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Mutilate   Listen
verb
Mutilate  v. t.  (past & past part. mutilated; pres. part. mutilating)  
1.
To cut off or remove a limb or essential part of; to maim; to cripple; to disfigure; to hack; as, to mutilate the body, a statue, etc.
2.
To destroy or remove a material part of, so as to render imperfect; as, to mutilate the orations of Cicero. "Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho."
Mutilated gear, Mutilated wheel (Mach.), a gear wheel from a portion of whose periphery the cogs are omitted. It is used for giving intermittent movements.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mutilate" Quotes from Famous Books



... be despised. They are adepts in stealing cattle and sheep; and the wounds they inflict when pursued, are ordinarily fatal if the wounded part is not immediately cut out. The animals they are unable to carry off, they kill or mutilate. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... lawless wills, and that marriage is something we may bend or break as we will. But, oh! it is not so. Marriage is mysterious and wonderful; it is the supreme test of men and women. If we wrong it, and despise it, we mutilate the divine ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that he could not conceive how anything could daunt or cast down a man who had an aim in life. "They that have had a guid schoolin' and do nae mair, whatever they do, they have done; but him that has aye something ayont need never be weary." I have had to mutilate the dialect much, so that it might be comprehensible to you; but I think the sentiment will keep, even through a change of words, something of the heartsome ring of encouragement that it had for me: and that from a man cleaning ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is the greatest master I know: a single word frequently opens to view an almost interminable vista of antecedent states of mind. Confined within the narrow limits of time, the poet is in many subjects obliged to mutilate the action, by beginning close to the last decisive stroke, or else he is under the necessity of unsuitably hurrying on its progress: on either supposition he must reduce within petty dimensions the grand picture of a strong ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... thou come," he said, "to enjoy the hopes which fete holds out to thy demented and accursed sect, to see the bosom of destruction sweep away the pride of old religion—to deface our shrines,—to mutilate and lay waste the bodies of our benefactors, as well as their sepulchres—to destroy the pinnacles and carved work of God's ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... barbarity to the initial cruelties, leaving the reader's imagination to fancy the atrocities that followed the second blow. It has always been noticed that the sight of blood, which appals a civilized man, serves to excite and enrage the savage, till his frantic passions induce him to mutilate his victims, even as a tiger becomes furious after it has torn the first wound in its prey. For five days the strangers were doomed to hear the yells of the storming amazons as they assailed the fort for fresh victims. On the sixth the sacrifice was over:—the divinity was appeased, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... enter one of these sanctuaries without reflecting on the rapid progress of irreligion among a people who, six months before, were, on their knees, adoring the effigies which, at that period, they were eager to mutilate and destroy. Iron crows and sledge-hammers were almost in a state of requisition. In the beginning, it was a contest who should first aim a blow at the nose of the Virgin Mary, or break the leg of her son. In one day, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... healthiest, and most vigorous political unit is that to which men are by their own feelings strongly drawn. Any breach of such unity, whether by forcible disruption or by compulsory inclusion in a larger society of alien sentiments and laws, tends to mutilate—or, at lowest, to cramp—the spontaneous development of social life. National and personal freedom are growths of the same root, and their historic connection rests on no accident, but on ultimate identity ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... formidable fish, the sharks or the barracudas, usually attack things smaller than themselves. But the piranhas habitually attack things much larger than themselves. They will snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water; they mutilate swimmers—in every river town in Paraguay there are men who have been thus mutilated; they will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness. They will tear ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... show that the actual progress of humanity has been, on the whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Procrustes treated his victims,—he must stretch some, and mutilate others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. "As the third or positive stage had accomplished its advent in his own person, it was necessary to find the metaphysical period just before; and so the whole life ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Rousseau was the ardent expounder,—that man is born with a clear and unsophisticated spirit, perfectly able to discern all the simple truths necessary for common conduct by its own unaided light. His motives are all pure and unselfish and his intelligence is unclouded, until priests and tyrants mutilate the one and corrupt the other. We who have the benefit of the historic method, and have to take into account the medium that surrounds a human creature the moment it comes into the world, to say nothing of all the inheritance from the past which ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... saw the error of his natural enemy, which brought ever nearer the realization of the dream of independence he had inherited from the past; for the same fierce passion burned within him that had made Endicott mutilate his flag, and Leverett read his king's letter with his hat on; and the guns of Lexington ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... foreign cathedral. It was too profane. What about the singing of "God save the King" upon the stage? That had been sanctioned by custom, Colman maintained; but he could not regard it as a precedent. Was he prepared to mutilate Portia's great speech in the "Merchant of Venice?" Certainly he was; but then custom had sanctioned it, and playgoers were not prepared for any meddling with the text of Shakespeare. He admitted, however, that he did not trouble himself to ascertain whether his excisions ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... permit me first to go to my room, I will find something which sorts better with a soldier than this churchman's gown. My buckskin, I was obliged to mutilate to ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... small, however seemingly reasonable, which he held to be dishonourable to his art ever found a place in his mind. The surrender of Die Walkuere alone would probably have turned the tide in his favour, and he was pressed for it by most of the great theatres, but in vain. To mutilate the Ring was in his opinion to dishonour it and prepare the way for its being misunderstood. So far from adopting any one of the many courses which could not fail to lead to success and popularity ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... on the back by the Torres Strait islanders and the New Guinea men of the adjacent shores, when on a marauding excursion;* these Papuans preserve the skulls of their enemies as trophies, while the Australian tribes merely mutilate the bodies of the slain, and leave them where ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... sits the hostess, Milks one moment, then a second, Then a third time milks and ceases; When the bloody wolves disguising, Quick attack the hostess milking, And the bears lend their assistance, Tear and mutilate her body With their teeth and sharpened fingers. Kullerwoinen, cruel wizard, Thus repaid the wicked hostess, Thus repaid her evil treatment. Quick the wife of Ilmarinen Cried aloud in bitter anguish, Thus addressed the youth, Kullervo: ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... to forget that the products of industry are made for man, not man for industrial products; to ignore the close relationship between their fruitful investigations and the whole circle of the moral sciences; to debase them and to mutilate them. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... to be credited, yet is true, that in the anxiety of the Northern merchant to conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher was found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer's picture. He intended his edition for use in the Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell into the hands of those who believed literally in a gospel which was to preach ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... his insolence so far, as to declare that he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (which was absolutely rejected by Attalus) to the baseness, and perhaps ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... therefore in its essence a sublime and impassioned spirituality. It had a divine and universal ideal. This is the reason why its passion spread beyond the frontiers of France. Those who limit, mutilate it. It was the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... organism from which these portions have been detached. And so far does this go, that some experimentalists have carefully examined the lower orders of animals,—among them the Abbe Spallanzani, who made a number of experiments upon snails and salamanders,—and have found that they might mutilate them to an incredible extent; that you might cut off the jaw or the greater part of the head, or the leg or the tail, and repeat the experiment several times, perhaps, cutting off the same member again and again; and yet each of those types would ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... eagerly opened the beautiful little casket, then dashed it with horror to the ground. "Prince!" she cried, "what can have induced you to mutilate yourself so cruelly? Could you imagine that I would ever wed a man who ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... were any truth in old faiths. A pretty mess we mortals made of life! I might almost have laughed at the irony of it all, except that my laughter would have choked in my throat and turned me sick. They were beasts, and worse than beasts, to maim and mutilate each other like this, having no real hatred in their hearts for each other, but only a stupid perplexity that they should be hurled in masses against each other's ranks, to slash and shoot and burn in obedience to orders by people who were their greatest enemies—Ministers ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... the chestnut blight acts in China—very differently from the way it acts in this country. In China, it produces, as the pictures show, definite cankers, which do not girdle the tree, which kill young trees occasionally, mutilate old trees, kill branches, but the cankers do not girdle the trees. That disease has been known in China we have no idea how many years, and, while it does a certain amount of harm, is said by Mr. Meyer not to be really serious in China. You ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... One of Lucrezia's ladies, Angela Borgia, was courted by both Giulio d' Este and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes of Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forthwith hired assassins to mutilate his brother's face. Giulio escaped from their hands with the loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito and Alfonso. His ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sate at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... reverently and accurately, He who made nature—is thinking of, and obey the "voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam." This science has done, while yet in her infancy. What she will do in her maturity, who dare predict? At least, in the face of such facts as these, those who bid us fear, or restrain, or mutilate science, bid us commit an act of folly, as well as of ingratitude, which can only harm ourselves. For science has as yet done nothing but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever done? When any one will show me a single ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... dealt kindly with The Luck of Roaring Camp; but the first of that ilk to mutilate the story was also the worst, to wit, the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... the reader, and sometimes it contains a note of warning. In a manuscript of St. Augustine now at Oxford, there is written: "This book belongs to St. Mary's of Robert's Bridge; whoever shall steal it or in any way alienate it from this house, or mutilate it, let him be Anathema Marantha!" A later owner, evidently to justify himself, has added, "I, John, Bishop of Exeter, know not where this aforesaid house is, nor did I steal this book, but acquired it in a ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... character of the bee. In the heart of the hive all help and love each other. They are as united as the good thoughts that dwell in the same soul. Wound one of them, and a thousand will sacrifice themselves to avenge its injury. But outside the hive they no longer recognise each other. Mutilate them, crush them,—or rather, do nothing of the kind; it would be a useless cruelty, for the fact is established beyond any doubt,—but were you to mutilate, or crush, on a piece of comb placed a few steps from their dwelling, twenty or thirty bees that ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a hundred— two hundred—a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition and stampede after some ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... his eyes] No, no, no—don't speak to me—you'll drive me into convulsions. Keep silent! Leave me alone! You mutilate my brain with your clumsy pincers—you put your claws into my thoughts and tear them ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... object enlightened men like Peel could have sought in prolonging it. He well knew, and admitted in private correspondence, that reform was inevitable; he must have known that a sham reform would be a stimulus to revolutionary agitation; yet he strove to mutilate the bill so that it might pass its second reading in the house of lords, and there undergo such further mutilation as would destroy its efficacy as a settlement of the question. For the present he yielded. No attempt was made to obstruct the bill on its third reading, when the division showed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... archipelago, living and dead must alike toil for nutriment; and the race having been cannibal in the past, the spirits are so still. When the living ate the dead, horrified nocturnal imagination drew the shocking inference that the dead might eat the living. Doubtless they slay men, doubtless even mutilate them, in mere malice. Marquesan spirits sometimes tear out the eyes of travellers; but even that may be more practical than appears, for the eye is a cannibal dainty. And certainly the root-idea of the dead, at least in the far eastern ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sensible that there is no appeal from his master." Where the slave is placed by law ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... humming now and then pieces which struck his fancy; and as these little reminiscences usually recurred to him in the mornings, he regaled me with them while he was being dressed. The air that I have heard him thus mutilate most frequently ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... latter prayer could be received under the "gag" rule. Connor, of North Carolina, (p. 261) moved to lay on the table so much of the petition as could be received. Mr. Adams tauntingly suggested that in order to do this it would be necessary to mutilate the document by cutting it into two pieces; whereat there was great wrath and confusion, "the House got into a snarl, the Speaker knew not what to do." The Southerners raved and fumed for a while, and finally resorted to their usual expedient, and dropped altogether a matter ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... pondering my Lord Keeper's suggestion for the bringing in of this older coin, I must ask you if this plan can escape that selfish impulse of the human mind which seeketh for personal gain? For, look you, short as would be the time proposed, it taketh but still shorter time to mutilate a coin; and it doth seem to me that, under the plan of my Lord Keeper, we should see the old currency of England mutilated in a night. Sir, I should opine in the contrary of this plan, and would base my decision upon ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... but not so the latter. Signa afterwards are the standards of the maniples, cohorts, and legions. [538] Latrocinium, 'a predatory attack,' as opposed to a regular battle. [539] Obtruncare in opposition to caedere (cut down) signifies 'to mutilate by cutting off a limb or limbs.' The word multos is chosen here only for variety's sake, instead of alios. [540] The words veteres novique express a whole sentence: 'as old and new soldiers ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... formed. Therefore let every proposition to change it be well weighed and, if found beneficial, cautiously adopted. Every patriot will rejoice to see its authority so exerted as to advance the prosperity and honor of the nation, whilst he will watch with jealousy any attempt to mutilate this charter of our liberties or pervert its powers to acts of aggression or injustice. Thus shall conservatism and progress blend their harmonious action in preserving the form and spirit of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... which proved too short for the dead comrade, and it was proposed to cut off his head in order to adapt the body to the receptacle, Lingan "sprang from his couch of pain, and, laying his hand upon the lifeless corpse of the departed soldier, swore he would destroy the first man who should thus mutilate the body ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... prayer; the same presence and answer; they agree here, have no names of difference; pity it should be otherwise anywhere—for, bretheren, in things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." This dispatch, too, the House of Commons took care to mutilate before sending ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... contemporaries, and goes a thousand years off to talk to us, which he does by aid of these tongue-gymnastics and extraordinary compounds— prides himself upon it, too, as if it were a great thing to disguise yourself, and mutilate the conversational currency. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... of judicial decisions, similar to that which was pronounced by the Exchequer Chamber in the case of shipmoney, transferred to the crown the right of taxing the people; had the Star Chamber and the High Commission continued to fine, mutilate, and imprison every man who dared to raise his voice against the government; had the press been as completely enslaved here as at Vienna or at Naples; had our Kings gradually drawn to themselves the whole legislative power; had six generations of Englishmen passed away without a single ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a word, contenting herself with keeping a watch on the man's movements, though to the very innermost part of her she longed to fling herself upon him to mutilate or ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... able to assist in the formation of several societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and they have done good service. Good service not only to the horses and cows, but to the nobler animal, man. I believe that in saying to a cruel man, 'You shall not overwork, torture, mutilate, nor kill your animal, or neglect to provide it with proper food and shelter,' we are making him a little nearer the kingdom of heaven than he was before. For 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' If he sows seeds of unkindness ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... concession was possible without affecting the essence of oligarchy, and the establishment of an energetic system of repression and prevention, were regarded by him as unavoidable; and he saw clearly that the senate as it stood would refuse or mutilate every concession, and would parliamentarily ruin every systematic reconstruction. If Sulla had already after the Sulpician revolution carried out what he deemed necessary in both respects without ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... "The Porter's Knot," and "The Chimney-Corner." When I say written, I mean, of course, translated. Our foremost dramatists have not yet ceased to borrow from the French; but, like the gypsies, they so skilfully mutilate the children they have stolen, that the theft becomes almost impossible to detect. Not one person in five hundred, for instance, would discover at first sight that a play so apparently English in conception and structure as the "Ticket-of-Leave Man" is, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... the personal and the impersonal, between pantheism and theism, between Spinoza and Leibnitz, to be regretted? No, for it is the one state which makes us conscious of the other. And as man is capable of ranging the two domains, why should he mutilate himself? ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Brahmin, like the Thug of seven victims, has tasted the sugar of blood, sweeter upon his tongue than to the lips of an eager babe the pearl-tipped nipple of its mother. Henceforth he must slay, slay, slay, mutilate and ravish, burn and slay, in the name of the queen of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... that freedom from it is the exception. It is painfully common to hear public speakers mutilate the king's English. If they do not actually murder it, as Curran once said, they often ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... man, perpend! Consider, who among inferior mortals shall imitate them becomingly? Dreamest thou they talk and act like checkmen at Banbury fair? How can thy shallow brain suffice for their vast conceptions? How darest thou say, as they do: 'Hang this fellow; quarter that; flay; mutilate; stab; shoot; press; hook; torture; burn alive'? These are royalties. Who appointed thee to such office? The Holy Ghost? He alone can confer it; but ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... up for attempting to mutilate the beautiful statues of London," shouted the enraged ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... Skopskis, a Russian sect dating from the eleventh century. They have been persecuted, but they number nearly six thousand, and regard themselves as the real Christians, the only true followers of Christ. They castrate themselves, and sometimes amputate the genitals entirely; the women even mutilate their breasts as ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... and appeals to us with the grim humour of a warlike age. After referring to the beauty of the blossoms, the inscription says: "Whoever cuts a single branch of this tree shall forfeit a finger therefor." Would that such laws could be enforced nowadays against those who wantonly destroy flowers and mutilate objects of art! ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... overpeopled, men emigrate, spread themselves over other countries, destroy one another, and establish laws and customs which sometimes only too surely prevent excess of population. In those climates where fecundity is greatest, as in China, Egypt, and Guinea, they banish, mutilate, sell, or drown infants. Here, we condemn them to a perpetual celibacy. Those who are in being find it easy to assert rights over the unborn. Regarding themselves as the necessary, they annihilate the contingent, and suppress future generations for their own pleasure and advantage. Man does for ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... friend Guerin of my situation, and foreseeing my approaching dissolution, of which I myself had no manner of doubt, they wished to delay the appearance of the work until after that event, with an intention to curtail and mutilate it, and in favor of their own views, to attribute to me sentiments not my own. The number of facts and circumstances which occurred to my mind, in confirmation of this silly proposition, and gave it an appearance of truth supported by evidence and demonstration, is astonishing. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... whatever the light revealed. Not very much destruction was accomplished on either side, however. Occasionally a stray bullet would carry off one of our men in his sleep. Sometimes these naked savages would stealthily creep in upon our sentries and with their sharp knives would overpower them and mutilate them in an ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... to call up and bring home to men an idea, a form, a character, and if that idea be twisted, that form be involved, that character perplexed, many strokes of literary art will be needful. Pure art does not mutilate its object: it represents it as fully as is possible with the slightest effort which is possible: it shrinks from no needful circumstances, as little as it inserts any which are needless. The precise ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... The source is Greco-Lat. manganum, apparatus, whence Ital. mangano, with both meanings. The verb mangle, to mutilate, is unrelated. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... national genius. The jealousy of puritanic fanaticism had persecuted these arts from the first rise of the Reformation in this country. It had not only banished them from our churches and altar-pieces, but the fury of the people, and the "wisdom" of parliament, had alike combined to mutilate and even efface what little remained of painting and sculpture among us. Even within our own times this deadly hostility to art was not extinct; for when a proposal was made gratuitously to decorate our places of worship by a series of religious pictures, and English artists, in pure devotion ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... charged the 400 Amhara soldiers. A shot struck him in the forehead, and he fell dead from his horse. His companions, however, before the Amharas could reload, made a second brilliant charge, avenged their chief, and carried away the body all were anxious to mutilate. More horsemen came pouring in from all directions; the war-cry was echoed far and wide; men, women, and children assailed the Amharas with lances and stones. Mahomed's brothers, now supported by fifty lances, charged again and again the affrighted enemy, and ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... Liberalism is the right of each man to unrestricted action, provided he does not hurt his neighbour? But Home Rulers are essentially one-sided in their estimate of tyranny, and things change their names according to the side on which they are ranged. To boycott a man, to mutilate his cattle,[F] to commit outrages on his family, and finally to murder him outright for paying his rent or taking an evicted farm, are all justifiable proceedings of righteous severity. But for a landlord ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... prints seems plain enough to me," said Hinman, coming forward. "Mr. Vaughan no doubt tore them out himself, when he took his violent dislike to Swain. The act would be characteristic of a certain form of mania. Nobody else would have any motive for destroying them; in fact, no one else would dare mutilate a ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... the matter?" inquired Colomba. They all drew near to the horse, and at the sight of the creature's bleeding head and split ear there was a general outcry of surprise and indignation. My readers must know that among the Corsicans to mutilate an enemy's horse is at once a vengeance, a challenge, and a mortal threat. "Nothing but a bullet-wound can expiate such ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... and hideous— It jars upon my sense fastidious, My "noble instincts," to decline To actions that are not divine. So, when I mutilate your pictures, So far from meriting your strictures, Compassion rather is my due For doing what I hate to do. It grieves my super-saintly soul Even to smash a china bowl; To carry off expensive clocks My tender conscience sears and shocks; I really don't enjoy at all Hacking to bits ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... will often, through jealousy, fight with her whom they consider more favored; on such occasions they may often resort to stone-throwing, or even use fire-sticks and stone-knives with which to mutilate ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... this seems to have been the universal and perhaps instinctive treatment of the hand that struck a father. By Nur al-Din's flight the divorce-oath became technically null and void for Taj al-Din had sworn to mutilate his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... HAMILTON letters, and a number are for the first time printed. The Editor does not at all like 'Extracts,' and must be permitted to regret that what in his judgment was an antiquated and mistaken idea of biography led the excellent as learned Bishop of Lincoln to abridge and mutilate so very many—the places not always marked. On this and the principle and motif which approve and vindicate the publication of the Letters of every really potential intellect such as WORDSWORTH'S, the accomplished daughter of SARA ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Satan, the God of Ugliness." Some of these men were suffering from the "visual derangement" of the insane, whilst "many of the pictures exhibited another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian campaign ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... want my papers whole, and don't you dare to mutilate them." By way of letting her down easier I added: ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... should rise a monument, at sight of which every friendly highlandman would say, Feiich an cabracli mor de Clanruadli! What a mockery of fate to be exposed for ever to the vulgar Cockney gaze, the trophy of a fool, whose boast was to kill! Such a noble beast! Such a mean man! To mutilate his remains for the pride of the wretch who killed him! It was ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... separately, and transacted their own business as a distinct assembly. With so much wisdom are the kingdoms of the earth governed! How else could any one in his senses have devised the idea of creating one deliberative body on purpose to mutilate or destroy the work of another? to produce from time to time a periodical crisis or a periodical deadlock? There is not a country in the world with a Second Chamber that doesn't twice a year kick and plunge to ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Veneer's. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place. You'll see to it,—won't ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... is ever cheered by breakfast, especially if Pete has prepared it, and gradually our departed spirits came lumbering back. I remembered Tommy's promise of the night before to mutilate my countenance on certain conditions, and began to laugh. Then he laughed, doubtless because I had, and pretty soon Monsieur showed signs of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... and peace in the other world if you do not mutilate her; and when I turned to the mason's lean corpse, and looked at his hands, which were harder and rougher than my own, the demon whispered the same. Then I stood before the strong, stout corpse of the prophet Rui, who died of apoplexy, and I remembered the honor and the riches that he had enjoyed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... were brought to me by a cousin who has just returned from India. Now, I want you to give me a little assistance. You see, I have decided to join them together so as to make one large square cushion-cover. How should I do this so as to mutilate the material as little as possible? Of course I propose to make my cuts only along the lines that ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... weight would prove more than sufficient to end the contest ere it fairly began, while a slight stroke from those taloned paws would both slay and mutilate. ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... created Adam a full-grown man, with all his faculties developed, complete, and in full activity. Hence, too, the heathen mythologies, which always contain some elements of truth, however they may distort, mutilate, or travesty them, make the gods the first teachers of the human race, and ascribe to their instruction even the most simple and ordinary arts of every-day life. The gods teach men to plough, to plant, to reap, to work in iron, to erect a shelter from the storm, and to build a fire to warm them ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... nature, indeed, that would mutilate the dead. But I do not see how Emilia hoped that the substitution would pass undiscovered by Selina's friends, to say nothing ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... next place, I agree with the learned counsel that I was out of doors at one o'clock that morning. But if he will use me as HIS WITNESS in that matter, then he must not pick and choose and mutilate my testimony. Nay, let him take the whole truth, and not just so much as he can square with the indictment. Either believe me, that I was out of doors praying, or do not believe me that I was out of doors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... my researches have furnished, not omitting those which are known, concerning the feelings and conduct of Rawleigh at these solemn moments of his life; to have preserved only the new would have been to mutilate the statue, and to injure the whole by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... whom he accuses of employing a mutilated gospel of Luke, is particularly instructive as showing how deep and settled was the conviction of the early Christians that nothing could be a gospel which did not proceed from apostles or apostolic men; and how watchful they were against all attempts to mutilate or corrupt the primitive apostolic records. In defending the true gospel of Luke against the mutilated form of it employed by Marcion, he says: "I affirm that not in the apostolic churches alone, but in all which are joined with ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... may have camped beneath Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540. It was not common for the Indians of the West to burn or mutilate trees, and as it was common for the Spaniards to do so, and as these hackings in the tree seemed to have been made with some edged tool sharper than any possessed by the Indians, it at least seems probable ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... certainly. You remember the scandal about the statues of Hermes. I did not mutilate them, but they ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... impartial trial! How much does nature approve thy laws, as consistent with her own feelings, while she absolutely turns pale, trembles, and recoils, at the institutions of these receivers! Execrable men! you do not murder the horse, on which you only ride; you do not mutilate the cow, which only affords you her milk; you do not torture the dog, which is but a partial servant of your pleasures: but these unfortunate men, from whom, you derive your very pleasures and your fortunes, you torture, mutilate, murder at discretion! ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... impris'ning snows Yield him a victim to Novara's power, No easy conquest else." With foot uprais'd For stepping, spake Mohammed, on the ground Then fix'd it to depart. Another shade, Pierc'd in the throat, his nostrils mutilate E'en from beneath the eyebrows, and one ear Lopt off, who with the rest through wonder stood Gazing, before the rest advanc'd, and bar'd His wind-pipe, that without was all o'ersmear'd With crimson stain. "O thou!" said he, "whom sin Condemns not, and whom erst (unless too near ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... startled when he read the particulars of their scheme, which was no other than an intention to sally upon him when he should be altogether unprovided against such an attack, cut off his ears, and otherwise mutilate him in such a manner that he should have no cause to be vain of his person for the future. Incensed as he was against the brutal disposition of his own father's son, he could not help being moved at the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... clerks did not mutilate out of recognition or reasonable guess the words I added to Dolby's last telegram to Boston. 'Tribune London correspondent totally false.' Not only is there not a word of truth in the pretended conversation, but it is so absurdly unlike me that I cannot suppose it to be even invented by ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... such friendly offices, have embraced without restraint every opportunity to weaken the confidence of the people; and, by having the whole game in their hands, they have scrupled not to publish things that do not, as well as those which do exist, and to mutilate the latter, so as to make them subserve the purposes which ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... Dasent in Popular Tales from the Norse, 1888, p. 39, under the title of Hacon Grizzlebeard. A princess refuses all suitors, and mocks them publicly. Hacon Grizzlebeard, a prince, comes to woo her. She makes the king's fool mutilate the prince's horses, and then makes game of his appearance as he drives out the next day. Resolved to take his revenge, Hacon disguises himself as a beggar, attracts the princess's notice by means of a golden spinning-wheel, its stand, and a golden wool-winder, and sells them to her for ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various

... themselves to strangers, either in the temple, or on the market-place, the gold received as the price of their favours being offered to the goddess. This obligation only lasted for one day.[24] It was also customary for the priests of Adonis to mutilate themselves in imitation of the god, a distinct proof, if one were needed, of the traditional cause ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... with the flesh and burned me in the fire to teach me that the spirit is born with the body. That is the power that overwhelms me.' While the priest was saying that, his eyes became as blood, and he vomited all his flesh. I saw him mutilate himself, rend himself with his teeth and fall on the ground. Seized with terror I awoke, and I began to ponder and ask myself if this indeed was the nature and the composition of the water. And I congratulated myself upon having reasoned well [namely in a train of thought preceding the vision]. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... there are only four bookbinders in London who may be trusted not to mutilate a book, and that there are only two who have any sense of design and harmony of colour. But this is not to be wondered at when we consider that the majority of the bookbinders' customers know nothing whatever of bookbinding good or bad, requiring only that their ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... custom among savages of the Zulu and kindred races, for reasons of superstition, to rip open and mutilate the bodies of enemies killed in war, but on this occasion the Matabele general, having surveyed the dead, issued an order: 'Let them be,' he said; 'they were men who died like men, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... which was the same to every man. Repentance, turning to God, works worthy of repentance, are as needful for Jew as for Gentile, and as open to Gentile as to Jew. What but universal can such a message be? To limit it would be to mutilate it. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... necessary result. It is very difficult to come across the best pur sang horses, as the Arabs are afraid of the Bey's taking a fancy to them, and taking them by force; and, consequently, they often purposely mutilate them, lest he should seize them to himself. There are also some very fine bazaars at Tunis, and the otto of roses there is especially excellent. Our Consul has a very fine, large house, and dispenses his hospitalities, &c., very ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... virtue, that you never know where it will stop. I can feel what Mr. Shaw probably means when he says that it is disgusting to feast off dead bodies, or to cut lumps off what was once a living thing. But I can never know at what moment he may not feel in the same way that it is disgusting to mutilate a pear-tree, or to root out of the earth those miserable mandrakes which cannot even groan. There is no natural limit to this rush ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... he is not wise who does not make liberal use of his knowledge so long as God may give him grace. The story is about Erec the son of Lac—a story which those who earn a living by telling stories are accustomed to mutilate and spoil in the presence of kings and counts. And now I shall begin the tale which will be remembered so long as Christendom endures. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... the censorship mutilate literary works, but it often suffocates the inspiration of the author. The Russian press has lately published a very interesting article on Nekrasov, explaining the frequent interruptions of his activity by a momentary ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. For every man that they have tortured, we must torture one of theirs. For every child mutilated, we must mutilate ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... a furtive glance around, he fetched the poker from the fireplace. He felt horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but the stone hand was still intact. He struck again—this time with all his force—and ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... more than 250 tons of these cast-iron rings had been made in that town and neighbourhood in the year 1838, for the African market. The captain of a vessel trading to Africa informed me in the same year that the Black Despot, who then ruled on the banks of the river Bonney, had threatened to mutilate, in a way which I will not describe, any one who should be detected in landing these counterfeit rings within ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... individuals for that of the people, "our representatives have failed to treat us with respect." This is not the first time, and it is not to be the last. Often do they exceed their mandate, they disarm, mutilate, and gag their legitimate sovereign and they pass decrees against the people in the people's name. Such is their martial law, specially devised for "suppressing the uprising of citizens", that is to say, the only means left to us against ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... least right in regarding the soul as all-important, though it was utterly wrong in considering the interests of soul and body to be entirely antagonistic, and in teaching that for the elevation of the soul we must outrage, mutilate, and deny the body. The new asceticism accepts the first principle of the old, but bases its practice on a truer conception of the relations between mind and body. The greater part of the body is composed of muscles, and it is with muscles that physical training is concerned. On our principles, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... spruit, he believes that his officers have done their best for him. He is ordered to fall in upon the deck of a burning troopship and to stand at attention while Death inspects the ranks. He is besieged in a hill fort on the Indian frontier by a horde of fanatics eager to kill or to mutilate him. He lies wounded on the field of battle from which, after an indecisive engagement, each combatant has retired; and there, scorched by the mid-day sun and starved by the cold of the night, and perhaps also in danger of being burnt alive by a veld ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... then, Albinik, that Caesar has any suspicions? Could he suppose that a man would have the courage to mutilate himself in order to induce confidence in ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... in countenance. We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... started to ride on. The woman was hoeing at the time, she whirled around, struck the overseer on his head with the hoe, knocking him from his horse, she then pounced upon him and chopped his head off. She went mad for a few seconds and proceeded to chop and mutilate his body; that done to her satisfaction, she then killed his horse. She then calmly went to tell the master of the murder, saying "I've done killed de overseer," the master replied—"Do you mean to say you've killed the overseer?" she answered yes, and that she had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... Martin"—Calamity (calamitas), not from calamus, as it is usually derived, but perhaps from obs. calamis, i.e. columis, from [Greek: kholo, kolhao, kolhazo] to maim, mutilate, and so for ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... ran him through the chest and gave vent to a strangled, growling cry as Alessandro fell. Eglamore wrenched his sword free and grasped it by the blade so that he might stab the Duke again and again. He meant to hack the abominable flesh, to slash and mutilate that haughty mask of infamy, but Graciosa clutched ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... There is not a single one among those books which is not worthy, by reason of some special merit, to command the respect of an honourable man. What other owner would ever know how to dip into hem in the proper way? Can I be even sure that another owner would not leave them to decay in neglect, or mutilate them at the prompting of some ignorant whim? Into whose hands will fall that incomparable copy of the "Histoire de l'Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Pres," on the margins of which the author himself, in the person of Jacques Bouillard, made ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... line from which I had strayed. Heaps of dead and spectacles of murder were continually presenting themselves. In one place I saw some ten or twelve soldiers with a number of unfortunates whom they had tied back to back in a batch. With volley after volley they despatched them, and proceeded to mutilate their bodies in the usual horrible fashion. Nobody was spared, man, woman, or child, that I could see. The Chinese appeared to offer no resistance. Many of them prostrated themselves on the ground before the butchers with abject submission, and were shot or stabbed ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... use of tattooing, nor do they mutilate the lips or nose, but what they lack in these respects they make up for ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... the revolutionary period, as well as the collections of the period which preceded it, have both been productive of serious damage. The collector is, or rather often was, a barbarian who did not hesitate, when he saw a chance of adding to his collection of specimens and rare remains, to mutilate monuments, to dissect manuscripts, to break up whole archives, in order to possess himself of the fragments. On this score many acts of vandalism were perpetrated before the Revolution. Naturally, the revolutionary procedure of confiscation and transference was also ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... the axe. Of my four sons but one remains. Henri was stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre's cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the mob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of my house I too would find a place beside the King and die with him. Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of an instance in India in which a horse lay down, deliberately exposing his anus, and allowing the crows to pick and eat his whole rectum. In temporary insanity, in fury, or in grief, the lower animals have been noticed by naturalists to mutilate themselves. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... can assure thee that it would have been less difficult for me to build the whole edifice anew than to mutilate it in several places, change, innovate, add and suppress in others, but I was almost perforce compelled to give it a new form, which I have done, partly for the requirements and the adornment of the stories, partly to conform to the times and the infelicity of our century, when most human ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... '—if, from dread of the terrible imprecations which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one, and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a stone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else upon it, or carry,it away to a place where it will be no longer seen,—this man, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon him looks ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... hast put all things under his feet." Slavery puts HIM under the feet of an owner, with beasts and creeping things. Who, but an impious scorner, dare thus strive with his Maker, and mutilate HIS IMAGE, and blaspheme the Holy One, who saith to those that grind his poor, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... either caves or low clay-made huts, of the shape of half an egg. They do not make pottery, and neither keep herds nor till the ground, contenting themselves with such food as wild fruits and roots and the animals they kill with spear or arrow or capture in traps. They do not mutilate or bedaub their bodies (though the Andamanese indulge in a kind of "tattooing"). Among them the struggle for life does not exist in its more brutal forms. They take care of the sick and feeble, the children, and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, mutilate. Defect, fault, imperfection, disfigurement, blemish, flaw. Delay, defer, postpone, procrastinate. Demoralize, deprave, debase, corrupt, vitiate. Deportment, demeanor, bearing, port, mien. Deprive, divest, dispossess, strip, despoil. Despise, contemn, scorn, disdain. Despondency, despair, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Germans are not fools," replied the movie- man; "when they mutilate a victim, they go through with it to the finish. They take care not to let telltales go straggling ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... ancient document—a document which advocates massacre, condones polygamy, accepts slavery, and orders the burning of so-called witches. Its Mosaic provisions have long been laid aside. We do not consider ourselves accursed if we fail to mutilate our bodies, if we eat forbidden dishes, fail to trim our beards, or wear clothes of two materials. But we cannot lay aside the provisions and yet regard the document as divine. No learned quibbles can ever ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I must take two more Danites whom he named and watch the house of a widow woman named Clawson. I was informed that a man went there nearly every night about ten o'clock, and left about daylight. I was to station myself and my men near the house, and when the man came out knock him down and mutilate him; it would not be inquired into ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... painter" he said—"that Antonio Vandyck—what a power he has! Steel may mutilate, warriors may waste and destroy—still the King stands uninjured by time; and our grandchildren, while they read his history, may look on his image, and compare the melancholy features with the woful tale.—It was a stern necessity—it was an awful deed! The calm ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... me slowly, this phase of rebellious animalism, like a mantle falling over me. Thought followed thought insidiously, imperceptibly, like fold upon fold of a cloth dropped upon me, as I sat in the silent room alone. To take this girl and force back her art upon itself, to mutilate her brain-power and drug it with her roused sensuality, to turn her into a simple instrument of pleasure for myself, and lend myself to her as such. To yield to this inflowing tide of desire that beat, now, heavily through ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... whether he dropped that stone on his foot before or after dinner. He, and not your own evil nature, should be responsible for your instinctive wish that he had happened to be toying with a bowlder instead of a small stone which could only mutilate. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... came the blaze kindled by Tract Ninety (1841). This, in the language of its author and his friends, was the famous attempt to clear the Articles from the glosses encrusting them like barnacles, and to bring out the old catholic truth that man had done his worst to disfigure and to mutilate, and yet in spite of all man's endeavour it was in the Articles still. Mr. Gladstone, as we have seen, regarded Tract Ninety with uneasy doubts as to its drift, its intentions, the way in which the church and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Accordingly they are scarcely possible in it, or at least they are only possible on the condition of traversing their age, like scared persons, at a running pace, and of being preserved by a happy star from the influence of their age, which would mutilate their genius. Never, for ay and forever, will society produce these poets; but out of society they still appear sometimes at intervals, rather, I admit, as strangers, who excite wonder, or as ill-trained children of nature, who give offence. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... others he tore and ripped with his teeth and nails. Sometimes he tore the mouth open and rent the face back to the ears, he opened the stomachs, and pulled off the limbs. Although he dug up the bodies of several men he felt no inclination to mutilate them, whereas he delighted in rending female corpses. He was sentenced to a ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... interest. Even the men of inferior life among us, whose occupations, one would think, tend to produce minds as callous as the mettle they work; lay a stronger claim to civilization, than in any other place with which I am acquainted. I am sorry to mutilate the compliment, when I mention the lower race of the other sex: no lady ought to be publicly insulted, let her appear in what dress she pleases. Both sexes, however, agree in exhibiting a mistaken pity, in cases of punishment, particularly by preventing that ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... proved that his own pride and selfishness had destroyed the faculty by which he could see God. The blind are not more oblivious to color than he was to those divine qualities which are designed to win and enchain the heart. A man may sadly mutilate his ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... confidence of your children do not threaten to mutilate the feet of their sensibilities for the sake of a narrow theory. I myself at least, after what I had experienced, would sooner have gone to the nearest police agent for intimate advice, than ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... ever recurring throughout the ages, with a different name for their Hero in each new recension, cannot pass unrecognised by the student, though they may naturally and rightly be ignored by the devotee; and when they are used as a weapon to mutilate or destroy the majestic figure of the Christ, they must be met, not by denying the facts, but by understanding the deeper meaning of the stories, the spiritual truths that the legends expressed ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... seemed to be reserving me to exchange for some other prisoner, perhaps to act as a hostage in case he should happen to be captured. I could come to no other conclusion; for so far the custom had been for the revolted people to murder and mutilate every one who ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... on the same sophism; they change and mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he allows men to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend towards their destruction; and when he makes someone happy, it is after ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... animals, are righteously sacrificed only when required to supply our wants. A man does not go out into the fields and mutilate or destroy his horses and oxen: let him treat the oaks and the elms with the same humanity. I would that enough of the old mythology to which I have alluded, and which our fathers called religion, still lived among us to awaken a virtuous indignation in our breasts when we witnessed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need? And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it, no good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledge, why do it? Without such it ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... who under the name of Carlists plunder friend and foe, and to robbery join cruelty so atrociously horrible that indignation at the crime is frequently lost in wonder; for the Galician robbers are seldom satisfied with booty, and unlike their brethren in other parts generally mutilate or assassinate those who are so unfortunate as to fall in their hands; prostitution is carried on to an enormous extent, and although loathsome concustant [sic] diseases stare the stranger in the face in the street, in the market-place, in the church, and at the fountain; 'Drunken ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... put his poilu inconnu in the depths of a cathedral in order to bring an unbelieving crowd into the house of God, but puts him in the public way under the Arc de Triomphe. He does not say that the soldier died for King and Country, and then mutilate a text—"Greater love hath no man than this," but he inscribes—"Ici repose un soldat francais mort pour la patrie," and leaves the living to make their own reflections. His Paris is a city of statues and gardens but ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... digestion, I answer, that, while men with the reputation of Bancroft and Hildreth could pass unchallenged when disregarding largely the use of documents and the citation of authorities, I would find myself challenged by a large number of critics. Moreover I have felt it would be almost cruel to mutilate some of the very rare old documents that shed such peerless light upon the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... hall, Hoarse sounding like a demon's voice, which the stoutest hearts appal! His doom is utter'd!—"Twelve hours hence thy traitorous head shall fall, And for a terror be exposed upon the city wall; Thy limbs shall quarter'd be, and hung, all mutilate and bare, At Jedburgh, and Lanark town, at Glasgow, and at Ayr; That all good subjects thence may learn obedience to the State, Their duty to our gracious king, and bloody treason's fate." A horror seizes every breast—a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... "The Winter's Tale," "The Tempest"—to be convinced of this. Only a man devoid of the sense of measure and of taste could produce such types as "Titus Andronicus" or "Troilus and Cressida," or so mercilessly mutilate the ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... importance with Charlemagne to support the papal authority, as holding out the only means of spreading Christianity, which he justly considered the most effectual instrument he could employ to enlighten and civilize the world. An attempt had been made to mutilate the Pope, and thus disqualify him for his office, by Campulus and Paschal, two disappointed aspirants to the papacy; but he escaped from their hands and brought his complaints before Charlemagne. The conspirators then attempted to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... own I gripped them to show her that I intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history? What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very seriously, or such drastic means would never be ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... mattock, and a light harrow. The ox and the ass were used for labour. The word "oxen,'' which occurs in our version of the Scriptures, as well as in the Septuagint and Vulgate, denotes the species, rather than the sex. As the Hebrews did not mutilate any of their animals, bulls were in common use. The quantity of land ploughed by a yoke of oxen in one day was called a yoke or acre. Towards the end of October, with which month the rainy season begins, seedtime commenced, and of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia



Words linked to "Mutilate" :   mar, mutilation, falsify, mangle, cut up, gouge, force out, murder, damage, warp, garble



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