"Retributory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God, and of disobedience, has been a blind and a reckless agency, unaccompanied with self-scrutiny, and to a great extent passed from his memory, yet it has all of it been looked at, as it welled, up from the living centres of free agency and responsibility, by the calm and dreadful eye of retributive Justice, and has all of it been indelibly written down in the book of God's sure memory, with a pen of iron, and ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... richly-wrought tapestry, full of sacred and profane history, and the furlongs of curiously-carved panels, wainscoting, and cornice that floppy, sloppy, vandal brush of pigs' bristles and pail of diluted lime have eclipsed and obliterated for ever, and not a retributive drop of the villainous mixture has fallen into the perpetrator's eye to "make his foul intent seem horrible!" Think of Christian kings of glorious memory, even Defenders of the Faith, with their fair queens, princes of the blood, and ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... perpetrated, they sprang by a generous reaction into an attitude of sympathy for the Roman Catholic system. A more favorable preparation of the way of conversion to Rome could not be desired by the skillful propagandist. One recognizes a retributive justice in the fact, when notable gains to the Catholic Church are distinctly traced to the reaction of honest men from ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... anywhere else, and would then have married Ophelia, put his mother in a nunnery, and lived happily ever after.[162] And to that edifying assumption, Mr. Feis adds the fantasy that Shakspere dreaded the influence of Montaigne as a deterrent from the retributive slaughter of guilty uncles by ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... "Sin has a retributive power. At the moment of commission it implants a sting in the conscience which, in the impenitent man, lights a flame, which, without the application of the Precious Blood, is never extinguished. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... physician fled at the sight of me; but my father, though thrilling with horror, bore the shock, and bowed to the retributive justice of the angry Deity she had invoked. His whole life, his whole nature, changed from that hour; and, kneeling beside my dead mother, as he afterward told me, he vowed before high Heaven to cherish and love ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... had intended. Ramsden, who had been summoned to attend poor Mr Spinney, was her sole confidant, and readily entered into a scheme which was pleasing to his mistress, and promised revenge for the treatment he had received; and which, as Miss Dragwell declared, would be nothing but retributive justice ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... pnnciple of Retribution; "retributive issues in this life, and the existence in all minds of an impersonal justice which demands that, in the final issue, every being shall receive his just deserts, suppose a being of absolute justice who shall render to every ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... justice in the affair, for Gabby Johnny, who was famed for his astute bargaining, had been voicing a wailing desire for high wheat ever since that grain had begun to grow along the banks of the Oro. Nevertheless, though the neighbours might secretly approve of such retributive acts of Providence, the medium through which they descended was liable to ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... been touched in the morning, but he was now completely prostrated. In the midst of the holy place, which he had formerly profaned, lay the body of his unfortunate mother, and he could not help looking upon her untimely end as the retributive vengeance of Heaven for the crime he had committed. His grief was so audible, that it attracted the notice of some of the bystanders, and Thames was obliged to beg him to control it. In doing this, he chanced to raise his eyes and half fancied he beheld, shaded by a pillar at the extremity of the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was buried in the Savoy in London. The family of the man who betrayed him is said, in the Highlands, to have been visited with a severe retribution, having, ever since, had one of its members an idiot. Such is the notion of retributive justice in ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... was like some sinister will-o'-the-wisp. What was it that urged him? A lure that beckoned? A menace that drove? He thought of Kish Taka. There was a nemesis to dog any man. Jim Courtot had dwelt with the desert Indians; he had come to know in what savage manner they meted out their retributive justice. Was Kish Taka still unsleeping, patient, relentless on Courtot's trail? Kish Taka ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... caused me some surprise. They made me wonder less at the energy with which some people now are striving to erect "barriers against democracy" to prevent the return match for the old game coming off.—However improving, and however justly retributive, future legislation for the rich by the poor in the spirit of past legislation for the poor by the rich might be, it could hardly be considered pleasant, and is surely worth putting up the true barrier against, one of education in each poor man's mind. (He ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... alone has Time hastened to bring that retributive justice which falls alike on empires and individuals. The son of "The Man" moulders in an Austrian tomb, leaving no trace that he has lived; while the lineal descendant of the obscure Creole, of the deposed empress, of the divorced wife, sits on the throne of Clovis ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... order to force him out of office. But the critics might have remembered that the most savage criticism of any Scot generally comes from other Scots who think he has not remained Scotch enough; as witness, by what new appears to be retributive justice, the general Scots dislike of Boswell himself. At any rate, the pamphlet was the production, not of one Englishman imbued with a hatred of all things Scots, but of three ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... strength, in whose purpose so many people refused to believe, came Poland's opportunity, in which nobody could have been expected to believe. Out of Russia's collapse emerged that forbidden thing, the Polish independence, not as a vengeful figure, the retributive shadow of the crime, but as something much more solid and more difficult to get rid of—a political necessity and a moral solution. Directly it appeared its practical usefulness became undeniable, and also the fact that, for better or worse, it was ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... triumphant, will weep down Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, Enduring thus, the retributive hour Which since we ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... and stood putting on new gloves preparatory to leaving the room. Eliza was not very imaginative; but had she been disposed to foresee events, much as she might have harassed herself, she would not have been more likely to hit upon the form to be taken by the retributive fate she always vaguely feared than are the poor ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... kidnaping. We have proof enough to convict them all; the valet will be hanged; and the viscount and the opera singer sentenced to penal servitude for many years. Will not that be sufficient punishment for the conspirators. And is it not better that the law should deal out retributive justice to them, than that you should execute unlawful vengeance?" ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... to undo the wrong committed at Washington—and they resolved on savage vengeance. For every dollar of which they have been defrauded we shall pay ten dollars in the cost of the war. It has been so for fifty years; it will be so again. God's retributive justice always has compelled a people to reap exactly what they have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the lower classes in reference to an unfortunate or crippled child. Here the word ingwa is used especially in the retributive sense. It usually signifies evil karma; kwaho being the term used in speaking of meritorious karma and its results. While an unfortunate child is spoken of as "a child of ingwa," a very lucky person is called a ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... refuge in the Gull's Nest—had effected an almost miraculous escape, considering how closely he was guarded, a few hours before, and secreted himself in the very chamber where he had left poor Fleetword to starvation, little imagining that he was standing on the threshold of retributive justice. He had caught at flight, even so far, as a sort of reprieve; and was forming plans of future villany at the very moment the train was fired. God have mercy on all sinners! it is fearful to be cut off without ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... felt culpable that she had not before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol in his house—an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than wood or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol too long—she had too entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency. She had, and she dimly perceived it, committed a greater ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... calamities, and all suffering as punishment. If we regard all suffering as punishment, then we need look no higher and no further in order to vindicate the character of God in the infliction of them. For, according to this view, they are the infliction of his retributive justice, merited by the person upon whom they fall, and adapted to prevent sin; and consequently here our inquiries may terminate; just as when we see the criminal receive the penalty due to his crimes. On the other hand, if we may not view all ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... movement they expected—and dreaded; their hearts laboring and pounding. For they saw in the face of this man who had brought his pony to a halt within ten feet of them a decision to adhere to the principles that had governed him all his days, and they knew that a woman's order would not stay the retributive impulse that ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... is retributive and not corrective. Justice requires that each man shall have the fruits of his own deeds; in this it assumes that each and every man is free and self-determined. It proposes to treat each man as free, and as the rightful owner of his deed and its consequences. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too. If that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache old Jolyon grimly smiled. He felt that what he was doing was in the nature of retributive ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... greatest indignities, grinding them under the harshest oppression, and exacting from them, by the lash of the task-master, the most arduous labor. But mark how their pride was rebuked and their cruelty punished, under the moral and retributive government of God. Their land was desolated by a series of plagues culminating in the death of the first-born, and the people whom they had oppressed made their escape from the most powerful empire then existing in the world, without themselves ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... say that neither Eric nor his friends took any part in this retributive act. They sat together in the boarders' room till it was over, engaged in exciting discussion of the recent event. Most warmly did Eric thank them for their trustfulness. "Thank you," he said, "with all my heart, for proving my innocence; ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... infliction, trial; judgment; penalty &c. 974; retribution; thunderbolt, Nemesis; requital &c. (reward) 973; penology; retributive justice. lash, scaffold &c. (instrument of punishment) 975; imprisonment &c. (restraint) 751; transportation, banishment, expulsion, exile, involuntary exile, ostracism; penal servitude, hard labor; galleys &c. 975; beating &c.v.; flagellation, fustigation[obs3], gantlet, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that Cnut, who is also called Canute, "marked one of his royal Christmases by a piece of sudden retributive justice: bored beyond all endurance by the Saxon Edric's iteration of the traitorous services he had rendered him, the King exclaimed to Edric, Earl of Northumberland: 'Then let him receive his deserts, that he may not betray us as he betrayed Ethelred and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Theologians have raised the question whether God's covenant is of this kind. Surely it is. His promises to Israel had an 'if,' and the fulfilment of the conditions necessarily secured the accomplishment of the promises. The ritual of the first covenant transcends the strictly retributive compact which it ratified, and shadows a gospel beyond law, even the new covenant which brings better gifts, and does not turn on 'do,' but simply on the sprinkling with the blood of Jesus. The words of Moses ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... princess and of my hope of her depending upon such an interview as this. From that hour when I stepped on the sands of the Continent to the day of my quitting them, I had been folded in a dream: I had stretched my hands to the highest things of earth, and here now was the retributive material ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Wrong-doing and calamity are inseparably connected. Those laws, through which the voice of the Supreme is ever heard, are so intertwined in their action, that the infraction of one leads to the infliction of retributive punishment by the other. We break a moral law, the physical law will take up its cause, and we suffer. We have come, I say, to see the universal validity of this rule, the absolute irresistibility of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... interview with Paddington, she had discovered the existence of his wife, for he himself had seen to it that the knowledge was imparted to her. Further than that, he preferred not to conjecture. The Madonna-faced girl had taken her secret with her to her swiftly retributive grave ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Druidism Exhumed, mentions that circles stood on the spot where one of the extensive manufactories at Grandholm, near Aberdeen, has been built. The people, shocked at the removal of the Druidical works, predicted retributive justice to those who disturbed the sacred relics. For a long time every misadventure to the company, or to individuals connected therewith, was ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... I loved had become the bride of my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were, those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As the destroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed with superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet delayed. At last, it fell—it fell. All who had wronged me met their ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... had, in some measure, thrown its softening veil over the past, he was suffered to regain his liberty.17 But he came forth an aged man, bent down with infirmities and broken in spirit,—an object of pity, rather than indignation. Rarely has retributive justice been meted out in fuller measure to offenders so high ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Good Stockbroker, 'that the tendency to monogamy is innate, and all the other forms of marriage have been temporary deviations, each bringing their own retributive evils. After all, monogamous marriage was instituted for the protection of women, and has been held sacred in the great and noble ages of the world. Quite apart from the moral point of view, however, polygamy could only be possible in a tropical climate, where the necessities of life were ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... had slipped noiselessly from the room. Pamela made no effort to detain him. She had a curious feeling that the things which had passed between them concerned their two selves only. So had no desire whatever to hand him over to retributive justice. ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... akin to Wat Tyler's, mercifully reprieved from death by King George in consideration of his provocation; for was he not, like Wat Tyler, the girl's father? She remembered what she accounted that man's only weakness—his dwelling with joy on the sound of the hammer-stroke of his swift, retributive justice—the concussion of the remorseless wrought iron on the split skull of a human beast. She remembered his words with a shudder:—"Ay, mistress, I can shut my eyes and listen for it now. And many was the time it gave me peace to think upon ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... had elapsed since Lionel Dale's death, when Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina had the interview described above. And now it seemed as though Fate itself were conspiring with the conspirators, for the watch kept upon them by Andrew Larkspur was perforce delayed, and Lady Eversleigh's designs of retributive punishment were suspended. A few days after the return of Mr. Larkspur to town, that gentleman was seized with serious illness, and for three weeks was unable to leave his bed. Mr. Andrew lay ill with acute bronchitis, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be severe and swiftly retributive. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... bad thing in them; he smiled in patronage of their simple pathos; he paid the tribute of a laugh when the poet turned, as he sometimes did, from his conception of angel and martyr motherhood, and portrayed the mother in her more familiar phases of virtue and duty, with the retributive shingle or slipper in her hand. He bought a pocketful of this literature, popular in a sense which the most successful book can never be, and enlisted the ballad vendor so deeply in the effort to direct him to Lindau's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... plainly, the subsequent words of the section show that it is God's. That quotation comes from Deuteronomy xxxii. 35. It is possibly unfortunate that 'vengeance' is ascribed to God; for hasty readers lay hold of the idea of passionate resentment, and transfer it to Him, whereas His retributive action has in it no resentment and no passion. Nor are we to suppose that the thought here is only the base one, they are sure to be punished, so we need not trouble. The Apostle points to the solemn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... and, if it does not imply the absolute immortality of the soul, at least asserts its existence after the death of the body, for the disembodied spirit becomes incarnate again as soon as it finds a tenement which fits it. To their life after death the Pythagoreans added a doctrine of retributive rewards and punishments, and, in this respect, what has been said of animals forming a penitential mechanism in the theology of India and Egypt, holds good for the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the Major Gontard had in mind to do toward assisting the march of retributive justice is immaterial—since he did not do it. Even as he spoke—in these terms of doom that qualifying conditions rendered doomless—the man suddenly dodged past him, bolted across the platform, jumped to the foot-board ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... matter of that—but Mrs Chick didn't know it—he had been pretty well blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even its retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of sobs ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... could not help indulging myself in this retributive cruelty towards the chief, and leaving him to the tender mercies of Mike, I ordered the others to rise and form in line before me. Affecting to occupy myself entirely with them, I withdrew the attention of all from the French officers, who remained ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... with a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomy with Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched me preparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I am persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributive justice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has the Christmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number of mysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... said Callandar, smiling. "You thought I was the one to blame? There was retributive justice in your eye, don't ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... crookedly with his fellow-men, but never, until the incident of Devil's Hole, had he deliberately planned murder. Thus tonight Maison's conscience had more ghastly evidence to confront him with, and conscience is a pitiless retributive agent. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the people is evident from an extraordinary circumstance. Two grave collections of historical documents adopted them. We are surprised to find prefixed to Rushworth's and Nalson's historical collections two such political prints! Nalson's was an act of retributive justice; but he seems to have been aware that satire in the shape of pictures is a language very attractive to the multitude, for he has introduced a caricature print in the solemn folio of the Trial of Charles the First.[102] Of the happiest of these ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... imposition, the imposition must be done, and must be done at a certain time, without appeal, and causa indicta. Mr Paton was as deaf as Pluto to all excuses, and as inexorable as Rhadamanthus in his retributive dispensations. Neither Orpheus nor Amphion would have moved him. Orpheus might have made all the desks and forms dance round as they listened to his song, but he could never have got Mr Paton to let off fifty lines; and Amphion would have been equally unsuccessful ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the Quivering Nostrils becomes an abbess, her rather odd abbey somehow accommodating not merely her own irregularly arrived child (not Belle-Rose's), but Belle-Rose himself and his marchioness after their marriage; and she is poisoned at the end in the most admirably retributive fashion. There are actually two villains—a pomp and prodigality (for your villain is a more difficult person than your hero) very unusual—one of whom is despatched at the end of the second volume and the other at the actual curtain. There is the proper persecuting minister—Louvois ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... *the relations of the individual human soul to God*, Christianity opens to our view a department of duty paramount to all others in importance and interest. His fatherly love and care, his moral government and discipline, his retributive providence, define with unmistakable distinctness certain corresponding modes, in part, of outward action, and in still greater part, of action in that inward realm of thought whence the outward life receives its ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... FURIES (Erinnyes), the three retributive spirits who punished crime, represented as snaky haired old woman, named Alecto, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... designation of 'maker of those persons' also suits only the individual soul. The meaning of the whole passage therefore is 'He who is the cause of the different persons that have their abode in the disc of the sun, and so on, and are instrumental towards the retributive experiences of the individual souls; and to whom there belongs karman, good and evil, to which there is due his becoming such a cause; he indeed is to be known, his essential nature is to be cognised in distinction from Prakriti.' And also in what follows, 'The two ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... country and sovereign; and thinking as you do yourself, I know what you must suffer when you are obliged to submit to national insults, unretaliated and unrevenged. But let us not conceive ourselves the agents of that retributive vengeance which Heaven has, in a peculiar degree, declared to be its own attribute. Let us, while we see and feel the injuries inflicted on our own country, not forget that our own raids, ambuscades, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... chiefs, he inveighed against their craven policy, and urged the necessity of vigorous and retributive measures that would check the confidence and presumption of their enemies, if not inspire them with awe. For this purpose, he advised that a war party should be immediately sent off on the trail of the marauders, to follow them, if necessary, into the very heart of the Blackfoot country, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... cover it entirely. Perhaps the nose, or the tongue, or the lips, or an eye, or some other prominent organ, is lost. Still the miserable sufferer lingers on, life serving only to prolong the torture. To many of them, death would be a grateful release, even with the fires of retributive justice before their eyes; for hell itself could scarcely be more awful punishment than ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... was as hopelessly philosophical a subject as Madame Roland, when, at six years old, receiving her penal bread and water with the comment, "Bon pour la digestion!" and the retributive stripes which this drew upon her, with the further observation, "Bon pour la circulation!" In spite of my "wickedness," as Topsy would say, I appear to have been not a little spoiled by my parents, and an especial pet and favorite of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... between meeting a policeman on a lonely wharf and whistling a few operatic airs with him, and being caught by him crawling out of a freight-car. So Dick waited, as even a New Orleans policeman must move on some time—perhaps it is a retributive law of nature—and before long "Big Fritz" majestically disappeared between the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Even the lieutenant, ordinarily incapable of observation, and just now lost in the tumult of his wrath, can see a thing when it is painted red for him. Interpreting the blush as the involuntary confession of black deceit confronted with its victim, he points to it with a loud crow of retributive triumph, and then, seizing her by the wrist, pulls her past him into the room as he claps the door to, and plants himself with his ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... nine, accompanied the army back to winter quarters; for John desired to see his friends, and also to raise recruits for next season's campaign, now that he had learned experience, and had inspiring tales to tell of adventure, victory, and quick retributive vengeance upon ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... penalties, so to speak, that is, in order to correct the criminal or at least to provide an example for others, might exist in the opinion of those who do away with the freedom that is exempt from necessity. True [423] retributive justice, on the other hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes something more, namely, intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because the harmony of things demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of suffering, to make the mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil whereto ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... was spoiled and fired, and thus retributive justice done to those who had wantonly murdered two white ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and his forty-two assessors, before whom it was brought by Analis; they had an Elysium, surrounded by waters, where the Osirian—that is, the happy dead—ploughed, sowed, reaped, and threshed, as on earth—a singular want of fancy. Retributive pains, by fire and steel, are also supposed to have been detected among the paintings. At the same time they held and taught to the Greeks the doctrine of metempsychosis. It is difficult to reconcile with either of these notions ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... invaded rights, must be exercised with the certain assurance of retaliation, not only in the limited operation of war in this part of the King's Dominions, but in every quarter of the globe. For the national character of Britain is not less distinguished for humanity than strict retributive justice, which will consider the execution of this inhuman threat as deliberate murder, for which every subject of the offending ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... symbols for the six stages of the ascent of the mind to the pure God-idea. The chief city, the metropolis, is the Divine Logos, next come the two powers already considered, and then three secondary powers, the retributive, the law-giving, and the prohibitive. "Very beautiful and well-fenced cities they are, worthy refuges of souls that merit salvation." Each of these cities is an aspect of the religious mind; when it settles in the first it obeys the law from fear of punishment and thinks of God ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... While this doctrine again, in its development and detail, differs essentially from that of the Christian faith, it is well to call attention to it as a point of contact. It breathes the spirit of karma, which, in its retributive power, has been compared by some to the doctrine of heredity, and by others, to that of fate. Karma demands the full future fruition of every act done in the body; and many re-births, with intervals of keener suffering and bliss in numerous hells and heavens, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... Babylonish dialect, her own vindications and explanations of these misdemeanors. Every day her mother declared that she must begin to get that child into some kind of order; but still the merry little curly pate contemned law and order, and laughed at all ideas of retributive justice, and Fred and his mother laughed and deplored, in the same invariable succession, the various direful results ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... goddess, the allayer of pain and the soother of sorrows, or the impersonation of stern retributive justice. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) admire, while with uplifted toe retributive you inflict vengeance incorporeal upon the shadowy rear of obnoxious ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... made. Sheep, fowls, and other articles of provision, which had been brought back, were killed and prepared. Huge bonfires were lit, and the party, secure that, for twenty-four hours at least, the Spaniards could attempt no retributive measures, sat down ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... come to an understanding with a lady irrevocably in his power. And all the while, deep in this bold villain's breast lurked a dark, fierce, terrible reflection that one more crime, only one more—almost, indeed, an act of wild retributive justice on his confederate—and that proud, tameless woman would be crouching in the dust, praying for mercy at the feet of the desperate man she ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... become still more corrupted; in the prevailing degeneracy it certainly could not save what was not worth preserving. The strong grasp which Rome had laid upon the splendors of all the ancient Pagan Civilizations was to be relaxed. Antiquity had lived out its life. The empire of the Caesars was doomed. Retributive justice must march on in its majestic course. The empire had accomplished its mission; the time came for it to die. The Sibylline oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the divine chastisement shall come upon thee; fire shall consume thee; thy wealth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... mainly instrumental, is not now known. In all likelihood she dragged on a miserable existence, a forlorn outcast, pointed at by the hand of scorn, or avoided with looks of horror in the wilds of Pendle. As if some retributive punishment awaited her, she is reported to have been the Jennet Davies who was condemned in 1633, on the evidence of Edmund Robinson the younger, with Mother Dickenson and others, but not executed. Her confession, if she made one at the second trial, might not have been unsimilar ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... remember, that the Earl of Montrose will hold you and your possessions liable for whatever injury my person, or my horse, shall sustain by these unseemly proceedings, and that he will be justified in executing retributive vengeance ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... apologist of Elizabeth for her conduct to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, and he has been very delicate in his distinctions. It is not her high abstraction of justice, Sir Artegal, who does the murderous deed, but his man Talus, retributive justice, who, like a limehound, finds her hidden under a heap of gold, and drags her forth by her fair locks, in such rueful plight that even Artegal ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... breadth and strength. And he, too, loved me passionately, devotedly. Strong indeed must have been the love that triumphed over principle, honor, and truth, that broke the most sacred of human ties, and dared the vengeance of retributive Heaven. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... indeed no doubt? Eager as was her curiosity on this all-absorbing subject, Venetia could never summon courage to speak upon it to her mother. Her first disobedience, or rather her first deception of her mother, in reference to this very subject, had brought, and brought so swiftly on its retributive wings, such disastrous consequences, that any allusion to Lady Annabel was restrained by a species of superstitious fear, against which Venetia could not contend. Then her father was either dead or living. That was certain. If dead, it was clear ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... are gene rally marked by some circumstances that betray its character, and naturally rouse the indignation of the Government. If the only consequence was the punishment of the guilty, we should rejoice in such retributive justice; but, unfortunately and too frequently, it happens, that the station belongs to a stockholder, who, both from feelings of interest and humanity, has treated the natives with every consideration, and discountenanced any ill-treatment of them on ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... torn-out pages all together," continued Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere—presumably upstairs—at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... perceive that Aeschylus has viewed the subject in its most terrible aspect, and drawn it within that domain of the gloomy divinities, whose recesses he so loves to haunt. The grave of Agamemnon is the murky gloom from which retributive vengeance issues; his discontented shade, the soul of the whole poem. The obvious external defect, that the action lingers too long at the same point, without any sensible progress, appears, on reflection, a true internal ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... nations, make reprisals on our part the occasion of hostilities against the United States, she would but add violence to injustice, and could not fail to expose herself to the just censure of civilized nations and to the retributive judgments of Heaven. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... his head. He would tell her that. He had certainly been rather screwed (but that there would be no necessity to mention); it was just a curious chance that he should have used them. He dramatised the interview in his mind. It would serve Christian right; it would be a rather jolly instance of retributive justice—only he wished that the Christian whom he visualised was not always that shadowed, ethereal Christian whom he had painted, with, as Rossetti said, the wonder not yet quite gone from that still look of hers. Bother Rossetti, anyway! What did it matter what he said? The main point was what ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... delirium she had turned and defied fate and society. He dwelt upon the admission of base wrong in Col. Selby's dying statement. He drew a vivid, picture of the villain at last overtaken by the vengeance of Heaven. Would the jury say that this retributive justice, inflicted by an outraged, and deluded woman, rendered irrational by the most cruel wrongs, was in the nature of a foul, premeditated murder? "Gentlemen; it is enough for me to look upon the life of this most beautiful and accomplished ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... man preserves when a woman's reputation is at his mercy—the wretch needlessly plotted and planned to save his usurped reputation; seeing all things, as such men invariably do, through the foul light of his own inbred baseness and cruelty. He was troubled by no retributive emotions of shame or remorse, in contemplating this second sacrifice to his own interests of the daughter whom he had deserted in her infancy. If he felt any misgivings, they related wholly to himself. His head was throbbing, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... wandering tribes in a peculiar and perfectly different social condition from that which prevails among us at this time. We know that the Christian Dispensation did distinctly repeal and annul certain portions of that law. We know that the doctrine of retributive justice or vengeance, was plainly disavowed by the Saviour. We know that on the only occasion of an offender, liable by the law to death, being brought before Him for His judgment, it was not death. We know that He said, "Thou ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... prophets of Judea had predicted that after seventy years the captives should return, and that Babylon itself should afterward be destroyed. The first prediction was fulfilled by the victory of Cyrus. It devolved on Darius to execute the second of these solemn and retributive decrees of heaven. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must be supernatural and divine; and thus the phenomena of conscience as a dictate avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive."[16] ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... upon us, for having wrung our parents' hearts with anguish. Now we feel a parent's agony: now can we realize what we made them suffer. This was the tender spot on which a wound would penetrate to the heart; and here it is that a retributive Providence has struck us. The arrows of the Almighty have pierced us—shall we any longer strive against our Maker? We will humble ourselves in the dust, O righteous Judge, and will return to duty: if it ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... warriors were deeply impressed with the Gospel message was evident, but it was equally evident that the former was not to be moved from his decision, and in this the warriors sympathised with him. His strong convictions in regard to retributive justice were ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... help myself," she said, urged by the fear lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held retributive, to take comprehensive review of her past conduct. "There's no woman strives more for her children; and I'm sure at scouring-time this Lady-day as I've had all the bedhangings taken down I did as much as the two gells put together; and there's the last elder-flower wine I've made—beautiful! ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... for Phenomena Will Change of Atoms Our Limitations Final Race Experience Religious Performances Of Teachers Wise Use of Money Genius Thoughts Are Things Unfoldment Inventions Divine Healing Surplus Analysis of the Lord's Prayer Absurd Beliefs The Resurrection The Creator Retributive Justice The ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... the punishment of evil-doers is in such exact correspondence with the character of their evil doings as to show that it is the Lord executing vengeance—the penalty shows a designing hand. He who watches the peculiar retributive judgments of God, how He causes those who set snares and pitfalls for others to fall into them themselves, will not doubt that behind such 'poetic retribution' there is ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Fuegians on board. The nearest approach to a religious feeling which I heard of, was shown by York Minster, who, when Mr. Bynoe shot some very young ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn manner, "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much." This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food. In a wild and excited manner he also related, that his brother, one day whilst returning to pick up some dead birds which he had left on the coast, observed some ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... geht's da besser?—Du lieber Gott! bin ich's denn allein? jeder andre gluecklicher als ich? Und was hab' ich dann gethan?"[20] There is a world of pathos in this helpless cry of pain, with its suggestion of retributive fate. A poem of 1788, "Die Stille," written at Maulbronn, epitomizes almost everything that we have thus far noted as to Hoelderlin's nature. He goes back in fancy to the days of his childhood, describing his lonely rambles, ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... of pirates in the air. They kindled the boy's lively imagination; they represented the large subject of retributive justice, and he resolved to devote his poetic sense to one of these ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... might I not have been had you not, when I was struck down by illness, taken advantage of my weakness, and by sending me to a madhouse, confirmed my malady; but fool as you called me, I can see that Heaven's retributive justice has chastised you through life. Me you got into your power on the ground that I was insane, and the mind of the daughter, in whom you took such pride, often totters on its throne; her son ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... perforce in outward deed. The battle frenzy took on him no hold: Severe his countenance grew; austere and sad; Fatal, not wrathful. Vicar stern he seemed Of some dread, judgment-executing Power, Against his yearnings; not despite his will. Once, when above the faithless town far off The retributive smoke leaped up to heaven, He closed with iron hand on Kenwalk's arm And slowly spake—a whisper heard afar— 'See you that town? Its judgment is upon it! I gave it respite twice. This day its doom Is irreversible.' The invader quelled, Anna and Kenwalk on their homeward way Rode by the ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... good or entirely bad, deserving of unmixed admiration or of their most excellent hatred, which they pour out simply and vehemently, rejoicing without qualms of pity when punishment overtakes the wrongdoer and retributive justice is done to the wicked. This is perhaps what makes them seem bloodthirsty in their vengeance; they feel that so it ought to be, and that the affirmation of principle is of more account than the individual. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... made off, but were soon pursued and put to death. The widows were all three put into prison, and all the property and estates were confiscated. The movable property amounted to three lakhs of rupees.[7] The Raja boasted to the Governor- General's representative in Bundelkhand of this act of retributive justice, and pretended that it was executed merely as a punishment for the robbery; but it was with infinite difficulty the merchants could recover from him any share of the plundered property out of that confiscated. The Raja alleged that, according to our rules, the chief within ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... eyes upon me, all others vanished as the stars of night before the rising of the god of day. Henry, I love you deeply, devotedly—but Catherine's terrible imprecations make me feel more keenly than I have ever done before the extent of the wrong I am about to inflict upon her—and I fear that retributive punishment will ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... importance of obtaining the declaration, which I had no doubt would establish my innocence—I ran for my father and Sergeant Lindsay, and, to make assurance doubly sure, brought two of the privates also along with me. It was a striking scene of retributive justice, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... she can have no real attachment to a fellow so uninteresting to themselves as her husband, but has married him on other grounds. Who, under such circumstances, pities the husband? Even his female friends are apt to think his position retributive: he should have chosen some one else. But perhaps Deronda may be excused that he did not prepare any pity for Grandcourt, who had never struck acquaintances as likely to come out of his experiences with more suffering than he inflicted; whereas, for ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... for the Bond leaders, and a substantial harvest for entire Holland, with paeans of praise for the coterie and Dr. Leyds from a grateful people for successfully restoring the good fortunes of the Dutch nation, and for effecting a retributive vendetta upon England, all under world-wide, gloating acclaims of gratified ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... will stimulate him," said the Duchess of Richmond, laughing; "and the more difficult it is to bring down these heads, so much the more impatiently will he hanker after it. The king hates them both, and he will thank us, if we change his hatred into retributive justice." ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... in a more serious manner. The brother of the lady was an officer in the army, and both the descendants of a poor but ancient family; the indignity offered to his name, and the seduction of his sister, called forth the retributive feelings of a just revenge; he sought out the offender, challenged him, but gave him the option of redeeming his sister's honour and his own by marriage. Alas! that was impossible; the earl was already engaged. A meeting took place, 39when, reflection and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... God with the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to hunt foxes for their brushes instead of their skins, or think the poor little black tails of a Siberian weasel on a judge's shoulders may constitute him therefore a Minos in matters of retributive justice, or an AEacus in distributive, who can at once determine how many millions a Railroad Company are to make the public pay for not granting them their exclusive business ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... description. The ruin and misery which the South is preparing for itself in every way is incalculable and incredible, and yet there is no diminution of desperation. The prosperity which made a mock of honest poverty is now, as by the retributive judgment of God, sinking itself into penury, and the planter who spoke of the Northern serf as a creature just one remove above the brute, is himself learning by bitter experience to be a mud-sill. Verily the cause of the poor and lowly is being avenged. Yet with all this there is no hint ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... the last remnant of primitive or medieval superstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid of it, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributive distinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of their singular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by the survivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, in graves of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... straight to the white of the butts. I now thought I had acquired knowledge and caution sufficient to avail myself of Uncle Jack's ideas, without ruining myself by following them out in his company; and I saw a kind of retributive justice in making his brain minister to the fortunes which his ideality and constructiveness, according to Squills, had served so notably to impoverish. I must here gratefully acknowledge that I owed much to this irregular genius. The investigation of the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a winder,' said Dark Dignum, a little later, as he were drinkin' hisself hoarse in the Black Boy. 'Summut fell on him retributive, as you might call it. For, would you believe it, the man had at the moment been threatenin' me? He did. He said, "I know damn well about you, Dignum; and for all your damn ingenuity, I'll bring you with a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... damages, had not an obstacle stood in their way, which it was dangerous to encounter. The liberal press took up a bold position. The speeches in the Assembly, by the leading independents, told upon the country. A spirit of retributive justice had been stirred up, which awed and intimidated the ruling compact. Open violence could not again be resorted to. The subtleties of the law were, however, brought into requisition. Under a show of justice and a pretended bridling of licentiousness, the press might ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... is my dream of the future. You see, with true mannish instinct, I throw the work of the world's salvation upon the women. I don't know, however, but it's retributive justice. If you got us fired out of the first Paradise it is your duty to find another and put us in possession. But really with all due respect to Sacred Writ, I could never accept that serpent story without considerable salt. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... but which were approximately estimated at a thousand millions of dollars. The railroads had created the Trust, the ogre of corporate greed, of which Ryder was the incarnation, and in time the Trust became master of the railroads, which after all seemed but retributive justice. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... well portrayed. You smelt the fumy liquor that had brought on this syncope. Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium tremens, nor so much as a retributive ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the beginning. There could be no poetic justice in her doom. To drag her out of a steamer wreck, only to make her the victim of a scoundrel, later an adventuress, and finally a murderess, all may be good art, but of a very bad kind. Laura is a sort of American Becky Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky's fate, whereas Laura's doom is warranted only by the author's whim. As for her end, whatever the virtuous public of that day might have done, a present-day audience would not have pelted ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Transvaal. Between the Boers and the Zulus great hostility prevailed, the Boers constantly encroaching upon the Zulus' ground, driving off cattle, and acting with extreme lawlessness. The Zulus had long been preparing for retributive warfare; and as the Boers had proved themselves shortly before unable to conquer Secoceni, a chief whose power was as nothing in comparison with that of Cetewayo, the Zulus deemed that they would have an easy conquest of the Transvaal. The occupation ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... The thought came to her: was it retributive justice pursuing her for having bartered herself for rank? And yet girls as good and better than she, did it every day. She rose and began pacing up and down the floor. What should she do? "Go back ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... for our mutual defence is basely employed, not against the common enemy, but a feeble defenceless female! Shame, Moor! shame! But that I reverence the public voice that named thee chief, and that I desire not to arrogate to myself a retributive justice, I myself would wrench from thee that command which thou shamest, and entrust it to the hands ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... released white men were waiting for the payment of the promised ransom. I thought this tolerably cool, after the treacherous manner in which they had attacked us during the preceding night; but I was too greatly rejoiced at the success of my mission to be very severe or retributive in my behaviour just then. I therefore paid the full amount agreed upon, but directed Lobo to say that although I paid it I did not consider that Matadi was entitled to claim a single article in view of his unprovoked attack upon the schooner, and the miserable condition ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... history, how sad were the spectacle of these mutilated effigies in marble, exquisite sculptures when fresh from the artist's hand, to-day torsos so hideously hacked and hewn as hardly to look human! We cannot, however, forget that the history of races, as of nations and individuals, is retributive. When the 'Roi-Soleil,' that incarnation of the Bourbon spirit, was so inflated with his own personality as to forbid the erection of any statue throughout France but his own, he paved the way for the revolutionary ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... primitive life, violations are regarded with particular horror, because they are frequently held to be not only infringements of established ways of the tribe, but as offenses against the gods, offenses which involve the whole tribe in the retributive punishments of the gods. Violation of the customary may, indeed, apart from arousing intellectual disapproval, provoke a genuine revulsion of feeling on the part of a group which has acquired certain fixed habits. We ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... philosophy, in politics, in religion—denouncing its mechanical method of thinking, deploring its utter want of faith, and threatening political society, obstinately deaf to the voice of wisdom, with the retributive horrors of repeated revolutions; and yet neither in philosophy, in religion, nor in politics, has Mr Carlyle any distinct dogma, creed, or constitution to promulgate. The age is irreligious, he exclaims, and the vague feeling of the impenetrable mystery which encompasses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... though, he could not in conscience blame his canine favourites, nor forbear regarding his huntsman's fate as a signal instance of the retributive justice of Providence, felt himself obliged to destroy the whole pack, after their ferocious banquet on human flesh; and with tears in his eyes, he forced himself to witness their execution, lest the cupidity or misjudging kindness of any of his retainers, should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... second clause of that same prediction? How about the advent of that strange child of promise, who preordained in his own flesh to bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the causes which operated in the first great intellectual struggle in which Christianity was engaged. No means exist for estimating the amount of harm done by the writings of unbelievers. The retributive destruction of some of them and the indignant alarm of the Christian apologists indicate the probability that these works had excited attention. But under a merciful Providence truth has in the end gained rather than lost by this first conflict of reason against Christianity. The church encountered ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... articles belonging to the dead, and ignorant that her mother had given it to Bertie, she deemed it safe in that sacred repository. Now, like the face of Medusa it glared at her, and that which her father's lips had sanctified, became the polluted medium of a retributive curse upon his devoted child. So the Diabolus ex machina, the evil genius of each human life decrees that the most cruel cureless pangs are inflicted by the instruments ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... barbarians trample beneath their heavy feet the proud trophies of ancient art and power. The glimmering life-sparks of the old civilization disappear. The world is abandoned to fear, misery, and despair, and there is no help, for retributive justice marches on with impressive solemnity. Imperial despotism, disproportionate fortunes, unequal divisions of society, the degradation of woman, slavery, Epicurean pleasures, practical atheism, bring forth their wretched fruits. The vices and miseries of society ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... seven years Weng remained about the shadow of the mountain, carrying out, together with the other members of the band, the instructions which from time to time they received from the higher circles of the Society, as well as such acts of retributive justice as they themselves determined upon, and in this quiet and unostentatious manner maintaining peace and greatly purifying the entire province. In this passionless subservience to the principles of the Order none exceeded ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... soldiers' huts were brought from the Bala Hissar, the demolition of which, as an act of retributive justice, I had recommended to the Government of India, as it appeared to me that the destruction of the fortified palace in which the massacre had taken place, and which was the symbol of the power of the Afghans and their boasted military strength, would be a more fitting ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the penult couplet is not uncommon, the idea of retributive justice, of others performing the last offices for the clerk who had so often done the like for his neighbours. The same notion is expressed in the epitaph of Frank Raw, clerk and monumental mason, of Selby, Yorkshire, which ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... I should expect of you," sneered Uncle Jake, while Mr Rooney-Molyneux, his attention thus diverted from his own affairs, gazed in watery-eyed surprise at a second victim of the retributive Dawn. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... life. For as our diseases decline, as it is supposed, with our declining bodily strength, so the quarreling humor of the Greeks abated much with their failing political greatness. But fortune or some divine retributive power threw him down the in close of his life, like a successful runner who stumbles at the goal. It is reported, that being in company where one was praised for a great commander, he replied, there was no ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... an example of retributive justice; the treacherous act of the left-handed Ehud, causing the death of the fat King Eglon of Moab; the inhospitable cruelty—or cruel inhospitality— of Jael, the wife of Heber, whose hammer and nail are welded fast in historical narration with the brow of the sleeping guest, Sisera, the captain ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... so awful in its baffled rage was the expression of his face when he understood that indeed she knew everything. She even at that moment longed that his cruel instincts should prompt him to kill her. He could never succeed in hiding that crime and retributive justice would of a surety overtake him then, without any help ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... if poor Bismarck were about to be treated just as he treated Count von Arnim. Can it be that everything must be paid for in this world, and that a splendid retributive justice rules the destiny even of super-men and punishes them for committing base actions? It is rumoured that the Duke of Lauenbourg (Bismarck) is threatened with prosecution on a charge of lese majeste, which the lawyers of the Crown will not have very much trouble ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... count as one of my heresies in an orthodox theological sense, but I certainly cling to the great idea of Eternal Hope; and, after any amount of retributive punishment for purifying the "lost" soul, I look for ultimate salvation to all God's creatures. This short and partial trial-scene of ours is not enough to make an end with: we begin here and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a thirst for vengeance—was asserting itself above petty vanity. I squeezed myself into the costume; and then, clapping on the false nose, stood arrayed—as queer a figure, surely, as ever was assumed by retributive Justice. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The tendency of The Bard is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre of the bards; to convince him that neither ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... wounded pride of the Canadians. Stung by the boldness and success of Colonel Clarke's adventure, and fearing the effect which it might have on their Indian allies, they seemed determined to achieve a victory over him, and strike a retributive blow against the position ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Kieft embarked in the ship Princess for Holland. The vessel was wrecked on the coast of Wales Kieft and eighty-one men, women and children sank into a watery grave. Kieft died unlamented. His death was generally regarded as an act of retributive justice. ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott |
