus the quarrel started, the young men siding with Delacroix, the older men ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... view to take of so genial a function: cynical, indelicate, and finally unforgivable by reason of its very accuracy. For, after all, that is what eating amounts to, if one must needs express it with such crude brutality. But if "the ingestion of alimentary substances"—to ring a modern change upon the older formula—is in itself a process material even unto carnality, it is undeniable that it forms a highly agreeable accompaniment ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... through Leicester's influence, Spenser, who was utterly weary of his dependent position, was made secretary to Lord Grey, the queen's deputy in Ireland, and the third period of his life began. He accompanied his chief through one campaign of savage brutality in putting down an Irish rebellion, and was given an immense estate with the castle of Kilcolman, in Munster, which had been confiscated from Earl Desmond, one of the Irish leaders. His life here, where according to the terms of his grant he must ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... genius, and shipped at sixteen as a ship-carpenter. He studied navigation in the forecastle, and found in its calm diagrams and tranquil eternal signs food for his thoughtful nature, and a refuge from the brutality and coarseness of sea-life. He had a healthful, kindly animal nature, and so his inwardness did not ferment and turn to Byronic sourness and bitterness; nor did he needlessly parade to everybody in his vicinity the great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness of heart, Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb, directly afterwards, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Siberia, Samojedia, and the other parts of Asia contiguous to the frozen sea; the greatest part of Africa, the island of Madagascar, and many places beside. In many of these parts also they are cannibals, feeding upon the flesh of their slain enemies, with the greatest brutality and eagerness. The truth of this was ascertained, beyond a doubt, by the late eminent navigator, Cooke, of the New Zealanders, and some of the inhabitants of the western coast of America. Human sacrifices are also ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... a most polished age, and in a nation of even false refinement, was the sole barbarian of his time; presenting, in his deficiencies, the picture of a low mechanic—and, in his positive qualities, the violence and brutality of a savage. [Footnote 9] Hence, by the way, the extreme folly of those who have attempted to trace a parallel between Napoleon and the first Caesar. The heaven-born Julius, as beyond all dispute the greatest man of ancient history in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... skittle-grounds, all frequented indiscriminately by the highest and the lowest classes, have been the schools of useful knowledge that have imparted to the lowest class something of the manners and habits of the highest, and have eradicated drunkenness and brutality, in ordinary intercourse, from the character of the labouring ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... DISAPPEARED!" Those were the words, plain and terrible in their clearness, tremendous in their brutality. Slowly the rest of the message began to urge its claims upon his brain. "Come to our office immediately" and "Will wait all night" battled for recognition. He was calm because he had not the power to ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... able to say: "Yes, there is something terrible, something shocking, in the frank brutality with which Englishmen affirm the essential inequality of men. The affirmation of the essential equality of men was the first point of departure with us when we ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... as their confidence increased, a reign of lawlessness and outrage against the rights of the defenseless was inaugurated. The negroes, who had begun to learn their freedom, were not only subjected to laws of practical re-enslavement, but to a treatment whose brutality could not have been foreseen. It was estimated that before the adjournment of Congress more than a thousand negroes and many white Unionists had been murdered in the South, without even the slightest attempt at prosecuting the murderers. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was young and virtuous—had she not been so for the last five and twenty years?—the comic man had not to open his mouth for us to begin to laugh; a latent sibilance foreran the villain. Least mutable of all, the hero swaggered on, virtuous without mawkishness, pugnacious without brutality. How sublime a destiny, to stand for morals and muscle to the generations of Hoxton, to incarnate the copy-book crossed with the "Sporting Times!" Were they bearable in private ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... conscious of her moral humiliation, shall say, to excuse herself, that she had trusted herself too much to certain theories, that an error of judgment is not a crime, it will then be necessary to remind her that her philosophy was simply a translation into intellectual terms of her brutality, her appetites, and her vices. So, too, in most cases, doctrines are the means by which nations and individuals seek to explain what they are and what they do. Germany, having finally become a predatory nation, invokes Hegel as witness; just as a Germany enamoured ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... Merriwell declared. "It is malicious and wanton brutality, and I fancy I can lay my hands on the fellow who was at ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to kill John Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that I should not look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, and I hate brutality. To me there is something repugnant in merely striking a man with one's naked fist—faugh! it is sickening! So, to shoot, or stab, or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name!) did not appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do it neatly and artistically, but also in such manner that ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... without his head becoming affected. He looks down with entire disregard on the laws of God and man, as made for inferior beings. As for any worthy moral quality,—as for anything beyond a certain picturesque brutality and bull-dog disregard of danger, not a trace of such a thing can be found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so devoutly. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... manger, and there is the pail Full set by the imp Illegality! That fierce fiery Pegasus thus to regale, When he's danger and death from hot head to flame-tail, Is cruelly callous brutality. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... Dick Prescott did not feel that he had wasted his time. Full of the hope of escaping, some day, he had watched covertly everything that he could see of German army life and movements behind the fighting line. Also, from several incidents that he witnessed, he gained a new idea of German military brutality. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... supply. Captain Rogers was the ablest seaman among the officers, and he it was that worked the brig. But Bully Evans was the real leader of the pirates. He was a big man, of tremendous vitality and strength, and he ruled like a czar, hazing his men into submission by sheer brutality. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... life of the race; he has no true conception of the dignity of souls, no sense of the beauty of modest and unselfish action. He mistakes rudeness for strength, boastfulness for ability, disrespect for independence, profanity for manliness, brutality ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... he perceived that neither humanity nor superstition were protecting the poor child; for, as she turned down the remnant of one of the treacherous little paths, a man in bright steel and deep black had spurred his horse to the river's brink, and was deliberately taking aim at her. Furious at such brutality, Berenger fired the pistol he held in his hand, and the wretch dropped from his horse; but at the same moment his pistol exploded, and the child rolled down the bank, whence a piteous wail came up, impelling Berenger to leap down to her assistance, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... results the father must be kind, considerate and self-controlled. It is a disagreeable fact that many men are brutal and inconsiderate of wives and unborn children. The extent of this brutality can hardly be realized by those who have had no medical experience. Perhaps the women are partly to blame, for they do not teach their boys to be considerate and kind and they leave them in ignorance of subjects that are important and that can best ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... impressed itself upon his mind. It was the indisputable something that marks those who are chosen to give ultimate expression to some gigantic world-purpose. In Balzac's face it was diffused with kindliness, in that of Napoleon sheer brutality predominated. The image of one who was said to be the richest man of the world also rose before his eyes. Perhaps it was only the play of his fevered imagination, but he could have sworn that this man's features, too, bore ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... come over to Boxall Hill and see you," said the doctor, whose heart softened towards the man, in spite of his brutality, as the hour ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... the man who was thus perilling the lives of his fellow-creatures by his senseless brutality, I could not help thinking what a load of guilt rested on his head. His face was flushed, his features distorted, his eyes rolling wildly, as he walked with irregular steps up and down the deck, or ever and anon descended to the cabin to gaze ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... This was all the evidence produced. Mr. Grant then addressed the jury, urging that beyond the fact of this unfortunate quarrel, in which the deceased appeared to have been entirely to blame and to have behaved with extreme brutality, there was nothing whatever to associate the prisoner with the crime. The young gentleman before them, as they had heard from the testimony of gentlemen of the highest respectability, bore an excellent ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... particular line, which develops one particular set of muscles. In the second place, competition to exhaustion, to vomiting, faintness, and even syncope is absolutely inexcusable. Furthermore, contests which partake of brutality ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... The cold-blooded brutality of that quiescence made Stratton furious, but it also brought home more effectually than ever the nature of the men he had to deal with. They were evidently the sort to stop at nothing, and Buck had moments of wondering whether or not he was proceeding in the right way to uncover the mystery ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... "I may have undiscovered depths of brutality that I have never had occasion to use. However, I ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the better. If your sister is going to be murdered it may as well be done next week as next year so far as I am concerned. Excuse my brutality, Mr. Hollyer, but this is simply a case to me and I regard it strategically. Now Mr. Carlyle's organization can look after Mrs. Creake for a few weeks, but it cannot look after her for ever. By increasing the immediate risk we diminish ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... quite heedless of the brutality of our questions and with a thousand wild suspicions flashing into my mind. "Is it your wife, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... dexter, but it is rather to be taken literally. I find Johannes cum pugno in 1184, and we can imagine that such a name may have been conferred on a medieval bruiser. There is also the possibility, considering the brutality of many old nicknames, that the bearer of the name had been judicially deprived of his right hand, a very common punishment, especially for striking a feudal superior. Thus Renaut de Montauban, finding that his unknown ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... is blind and deaf, or runs away and hides from his fellows like a coward; for brutality, alas, is a very human attribute and slumbers more or less in each one of us, let us ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... me pain. It was a feeling worse than mere jealousy I experienced. It was jealousy embittered by the very brutality of my rivals. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... her own situation had been swallowed up by indignation at the Surgeon's brutality to others. All her higher instincts were on fire at the gratuitous insults to boys, toward whom her womanly sumpathies streamed out. The pugnacious element, large in hers as in all strong natures, asserted itself and invited to the fray. If there was ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... earth, a valley of tears. Mariano must modify his instincts—that was his master's advice—must lose his fondness for drawing coarse subjects—people as he saw them, animals in all their material brutality, landscapes in the same form as his eyes ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... hungry eyes followed her every movement. His heart was torn by conflicting emotions. His love told him that he had been harsh almost to brutality, but his sense warned him he had taken the only course which could hope to achieve the peace and happiness which was Nita's right as well ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Washington, they were met by the royal officers with every mark of contempt and hate. They were stripped of their arms and uniforms, robbed of their money, insulted with rude taunts and even blows. War had not yet been robbed of some of its brutality by the slow rise of knowledge, and the British officers had not yet learned the politeness of freemen. A savage Hessian made his way up to Graydon, the young American officer, and threatened to kill him. "Young man," said to him a Scotch officer of more humanity, "you should never ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on matters of sex must probably be attended to in the public schools. It were better done by parents, perhaps; but parents cannot be depended upon to do it. The dangers that await indulgence, the cruelty and brutality of prostitution, should be universally but cautiously taught; too many boys and girls wreck their lives for l ack of such knowledge. It is indeed a delicate task to instruct adolescents in these matters; there is, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... our Western civilization; but young Haldane was as truly an Oriental as if he had been permitted to bluster around a Turkish harem; and those whom he should have learned to wait upon with delicacy and tact became subservient to his varying moods, developing that essential brutality which mars the nature of every man who looks upon woman as an inferior and a servant. He loved his mother, but he did not reverence and honor her. The thought ever uppermost in his mind was, "What ought she to do for me?" not, "What ought I to do for her?" and any effort to curb ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... (he being at the fort La Concepcion), and then to summon the admiral before him, sending him the royal letter. Neither the admiral nor his brothers attempted to make any resistance; and Bobadilla, with a stupid brutality, which I suppose he took for vigour, put them in chains, and sent them to Spain. There is no doubt that the Castilian population of Hispaniola were rejoiced at Bobadilla's coming, and that they abetted him in his violence. Accusations came thickly against Columbus: "the stones rose up against ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... on the blow she had given the officer, much to the aunt's surprise, for she could not think how I had heard of it; and I shewed her that, after having exposed me to her niece's brutality, her request was extremely out of place. I concluded by saying that I could believe her to be an accomplice in the fact without any great stretch of imagination. This made her burst into tears, and I had to apologize ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... quiet for a considerable length of time. An association of men, denominated the "Paxton boys," broke into their little town and murdered all who were found at home—fourteen men, women and children fell a prey to the savage brutality of those sons of civilization [79]. The safety of the others was sought to be effected, by confining them in the jail at Lancaster. It was in vain. The walls of a prison could afford no protection, from the relentless fury of these ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... hanged up by the feet, and the people joyfully treated with fresh meat from the gallows. These sentiments only added fuel to the flames of Don Miguel's vengeance, and the kingdom was laid at the mercy of a set of men to whose vengeance, brutality, and avarice there were no bounds. One step downward in the path of moral turpitude ever leads to another. From the moment of his return, Don Miguel had hated his sister Bonna Maria, because she had been her brother's regent, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... reached Sydney gladly accepted the truth. This exposed him to the sneers, and often to the ill-treatment, of his messmates, though Dick and I did our best to protect him. He expressed his gratitude, and, opposing gentleness to brutality, showed every day more and more earnestness. Mr Newton encouraged him to persevere. Miss Kitty often spoke kindly to him, and frequently brought up her Bible, and read such portions as he could ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... utter an exclamation, move a finger, he was swathed in a cloth, seized, bound, with the utmost brutality. Mysterious hands fixed a supple mask on his face, pressed something on his head. Dragged violently along, the cords cutting his flesh, Fandor realised his attackers were fastening him to something which held him stiffly upright. It must be one ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even in what are claimed as the English qualities,—simplicity and truth,—so do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... changed; she began to reason that if she could not dominate him, could not make him properly sorry, she had better leave. It was evident, she thought, that he did not love her any more, seeing that his anxiety to protect Rita had been so great; his brutality in restraining her so marked; and yet she did not want to believe that this was so. He had been so wonderful to her in times past. She had not given up all hope of winning a victory over him, and these other women—she loved him too much—but only a separation ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... property or the life of the lowest in rank. All this seems to me excellent; but then, on the other hand, my blood boils in my veins at the contempt in which they hold us; at their greed, their rapacity, their brutality, their denial to us of all rights. In their eyes we are but savages, but wild men, who may be useful for tilling the ground for them, but who, if troublesome, should be hunted down and slain like wild beasts. I admire them for what they can do; I respect them for their power and ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... whether or not you are going to hell. Of course the 'vilest sinner may return' at any point along the road—but to what? To shattered health; to a mother heart-broken in her grave; to a wife damned to all eternity by your thoughtless brutality; and to children who are always afraid to look up the alley, when they see a group of boys, for fear they may be teasing you—you, drunk and dirty, lying in the stable filth! To that you will 'return,' with your strength spent, and your sportive friends, gone to the devil before ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... longer. He got out of bed noiselessly, stepped across the other, went to the window-seat and sat down there, staring out, with eyes well accustomed to the darkness, towards the vast outline against the sky which he knew was the keep of the castle. No light burned there to relieve its brutality. It remained there, implacable as English justice, immovable as the heart of Elizabeth and the composure of the gaoler who kept it.... Then he drew out Mr. Maine's rosary and began ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... cited to show that the Central empires were dead to the humanities. There were apparently no limits to the brutality of the German war-makers. Among the outstanding deeds of the Teutons that sickened the world was the killing of Miss Edith Cavell, an English nurse working ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... at the prisoner both when I entered the witness-box and when I left it. The lowering brutality of his face was unchanged, but his faculties seemed to be more alive and observant than they were at the police-office. A frightful blue change passed over his face, and he drew his breath so heavily that the gasps were distinctly audible while ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... very glad we arrived in time, Tim," Ralph said. "And it's lucky for you that you shouted 'Hurrah for old Ireland!' as you went down; for of course we had no idea you were a countryman and, although we were disgusted at the brutality of that cowardly mob, we could hardly have interfered between them and ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... visited me after some weeks, but far from imitating the brutality of Borck, the Landgrave spoke to me with mildness, promised me his interest to regain my freedom, when peace should be concluded; told me I had more friends than I supposed, and assured me I had not been forgotten by ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... all at once, Servigny, by a few words, the brutality of which she felt without understanding them, awakened in her a sudden disquietude, unreasoning at first, but which grew into a tormenting apprehension. She had fled home, had escaped like a wounded animal, wounded in fact most deeply by those words which she ceaselessly repeated to get all their ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... and women. A clean, stiff collar was to Billy as a red rag to a bull. Cleanliness, success, opulence, decency, spelled but one thing to Billy—physical weakness; and he hated physical weakness. His idea of indicating strength and manliness lay in displaying as much of brutality and uncouthness as possible. To assist a woman over a mud hole would have seemed to Billy an acknowledgement of pusillanimity—to stick out his foot and trip her so that she sprawled full length in it, the hall mark of bluff manliness. And so ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... only with regard to the horse, in consideration of his beauty, nobility, use, and in honor of the respect with which man regarded him, by the courtesy of Christendom, he might be allowed to have a bouche, and his reproach of brutality, if not taken away, might thus be hidden. But surely, of the rabid animal who is caught dining at noonday, the homo ferus, who affronts the meridian sun like Thyestes and Atreus, by his inhuman ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... rang the bell and ordered my horse. Mother paid no attention to that, but continued, 'The woman raved all night, and died early the next morning.' I said with a good deal of anger, that her husband's brutality had killed her and that the grave was the only place for a poor woman who was married to such a monster. And then I heard the trampling of horses' feet and I came away without another word. But my heart was hot and I was sick and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... old chair in his study, smoke a pipe and go to sleep, hindered again and again his ambition. He had, as so many clergymen have, a great deal of the child in him, a remoteness from actual life, and a tremendous ignorance of the rough-and-tumble brutality and indecency of things. It had not been difficult for Grace, because of his laziness, his childishness, and his harmless conceited good-nature to obtain a very real dominion over him, and until now that dominion had ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... houses and other buildings burnt to ashes; without houses, beds, furniture, or even clothing in many instances, to meet the inclemency of the weather. I confess that my feelings have been shocked with the gross brutality of these Mormons, who have acted more like demons from the infernal regions than human beings. Under these circumstances, you will readily perceive that it would be perfectly impossible for me to protect ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to bless what He'd cursed. What must God thought on't! For He and they well knew all the sin and pain, poverty and crime that flowed out of saloons, the ontold losses and danger to community, the brutality, fights, murders, crimes ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... was nearly over, Roland, with his usual frankness, which almost bordered upon brutality at times, leaned his elbows on the table, settled his chin in his hands, and said: "Well, my dear Sir John, you have something to say to your friend Roland that you don't dare put ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... to maintain discipline, and they must suffer. No more pillaging here. It is the worst case of brutality and plunder that we have had ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... an ill-dressed mob, both which I hate. Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo. The vapid affectation of the one to me is even more intolerable than the gross insolence and brutality of the other. If a set of low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and boisterous to show their disregard of the company, a set of fashionable coxcombs are, to a nauseous degree, finical and effeminate to show their thorough breeding. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... would remark if she heard me; only she would giggle, and you look infernally serious. Next item: Hilton Fenley, like most high-class scoundrels, has the nerves of a cat, with all a cat's fiendish brutality. He could plan and carry out a callous crime and lay a subtle trail which must lead to that cry baby, Robert, but he was unable to control his emotions when he saw his father's corpse. That is where the murderer nearly always fails. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at their highest with the spiritual, for performance whose compass reaches beyond an individual, momentary good. A burglar or a murderer may exhibit courage; but here, a manly quality backing baseness and brutality for selfish, short-sighted ends, there is an introverted and bounded action, no expansive upward tendency, and thence no poetry. But courage, when it is the servant of principle for large, unselfish ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... shouted out the opposite opinion, thinking that the fear of Carthage had a salutary effect on the Roman populace at large. But the ideas of Cato prevailed, and a cruel policy, carried out with needless brutality, led to the extinction of Rome's greatest rival. Cato did not live to see the conclusion of the war; he died in 149, at the age of 84 or 85 years, having retained his mental and physical vigor to the last. He had two sons, one by his first wife, and one by his second wife, ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "gift of continency" he did not possess, or trouble himself to acquire. He was, to use his own phrase, "passionate of body," and his desires were stronger than his will. There are points of Byron's character with regard to which opinion is divided. Candid he certainly was to the verge of brutality, but was he sincere? Was [v.04 p.0904] he as melancholy as his poetry implies? Did he pose as pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that Byron knew that his sorrow ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the matter, then," conceded Wingate, "from your point of view. Supposing that your nephew has been abducted and is held at the present moment as a hostage. It would be, without doubt, by some person or persons who resented the brutality, the dishonesty, the foul commercial methods of the company with which he was connected. An amendment of those methods ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... much more conversation of the kind recorded above, but I will not revolt the reader's feelings by repeating it; what I have already given is intended merely to convey an idea of the unparalleled ruffianism and brutality which characterised the soldiery of ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... remember it all: nobody can blame me more than I blame myself in my own heart; at any rate, nobody can regret more sincerely than I do the result of my brutality, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... was about to give utterance to an indignant refusal, when a terrible glance from her tyrant assured her that resistance would be useless. His savage brutality—the blow he had given her—her forced submission to his loathsome embraces—and the consciousness that she was completely in his power, compelled her to ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... size, but he had a singularly athletic frame not devoid of symmetry. His head was well placed on his broad shoulders, and his mien was commanding. He was narrow-minded and prejudiced, but acute, and endowed with an unbending will. He was an eminent sportsman, and brave even to brutality. His boast was that he had succeeded in every thing he had attempted, and he would not admit the possibility of future failure. Though still a very young man, he had won the Derby, training his own horse; and he successfully managed a fine stud in defiance of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Glavour," he said, "despite your brutality and sensuality which sickened me, until you strove to add to your already crowded seraglio the maiden whom I had chosen. As a Nepthalim, you thought I had no right which you need respect and I would tamely submit to whatever you chose ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... certain national foibles, and a no less conspicuous belief in the heroic proportions of their good qualities. For surely no people has ever been blessed in its seclusion with such an abundance of criticism of singular candour. The frank brutality with which the travelling Englishman has made his opinions known on any peculiar trait or unusual institution which he has been pleased to think that he has noticed in the United States has been vastly more ill-mannered than anything ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... satire. Certainly the most delicate irony could not portray the vicious institutions under which the magnificent territory and noble people of Spain were thus doomed to ruin more subtly end forcibly than was done by the honest brutality of this churchman. The careful tillage, the beautiful system of irrigation by aqueduct and canal, the scientific processes by which these "accursed" had caused the wilderness to bloom with cotton, sugar, and every kind of fruit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... others more circumscribed or less severe. The emperors Alexander Severus, Philip the Arabian, and Constantius Chlorus were almost the only exceptions to this cruel system; and nearly always, wherever it was in force, the pagan mob, in its brutality or fanatical superstition, added to imperial rigor its own atrocious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... earnest conviction in many a page of "Sartor Resartus," and scattered through innumerable pamphlets, Carlyle commands the fervent adhesion of the honest, the brave, and the good; while in other parts of his writings his infatuated admiration of force, however clothed with brutality, and of strength, however marred with mendacity, are calculated as deeply to alienate the urbane man of the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... womanly fascinations; for I was a young student, lodging in the same house with her, in an academic town. Before I ever spoke to her of love, she had confided to me her own unhappiness—the uncongeniality of her married life, the harshness, and even brutality, of her husband. Even a man less in love than I was could have seen the truth of this—the contrast of the coarse, sensual, and vulgar man with an apparently refined and intelligent woman; but any one else except myself would have suspected that such a union was not merely a sacrifice of the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte |
