"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the temporary glow of success fading before the torture of aching feet, "I don't see that they helped very much when they were here. We did the suggesting, and all they did was to laugh ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... among disagreeable trades, like cleaning sewers; but a cynic might contend that the pleasures of vindictiveness and moral superiority are so great that there is no difficulty in finding well-to-do elderly gentlemen who are willing, without pay, to send helpless wretches to the torture of prison. And apart from enjoyment of the work itself, desire for the good opinion of neighbors and for the feeling of effectiveness is quite sufficient to ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... will you not change this marble statue into a woman of flesh and blood, with heart and soul? These lips are ready to smile, to utter a cry of rapture and delight, and behind the veil of my eyes lies a soul, which one touch of thine will arouse! O Frederick! Frederick! why do you torture me? Do you not know that your wife worships, loves, adores you; that you are her salvation, her god? Oh, I know these are unholy, sinful words! what then? I am a sinner! I am ready to give my soul in exchange for thee, Frederick. Why do you not hear me?—why have not my sighs, my tears the power ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... you torture me so? Sometimes I think you care for me; sometimes that you hate and detest ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... passion, understanding, devotion—more capable of giving herself wholly and greatly to a mate—than any girl could be. The well of life still poured its flood into her! Her husband could never know that agony of longing, those arms stretched out to—what? When would this torture of defeated capacity be ended—when had God set the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... swallowing, appetite, digestion, etc.; and the result of its failure to function would create coughing, choking, indigestion—separately or in combination. Its mental functions include the expression of shame, desire, disgust, grief, torture, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... "It is right that I should know, and you too! It is meet that such deeds should be made known to the world: my sister was taken by these men, but less fortunate than my husband she had life enough left for torture—she too is dead now; M. de Puisaye adds: Thank God! And that is all that I can ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... souls are blown "about the pendent world." Shakspere may indeed have heard some of the old tales of a hot and cold purgatory, such as that of Drithelm, given by Bede,[91] whence (rather than from Dante) Milton drew his idea of an alternate torture.[92] But there again, the correspondence is only partial; whereas in Montaigne's APOLOGY OF RAIMOND SEBONDE we find, poetry apart, nearly every notion that enters into ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... purpose. When the slave-hunters sought for corn, they were in the habit of catching the villagers and roasting their posteriors by holding them down on the mouth of a large earthen water jar filled with gloving embers. If this torture of roasting alive did not extract the secret, they generally cut the sufferer's throat to terrify his companion, who would then divulge the position of the hidden stores to avoid a similar fate. This accusation was corroborated by Mohammed, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... shortness of face makes the dog appear smaller in head and less formidable than he otherwise would be. Formerly this shortness of face was artificially obtained by the use of the "jack," an atrocious form of torture, by which an iron instrument was used to force back the face by means of thumbscrews. The nose should be rough, large, broad, and black, and this colour should extend to the lower lip; its top should be deeply set back, almost between the eyes. The distance from ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... will never call you ridiculous, but I shall think you hate me if you make me pass another night in torture. You have inflamed me." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... compared with my kaleidoscopic movements among the swashy seas. Many visions were before me that night, of the numerous little sufferers who are daily slung backwards and forwards in those pernicious instruments of torture called cradles. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... who had a vague idea it might be some kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... One torture was over, another on. Crack after crack sounded from the forest—from here and there and everywhere, it seemed—and with a song that like a hurtling insect ran the scale of notes, the bullets buried themselves in the trunk of our oak with a chug. Once ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it repeatedly; but though her heart longed to believe, her mind remained unconvinced. She shrank from all mention of the subject with her step-mother, knowing how one-sided a partisan she would be, but could not deny herself the self-torture of questioning Lola again. The child relentlessly stuck to her text, painting the scene with a vividness that did credit to her descriptive powers; and being one of those vivacious and ubiquitous children never to be sufficiently ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... That its educated followers no longer believed in a physical Hell, that its more advanced clergy had entered into a conspiracy of silence on the subject was no answer. The great mass of the people were not educated. Official Christendom in every country still preached the everlasting torture of the majority of the human race as a well thought out part of the Creator's scheme. No leader had been bold enough to come forward and denounce it as an insult to his God. As one grew older, kindly ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... me now to let go my hold on work, on this bitter effort to succeed, on this vain, useless striving for recognition, and sink into some humble position which would supply the necessities for a quiet obscure existence—shared with this woman. The weeks, months, years, passed now, wasted, in a dull torture, in a low fever, filled with long, dragging hopes, expectations, possibilities, and no realities. Better sweep all these away and settle into a level, solid existence, contented with the simple natural pleasures that life offers without striving for. Contented! ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in a golden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together. The Druid Priests had some kind of veneration for the Oak, and for the mistletoe—the same plant that we hang up in houses at Christmas Time now—when ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... with all his best energies burnt out in those weird orgies beneath the water; and his bridal vow is a hollow one, for when he utters it he hears the shriek of the Lurline blending with the wedding music, and his nightly couch is to be henceforth a torture of unrest—his ride by day a mere hopeless fleeing from the ghosts ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the night he woke. Some sound was threatening him. It was London, coming to get him and torture him. The light in his room was dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door, half ajar, and for some moments lay motionless, watching stark and bodiless heads thrust themselves through the opening and withdraw ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... anisette, and talk of something else—your trip, your family. No? no? You are only asking me out of politeness! You are so aimable, so kind. Well, if you are not ennuyee—in fact, I want to tell you. It was too long to write, and I detest a pen. To me there is no instrument of torture like a pen. ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... conversant about the centre of the earth to torture the souls of damned men to the day of judgment; their egress and regress some suppose to be about Etna, Lipari, Mons Hecla in Iceland, Vesuvius, Terra del Fuego, &c., because many shrieks and fearful cries are continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... advantage of the fact that their prey was compelled to swerve to the left, began to close in, bringing themselves in such close proximity that Bart could see the fierce, vindictive faces, the flashing eyes, and eager clutching hands, ready to torture them should they ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... he ordered, growling in Hindustanee through his savage black mustache. "I have yet to hear what price a Hindu sets on immunity from torture!" ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... possible absurdity in the way of preparation for this blessed event. I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought. My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture. I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that could be got for ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... hastened to the barbarians' camp, and in his pontifical robes, sought the mercy of the unrelenting and savage foe. But he could secure no better terms, than that the unresisting should be spared, the buildings protected from fire, and the captives from torture. But this promise was only partially fulfilled. The pillage lasted fourteen days and fourteen nights, and all that the Goths had spared was transported to the ships of Genseric. The statues of the old pagan gods, which adorned the capitol, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... means to obtain this favor for me? Swear it to me, monseigneur, that I may bless your name, and that, even under torture, nothing may escape but a thanksgiving ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... pictures in this gallery of various glory. It is sublime in its ample outline, and exquisitely tender in its details. It is charged with many precious lessons, which flow freely at the gentlest touch; and it is cruel to put it to the torture to compel it to give meanings which it ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to sophistry. He threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and took the seat to which the conspirator invited him. The meal was excellent; the host not only affable, but primed with curious information. He seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the torture of silence, to exult in the most wholesale disclosures. The interest of what he had to tell was great; his character, besides, developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time fled, not only outgrew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrung, as he stood amongst the familiars a silent witness of her sufferings; but to interfere was impossible. One thing, however, was favorable. He knew she would not be again disturbed till a sufficient time had elapsed for the recovery of such strength as would enable her to endure further torture; and he had, therefore, some time before him for ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... of two rooms. The first room, with a large, dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people. In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices. There was a writing table by ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... at a christening party not long since, where there were amongst the guests a formal couple, who suffered the acutest torture from certain jokes, incidental to such an occasion, cut—and very likely dried also—by one of the godfathers; a red-faced elderly gentleman, who, being highly popular with the rest of the company, had it all his own way, and was in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief; lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes, in tender womanish tears. Can you not read it? ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... in thought as free as ever, What are England's rights, I ask. Me from my delights to sever, Me to torture, me to task? Fleecy locks and black complexion Cannot forfeit Nature's claim; Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in black ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... justifiable only on principles of self-preservation; and therefore it gives no other right over prisoners, but merely to disable them from doing harm to us, by confining their persons: much less can it give a right to kill, torture, abuse, plunder, or even to enslave, an enemy, when the war is over. Since therefore the right of making slaves by captivity, depends on a supposed right of slaughter, that foundation failing, the consequence drawn from it must ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... the Father in spirit and in truth." They drink the cup of Christ and are baptized in the purification of persecution who discern his true merit,—the unseen glory of suffering for others. Physical torture affords but a slight illustration of the pangs which come to one upon whom the world of sense falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor to crush out of a career ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... incense smoke. Surgeons and dentists allow us fleeting glimpses of bright steel instruments, very strangely shaped. It is contrived that we see them in a cold, clear light, the light of scientific relentlessness. There is a suggestion of torture, not brutal but exquisitely refined, of perfected pain, achieved by the stimulation of recondite nerves of very delicate sensibility. Lawyers wear archaic robes and use a strange language in their mysteries, conveying to us a belief that Justice is an ancient witch ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... conversation, which she had fancied necessary to his existence, than for her "roast beef and plumb pudden," which he now devours too "dirtily for endurance." She was fully resolved to go, and yet she could not bear that her going should fail to torture the friend whom for eighteen years she had loved ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... a forebode of impending griefs. The room was a fashion of torture chamber to Dorothy. Mrs. Hanway-Harley had summoned her to this room for admonition and reproach and punishment since ever she was ten years of age. Wherefore, there was little in her mother's call to engage Dorothy pleasantly; and she hung back, and answered ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Babbalanja, "when from the ambiguity of his speech, you could so easily have derived something flattering, thus to seek to extract unpleasantness from it? Be wise, Yoomy; and hereafter, whenever a remark like that seems equivocal, be sure to wrest commendation from it, though you torture ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... cruelty. But there is nothing in the least barbaric or ignorant about intellectual cruelty. The great Renaissance artists who mixed colours exquisitely mixed poisons equally exquisitely; the great Renaissance princes who designed instruments of music also designed instruments of torture. Barbarity, malignity, the desire to hurt men, are the evil things generated in atmospheres of intense reality when great nations or great causes are at war. We may, perhaps, be glad that we have not got them: but it is somewhat dangerous to be proud that we have not got them. Perhaps we are ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... opposing factions at times united to plunder and torture their wretched victims, and again they fell upon each other's forces, and slaughtered without mercy. Even the sanctity of the temple could not restrain their horrible ferocity. The worshipers were stricken ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... and yet this was far more awful. Only the throat of a human being could emit that chilling cry. It rose in shrill crescendo, to die away in a sobbing wail that lifted the hair on the listener's head. Again and again it came—a moan born of the frightful torture of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... he would have the chance to try, instead of to some spot off the map. Whether he won or lost, at any rate he was in the ring, and could fight. So every night he sat in Alcala, and wrote. Sometimes he would only try to write, and that was torture. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... but he did not move. Again she dipped the spoon, looking at him with defiant eyes, and with the same deliberation she let the stuff fall on the living flesh. This time the perspiration sprang out on her brow, her face burned suddenly hot, her whole frame shrank under the torture. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the king lent a ready ear to suggestions of this kind, they soon furnished him with an overwhelming mass of evidence of the treasonable designs of Philotas. Philotas was at once arrested, and put to the torture in the presence of the chief officers of the Macedonian army, while Alexander himself sat behind a curtain to hear what he would say. It is said that when Alexander heard Philotas piteously beg Hephaestion for mercy, he exclaimed ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... and every fang imbued with virulent copperhead poison, stormed through our streets in the light of day and in the gloom of night, during many ghastly hours, knowing no law save its own wicked will, while Treason, Cruelty, House-breaking and House-burning, Robbery, Assassination, Torture, Hanging, Murder, stalked on in its wild train of horror. But we know its face now, and it will be our own fault if anything so foul shall e'er be seen again in our midst. We must be on the alert to act when called upon—not to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... answer; he turned away. The old man caught at his feet. 'You are not going,' he cried in a shrill voice, '—you are not going? Leave me to die,—that is well; the sun will come and burn me, thirst will come and madden me, these wounds will torture me, and all is no more than I deserve. But Silver? If I die, she dies. If you forsake me, you forsake her. Listen; do you believe in your Christ, the dear Christ? Then, in his name I swear to you that you cannot ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... fortune. Before night had fallen, on the day he was burned, an elderly woman of serene visage had appeared in his bachelor den, and declaring herself a nurse sent by friends, had proceeded to make him more comfortable than he had believed possible, with those aching members touching up every nerve to torture. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... into his very heart's core, and remorse, like an old vulture, gnawed at his vitals; yet for a few brief, agonizing moments he slept, but only as the fiends of hell might be supposed to sleep. A dream, a series of change and torture, bewildering and terrible, came, like a blight, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... in extent to the half of Europe, are only the purgatory, not yet the real Siberian hell. You still find woods there, poor, thin, dwarfed woods, it is true, but where there is wood there is fire and vitality. The true hell of human torture begins beyond the line of the woods; then there is nothing but ice and snow; ice that does not even melt in the plains in summer—and in the midst of that icy desert, miserable human beings thrown upon this shore by an ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... her having stolen him, as it appeared she had; also for her jealousy. What would be the end of the muddle? Rodney asked himself. He thought of the stake and the frenzied villagers dancing around the fire with blood-curdling yells. Would he be able to endure the torture? He hoped so, for the boy was proud of his race. But why borrow trouble? All around him were signs of peace and savage contentment. The little camp-fires twinkled in the gathering dusk. Some of the squaws sang bits of a wild lullaby ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... examined this rather more minutely than the other, and whilst we could find nothing dreadful in the penitents' apartment, we fancied, on entering the priest's side, that, we had met with something belonging the realm of confessional torture as depicted by the Hogans, Murphys, and Maria Monk showmen, and which the officials had forgot to put by in some of their secret drawers. It was hung upon a nail, had a semi- circular, half viperish look, and was cupped at ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... limit of human life under such conditions. In early English history condemned criminals were put to death by being deprived of sleep, and the same method has been employed in China. Enforced sleeplessness, in fact, has been used as a form of torture by the Chinese, being more feared than any other. The men subjected to this frightful ordeal ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... guidance had been purely negative, there was yet something about it which had given him a vague pleasure. Instinctively he knew that she was of the order of women to whom the merest touch from a man whom they disliked would have been torture. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or a Senate, or other Soveraign Person forbid us to beleeve in Christ? To this I answer, that such forbidding is of no effect, because Beleef, and Unbeleef never follow mens Commands. Faith is a gift of God, which Man can neither give, nor take away by promise of rewards, or menaces of torture. And if it be further asked, What if wee bee commanded by our lawfull Prince, to say with our tongue, wee beleeve not; must we obey such command? Profession with the tongue is but an externall thing, and no more then any other gesture whereby we signifie our obedience; and wherein a ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... did not leave Ryde until the 23d, it is possible that Fielding received a reply. During the remainder of this desultory voyage he continued to beguile his solitary hours—hours of which we are left to imagine the physical torture and monotony, for he says but little of himself—by jottings and notes of the, for the most part, trivial accidents of his progress. That happy cheerfulness, of which he spoke in the Proposal for the Poor, had not yet deserted him; and there are ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... scoundrel, interrupted one while for an instant by Squeers screaming out, "Sit down, you—beggar!" and followed at its close by the last and crowning outrage, consequent on a violent outbreak of wrath on the part of Squeers, who spat at him and struck him a blow across the face with his instrument of torture: when Nicholas, springing upon him, wrested the weapon from his hand, and pinning him by the throat—don't we all exult in the remembrance of it?—"beat the ruffian till ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... one of the gravest of my life, I had happily no leisure to think of myself. My whole soul sickened with anxiety for the girl. I knew enough of Indian ways to guess her fate. For Shalah and myself there might be torture, and at the best an arrow in our hearts, but for her there would be things unspeakable. I remembered the little meadow on the Rapidan, and the tale told by the grey ashes. There was only one shot in my pistol, but I determined that it should be saved for her. In such a crisis ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... sighed religiously at the thought of Winnie's "gift." Winnie could have sighed, too, but it was with torture. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... violently taken away, by despotic power and prelatic intolerance. The extent of this organization, in a time of great suffering is remarkable. Gordon of Earlston, when examined before the Privy Council in 1683, with the instruments of torture placed in view, testified that several counties were divided into districts, of which there were 80, with 7000 associated members. There is evidence that, chiefly through the Divine blessing upon Renwick's faithful ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... bigotry, tyranny, and cruel religious intolerance were such as flourished in the seventh century, and in spite of systematic slave raids the population decreased by nearly two-thirds, and practically all the children died. Peace came, well-being came, freedom from rape and murder and torture and highway robbery, and every brutal gratification of lust and greed came, only when the Sudan lost its independence and passed under English rule. Yet this well-meaning little sonneteer sincerely felt that his verses were issued in the cause of humanity. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the English nation has authorized, by a tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of those judgments as savours of torture and cruelty: a sledge or hurdle being usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn; and there being very few instances (and those accidental or by negligence) of any persons being embowelled or burned, till previously deprived ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... still brooding over the fact, and trying to torture it into some connection with Mr. Huddlestone's danger, when a man entered the tavern and asked for some bread and cheese with a ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "My God! Oh! my God!" writhed and leaped so as to displace the gratings, and scatter the nine tails of the scourge all over his person. At the next blow he howled, leaped, and raged in unendurable torture. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... for here, he thought, was death at last. But it was only a new torture; perhaps Gino inherited the skill of his ancestors—and childlike ruffians who flung each other from the towers. Just as the windpipe closed, the hand fell off, and Philip was revived by the motion of his arm. And just as he was about to faint and gain at last one moment of oblivion, the motion ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... the first rush had ended and the time to follow the lines of ambulance wagons back to Washington drew near, the old anguish returned to torture her soul. She told herself it was all over, and yet she knew that somewhere in that vast city of tents, stretching for miles over the hills and valleys about Falmouth Heights, was John Vaughan. She had put him resolutely ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... further attempts. Indeed she had hardly completed the last chapter of her 'Criminal Queens' before she was busy on another work; and although the last six months had been to her a period of incessant trouble, and sometimes of torture, though the conduct of her son had more than once forced her to declare to herself that her mind would fail her, still she had persevered. From day to day, with all her cares heavy upon her, she had sat at her work, with a firm resolve that so many lines should be always forthcoming, let the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... suffered many inconveniences, accidental and intentional jostling, insolence and ribald jest. The Cantonese, excepting in the shops where he expects profit, always resents the intrusion of the fan-quei—foreign devil. The chair was torture. It hung from the centre of a stout pole, each end of which rested upon the calloused shoulder of a coolie; an ordinary Occidental chair with a foot-rest. The coolies proceeded at a swinging, mincing trot, which gave to the suspended seat ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... boy? what rapturous agony Torments and glorifies his glance at her As with delight in torture? Cheer thee, man: Thou ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... moral and symbolical meaning. The bajan lies upon a table, undergoing the planing of his tusks, "while a saw lies upon the ground, suggestive of the actual de-horning of the beast. The work itself and later apologies for the institution mention among the instruments of torture a comb and scissors for cutting the victim's hair, an auriscalpium for his ears, a knife for cutting his nails; while the ceremony further appears to include the adornment of the youth's chin with a beard by means of burned cork or other pigment, and the administration, (p. 120) internal ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... the four quarters of the world, far away at that moment a king sat enthroned in his hall. A captive was bound before him—bound, but proud, defiant, unconquerable of soul. There was silence in the hall until the king spake the doom and torture ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... their side—without weapons and without means of defense. They pledged themselves ahead to show no violence. They had all too good reason to anticipate that their lot would be the same as that of others who had preceded them—torture as ingenious and varied as Torquemada and ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... insolent sway and armed terror. Why should I relate the horrible murders, the savage deeds of the monarch? May the gods keep them in store for himself and his line! Nay, he would even link dead bodies to living, fitting hand to hand and face to face (the torture!), and in the oozy foulness and corruption of the dreadful embrace so slay them by a lingering death. But at last his citizens, outwearied by his mad excesses, surround him and his house in arms, cut down his comrades, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... had lost her case in the Divorce Case and Jimmy had been taken away from her? Even now she shuddered when she thought of the risk she had run. She remembered again the period of waiting when the jury could not come to an agreement. What torture she had endured, though no one knew it, or, perhaps, ever would know it! Had not that torture been a tremendous warning to her against the unwise life? Why go into danger again? But perhaps there was no danger any more. A man who has tried to divorce his ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... cursing of Tara, where the growing unity of the nations was split into fractions, down to the present time. I often doubt if the barbarities in eastern lands which we shudder at are in reality half so cruel, if they mean so much anguish as this threat of after-torture does to those who believe in the power of another to inflict it. It wounds the spirit to the heart: its consciousness of its own immortality becomes entwined with the terror of as long enduring pain. It is a lie ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... wooden man, he who knows little, this week of final examinations is a period of unalloyed torture. He must go before an array of professors who are there to expose ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if after all we should fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... lord. But the punishment suggested by Jesus for the abominable conduct was extremely harsh: "And his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him." Torture for criminals was thus taught ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... grimaces and jokes which marked the sale—with the distorted countenances and boisterous laughter which were to be seen on every side—how it must have writhed under the smart of general ridicule, or have groaned under the torture of contemptuous indignation! Peace to Henley's[384] vexed manes!—and similar contempt await the efforts of all literary quacks ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... being gone over by the bare titles of the pictures, reading cannot but be learned; and indeed too, which thing is to be noted, without using any ordinary tedious spelling, that most troublesome torture of wits, which may wholly be avoided by this method. For the often reading over the Book, by those larger descriptions of things, and which are set after the Pictures, will be able perfectly to beget a habit ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... apology for a nap, and who pretend to be reading Macaulay or Herbert Spencer only to dream between the leaves; sensitive readers, who cannot abide the least noise or interruption when reading, and to whose nerves a foot-fall or a conversation is an exquisite torture; absorbed readers, who are so pre-occupied with their pursuit that they forget all their surroundings—the time of day, the presence or the voices of others, the hour for dinner, and even their own existence; ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... thought. "By this torture, he hopes to extract her diamonds. What a life! What fiends to ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pause, then Mrs. Orton Beg broke out: "Don't make me think about it. Surely I have suffered enough? Disagreeable to know! It is torture. If I ever let myself dwell on the horrible depravity that goes on unchecked, the depravity which you say we women license by ignoring it when we should face and unmask it, I should go out of my mind. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... denounced—nay, if we are not alert and quick of wit, we shall be deceived by it, and wonder in the end, as the fool does, why heaven struck that final blow; concluding that it was but another whimsy of the Gods. The ladies prayed to their mother. They were indeed suffering vile torture. Ethereal eyes might pardon the unconscious jugglery which made their hearts cry out to her that the step they were about to take was to save her children from seeming to acquiesce in a dishonour to her memory. Some such words Adela's tongue did not shrink from; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lamp, Mr. Smithers sees plainly enough that the end is near. The fugitive touches the ground with only the balls of his feet, as if each step were torture, and expels his breath with unceasing violence. He does not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... what, dear?—of death? Oh yes; the chances are many against me; and even if the operation is safely performed, it may not arrest the disease. But to one who suffers the torture which it is the will of Heaven that I should bear, speedy death would only be a happy release. And yet, Agnes, do not misunderstand me; I would not for the world do anything to shorten my life of suffering. Oh no! 'All the years of my appointed time ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... a human enemy might have done. His savage snarl was full of intelligence, and his slow approach was deliberate torture. He stood for a moment in full view—then slipped and slid down to the surface of the ice, where, ten yards away, he stood ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Gerome, with a deafening crack of his heavy chapar whip. We are both provided with this instrument of torture—a thick plaited thong about five feet long, attached to a short thick wooden handle, and terminating in a flat leathern cracker of eight or ten inches. A cut from this would make an English horse jump out of his skin, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... accelerated force; for the evil knoweth its time is short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is temporal, not eternal. The dragon is at last stung to death by his own malice; but how many periods of self-torture it may take to remove all sin and its effects, must depend ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... dear fellow. No more introductions to-night, please. I've just suffered torture from an unspeakable youth from Aberdeen, who expected me to rejoice with him because Oxford is at last recognising the 'exeestence of a metapheesical principle in the wur-r-ld ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... high, and it shone with dazzling brightness upon the bleached bones which lay upon the road. Again the torture of thirst fell upon the little group of survivors, and again, as they rode with withered tongues and crusted lips, a vision of the saloon of the Korosko danced like a mirage before their eyes, and they saw the white napery, the wine-cards by the places, the long ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Her second school brought her, indeed, two kind friends; but her shyness made that school-life in itself a prolonged tragedy. Of the two experiences as a private governess I shall have more to say. They were periods of torture to her sensitive nature. The ambition of the three girls to start a school on their own account failed ignominiously. The suppressed vitality of childhood and early womanhood made Charlotte unable to enter with sympathy ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... an ordeal to traverse. In the presence of such a contingency the poor girl felt grim and helpless; she could only vaguely wonder whether she were called upon in the name of duty to lend a hand to the torture of ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... with his shoulder, in the best football fashion he could muster. It could try—but it couldn't keep him and Ellen here to be burned in their heat-ray bath, or treated to whatever alien torture they had in mind. He felt his shoulder hit. And he knew he'd missed. It was an arm that he struck against, and the arm brought him upright, while a second arm drew back and came forward with a savage right to ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... Marat, Barriere, and the black Dessalines, took this hateful, hissing, stinging, maddening reptile to their bosoms, and they are welcome to its rewards. But they mistook the thing: it was not liberty transformed; it was tyranny unbound, the very scourge of hell, and Satan's chief instrument of torture to a guilty world. It was neither more nor less than Sin, despising GOD, and warring against ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... he observes the most noble disinterestedness upon a throne where selfishness has long held sway, that he spontaneously commenced his reign by conferring benefits, that his first acts held out the fairest hopes to Italy and to Europe, that he has suffered the lingering torture of exile, that he exercises a precarious and dependent royalty under the protection of two foreign armies, and that he lives under the control of a Cardinal. But those who have fallen victims to the efforts made to replace him on his throne, those whom the Austrians ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... there must have been an extensive foundation in facts for the horrors detailed by the committee. If it could not be distinctly proved that an individual officer had murdered any prisoner by the use of a particular torture, yet the instruments of torture described in the above extract were in the prisons—they were seen and handled by the committee, who were not to suppose that they were kept for no use. They state, that it had become the practice for the keepers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... (the Committee) deeming that our marriage would have been a greater disgrace to their village than even bloodshed or death, would have left us to our fate—Miss King to be carried off, or perchance grossly insulted, and myself left, as the spiked barrel especially evinced, to torture and to death. That this Committee saved my life, I have no doubt; and I have publicly thanked them for the act. So I would be grateful even to the man who took deadly aim at me with his revolver, and ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen |
