"Torturer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... live, black, burning eyes had been stuck. But it was none of these things that frightened Maggie. It was the expression somewhere in the mouth, in the eyes, in the pale bony hands, that spoke of some meeting with a torturer whose powers were almost omniscient—almost, but not quite. Pain, sheer physical, brutal pain, came into the room hulking, steering behind Aunt Anne's shoulder. It grinned at Maggie and said, "You haven't begun to feel what ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... mistrust his first impulses, and he feared lest his victim might grow weary of writhing; he might be driven to despair, to premature confession, flight—suicide, perhaps. He was just the man to die by his own hand and leave a letter cursing him as his torturer, to be read at the inquest and get into all the papers. No, he would not go too far; for the present he decided to leave Mark in happy ignorance of the ruin tottering above him. He would wait until he was even more prosperous, more celebrated, before taking ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... not write," sneered the torturer. "You are not the sort to need a death-bed scene; besides, there isn't going to be any death-bed. I dare say the parson would be glad enough to carry your so-called confession to Washington. Bah! you are ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... you dull-witted brute?" cried Ivan Dmitritch, and he banged on the door with his fist. "Open the door, or I will break it open! Torturer!" ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a fire of agony that wrapped his whole body and consciousness flashed back on him. Strong arms lifted him up, up; above him he sensed the eyes of his torturer, dim in moonlight, and he beat his clubbed left fist into that face. After that he knew he was being dragged onto a saddle, but a wave of pain rushed up his side and numbed his brain. Thereafter his senses returned by fits and starts, vaguely. Once he felt a steel cable that ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... struck off by the torturer, the aforesaid has removed her dress, and has maliciously and with evil design bewildered and attacked our understandings with the sight of her body, the which, for a fact, exercises ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... have tried to endure the evil or cure it for awhile; and when I found it intolerable and incurable, I should have left my torturer ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... it all. Nika, the torturer, the serpent, would rob Saronia, and thou, half-hearted, art tottering on ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the first time she did not weep for Pierre, the old lost Pierre who had so changed into a torturer, but, wakeful, her brain on fire, she pondered over and over the things she had just heard, feeling after their meaning, laying aside for future enlightenment what was utterly incomprehensible, arguing with herself as to the truth of half-comprehended speeches—an ignorant child wrestling with ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of shame, The prison of his tyranny who reigns By our delay? No! let us rather choose, Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the Torturer; when, to meet the noise Of his almighty engine, he shall hear Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his Angels, and his throne itself Mixed with Tartarean ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Luigi flew at the torturer and stuck at the length of his straightened arm, where he wriggled, refusing to listen to the explanation of Barto's system; which was that, in cases where every fresh examination taught him more, they were continued, after regularly-lengthening intervals, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... took place in the time of Deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude of all things, requires a conflagration; and this made them give utterance to the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing fire like a torturer."(44) ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... ruffian. Lamia had been suffered to live, because as a living man he yielded up into the hands of his tormentor his whole capacity of suffering; no part of it escaped the hellish range of his enemy's eye. But this advantage for the torturer had also its weak and doubtful side. Use and monotony might secretly be wearing away the edge of the organs on and through which the corrosion of the inner heart proceeded. On the whole, therefore, putting together the facts of the case, it seems ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and force, Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse! Fear, for their scourge, mean villains have, Thou art the torturer of the brave! Yet fatal strength they boast to steel Their minds to bear the wounds they feel, Even while they writhe beneath the smart Of civil conflict in the heart. For soon Lord Marmion raised his head, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... I could even become in time her tyrant and torturer,' he said to himself with measureless pain, 'and who knows—who can answer for himself? ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this collection of ugly instruments, putting one in mind of a torturer's kit of tools, there are some articles of defence and offence of a bygone age. A coat of mail, with links so flexible, close, and light, that it resembles steel tissue, hangs from a box beside iron cuishes and arm-pieces, in good condition, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... And just as the admiration for the Redskin almost became an apology for scalping, the mysterious fascination of the African has sometimes almost led us into the fringes of the black forest of Voodoo. But the sort of interest that is felt even in the scalp-hunter and the cannibal, the torturer and the devil-worshipper, that sort of interest has never ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... come a long way indeed from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore among the noblest of his titles that of "The Great Physician." The result was natural: the treatment of the insane fell more and more into the hands of the jailer, the torturer, and the executioner. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Had his torturer been Cochise, there might have been no room for hope. But Slade was a white man. He might prefer gold to the lust of torture. The death of his victim would mean the loss of the ransom money. Lennon's tense ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... I become thy fere, * O shining like full moon when clearest clear! All beauty dost embrace, all eloquence; * Brighter than aught within our worldly sphere: Content am I my torturer thou be: * Haply shalt alms me with one lovely leer! Happy her death who dieth for thy love! * No good in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... agony that Jimmie had ever dreamed of. His voice rose to a shriek: "Wait! Wait! Listen!" The torturer would relax the pressure and say: "The names?" And when Jimmie did not give the names, he would press harder yet. Jimmie writhed convulsively, but the other two men held him as in a vice. He pleaded, he sobbed and moaned; ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... yourself into your hell, if any one tried to open the door from the outside. You are forever—Oh, alas, that the pain is intermittent, that the piercing agony sometimes ceases! That is the reason why it lasts so long! The tortured man imagines he is resting when the torturer merely pauses to get his breath. It is like a drowning man's catching his breath on the waves, when the current that has drawn him under spews him forth again only to seize him once more and draw him down. He has nothing but a double, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... moment the door was flung open, and Monsignor Del Fortis was ceremoniously ushered into the presence of his Majesty. At the first glance it was evident that De Launay had reasonable cause for associating the mediaeval priestly torturer pictured in his early lesson-book with the unprepossessing personage now introduced. Del Fortis was a dark, resentful-looking man of about sixty, tall and thin, with a long cadaverous face, very strongly pronounced features and small sinister eyes, over which the level brows ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... torture ordinary and extraordinary, and having explained the nature of these tortures, we proceed to quote the official report:— "And as in reply to every question she would confess nothing, we caused her to be taken by two officers and led from the prison to the torture chamber, where the torturer was in attendance; there, after cutting off her hair, he made her sit on a small stool, undressed her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling of the aforesaid chamber, ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... occurred, another post-captain tarred and feathered one of his young gentlemen, and kept him in that state, a plumed biped, for more than six weeks in his hen-coop. This last fact obtained much notoriety, from the aggrieved party leaving the service, and recovering heavy damages from his torturer in the court of civil law. My treatment never was known ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than you or I!—What is that great bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.—For you to drink,—said the torturer to the little woman.—She could not think that it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The torturer knew better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of Ireland with England have been, for so many centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim with his torturer." ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle |
