Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bloodthirsty   /blˈədθˌərsti/   Listen
Bloodthirsty

adjective
1.
Marked by eagerness to resort to violence and bloodshed.  Synonyms: bloody-minded, sanguinary.  "Bloodthirsty yells" , "Went after the collaborators with a sanguinary fury that drenched the land with blood"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Bloodthirsty" Quotes from Famous Books



... Macbriar, "the infamous executioner of your bloodthirsty commands upon the persons of God's people. He and you are equally beneath my regard; and, I bless God, I no more fear what he can inflict than what you can command. Flesh and blood may shrink under the sufferings you can doom me to, and poor frail nature may shed tears, or ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... She saw the foundation of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and of the two famous churches of St. Denys and of St. Martin of Tours, and gave her full share to the first efforts for bringing the rude and bloodthirsty conquerors to some knowledge of Christian faith, mercy, and purity. After a life of constant prayer and charity she died, three months after King Clovis, in the year 512, the 89th ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... demanded of him twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not understanding the value of their prisoner, and voluntarily engaged to give them fifty. He presently dispatched those about him to several places to raise the money, till at last he was left among a set of the most bloodthirsty people in the world, the Cilicians, only with one friend and two attendants. Yet he made so little of them, that when he had a mind to sleep, he would send to them, and order them to make no noise. For thirty-eight days, with all the freedom in the world, he amused himself with joining in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... common people were treated by their emperor with haughty insolence, and held up to the scorn of his foreign guests. A report also became rife that a timber fort, which Dimitri had erected opposite the gates of the city, had been constructed solely for the purpose of giving the bloodthirsty Marina a martial spectacle, and that, sheltered behind its wooden walls, the Polish troops and the czar's bodyguard would throw firebrands and missiles among the crowds of spectators below. This idle rumour was ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... bloodthirsty Graham of Claverhouse hated to spend his time with wine and women."—"Life of Walter Smith," ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... his religion, the more clear will be his perception that Europeans and European influence must be rooted out. All means for the attainment of this end are justifiable. As Krishna killed Kamsa, so the modern Indian must kill the European demons that are tyrannically holding India down. The bloodthirsty goddess Kali ought to be honoured by the Indian patriot. Even the Baghavad Ghita was used to teach murder. Lies, deceit, murder, everything, it was ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... years since the city had been disturbed by plebeian violence or aristocratic vengeance. Twenty-four years ago, the avenging sword of Sylla had purged the state of its bloodthirsty demagogues, and their brute followers; twenty-four years ago his powerful hand had reestablished Rome's ancient constitution, full of checks and balances, which secured equal rights to every Roman citizen; which secured all equality, in short to all men, save that which no human laws can give, equality ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... animals I have had bloodthirsty moments of feeling that the only possible way to enjoy pets was to have them like those wooden Japanese eggs which fit into each other. If you have white mice or a canary, have a cat to contain the canary, and a dog to reckon with the cat. Further up in the scale the matter is more difficult, ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... foresaw; a breach is made which can only be closed by the bodies of hundreds of these cursed heretics; and Santa Anna is bloodthirsty enough to drain the last drop. Alphonso Mazzolin, canst thou not carve thy fortune in the coming storm? Yea, and I will. I am no unworthy follower of Loyola, of Gavier, and of Bobadillo. Patience! a Cardinal's cap shall ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... of the two murders he should be first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty, and cast for death. Bloodthirsty wretches! They would have made him Guilty of anything, so set they ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of slaves in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... kind there are several curious varieties. One of them may be observed building its nest of moistened clay against a wall, and inclosing in each of its numerous compartments a living spider; thus revenging upon this bloodthirsty race the injuries sustained by harmless flies, and providently securing for its own young a ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... obtain. But the Princess understood him to refer to the four eyes of her two children—to his unwillingness, in fact, to become a stepfather. So she suffocated the infant obstacles, and wrote to her lover that the way was clear. He was stricken with horror at the cruel deed, and died cursing her bloodthirsty rashness. The Princess, in her turn, became overwhelmed with remorse. After lingering a day or two in indescribable anguish, she too died, and was buried under the old castle at Berlin; but not to rest ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... proposition goes, he preaches to the converted.... If nations were perfectly wise and held perfectly sound economic theories, they would recognize that exchange is the union of forces, and that it is very foolish to hate or be jealous of your co-operators.... Men are savage, bloodthirsty creatures ... and when their blood is up will fight for a word or a sign, or, as Mr. Angell would put it, ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... some little time before Clarence Tinling gave any opinion upon this bloodthirsty document. He turned exceedingly red, and examined it suspiciously on both sides. It seemed as if he did not altogether welcome this second opportunity for distinguishing himself. When he spoke it was with a ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... left his client, the physician his patients, the carpenter his work-bench, the shoemaker his tools—all have fled, fled for their lives; fled to escape murder and pillage, intimidation and insult at hands of a bloodthirsty mob of ignorant descendants of England's indentured slaves, fanned into frenzy by their more intelligent leaders whose murderous schemes to obtain office worked charmingly. Legally elected officers have been driven from the city which is now ruled by a banditti whose safety in office ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... weasels can climb trees, too, and this one had tracked the frightened chipmunk to the topmost branch, where he had tried to seize him. Then the squirrel had, in horror, let go his hold, screamed, and fallen through the air, till he struck the branch as just described. Now his bloodthirsty enemy was looking for him again, apparently relying entirely upon his sense of smell to guide him to ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... other concerns, by drawing out the younger professors to the firing line and the older men to the Landstrum, a body of spectacled elderly men in uniform, who felt the spirit wake in their feeble blood and prided themselves as "bloodthirsty dogs," as they watched railway lines, reservoirs, power stations, and did ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... of the most brutal and bloodthirsty of warriors settle down into an earnest preacher of the gospel. I have heard a prize- fighter lecture on the atomic theory; and, I am acquainted with a violent radical demagogue "of the deepest dye," who, by means of a nice berth and a snug salary, has been turned into the most conservative ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... through the Faubourg St. Antoine, but the demonstrations of the mob gave him little pleasure, and, it was easy to detect a sneer in his addresses to them. He had some slight intercourse with the men of the Revolution—the fierce, bloodthirsty Jacobins—but even now he could not conceal his abhorrence of them, and, be it said to his honour, he had as little to do ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... animal is not now extinct in the British Isles. Professor Parker writes: "It has been known to kill as many as sixteen turkeys in a single night; and indeed it seems to be a point of honour with this bloodthirsty little creature to kill everything it can overpower, and to leave no survivors on its battle-fields." According to Bell, a female Pole-cat, which was tracked to her nest, was found to have laid up in a side hole a store of food consisting of forty frogs and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... Goliath from the borders of France encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head in his bloodthirsty pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of God and zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... said Shif'less Sol, "an' I think I'll tell 'em so. I always like to hurt the feelin's of a bloodthirsty savage that's lookin' ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... years had his shadow been cast in forest, on highway, and run; But Nemesis tracked him at last, and swept him from under the sun. Foul felons in chains were ashamed to speak of the bloodthirsty thing Who lived, like a panther inflamed, the life that no singer can sing— Who butchered one night in the wild three women, a lad, and a maid, And cut the sweet throat of a child—its mother's pure blood on his blade! But over the plains and away by the range ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... Thus embittered and bloodthirsty towards each other were the two great sections of the Reformed religion on the first centennial jubilee of the Reformation. Such was the divided front which the anti-Catholic party presented at the outbreak of the war ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and after winding through several small streets—some of them so narrow as not to admit more than one cab at a time—I found myself in the Rue de L'Ecole de Medecine, and standing in front of house No. 20. This was the residence, during the early days of the revolution, of that bloodthirsty demon in ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... of the great scourges of Erin was the coming of the Danes, the bloodthirsty and conquest-loving Vikings of the North, the worshipers of Thor and Odin, the gods of thunder and of strife. These warriors, in never-ending invasions, had for four hundred years overrun Britain and finally conquered the northern provinces of Gaul. Until the end of the eighth ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... of the people was to raise a great temple to their god—the bloodthirsty Huitzilopochtli—who had led them on. It was begun at once, and around it grew the habitations of the people, the huts made of reeds and mud called xacali, such as indeed to-day form the habitations of a large part of Mexican people under the name of jacales.[5] ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... bloodthirsty, I believe!" laughed Jack indulgently. "I know the provocation is severe, but remember that ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... with delight, and their cries were answered from without by the demand of the bloodthirsty rabble—"How soon are you going to throw out the heads of the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... went by and no open movement against him took place, his vigilance somewhat relaxed. Mink kept to his lair like some treacherous, bloodthirsty animal, which was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... Crocodile Put on his most bloodthirsty smile; The Leopard and the Wolf were there, And ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham

... young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grew up like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage, bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day while the master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his hand started the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, his ferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... take a load of champagne and half a dozen prostitutes, and spend the night careering about the country. This man was now quartered in one of the great hotels in New York; and in his apartments he would have prize fights and chicken fights; and bloodthirsty exhibitions called "purring matches," in which men tried to bark each other's shins; or perhaps a "battle royal," with a diamond scarf-pin dangling from the ceiling, and half a dozen negroes in a ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... whimsical hand. If Baree had dragged himself into the timber half an hour later he would have died. He was too far gone now to hunt for crayfish or kill the weakest bird. But he came just as Sekoosew, the ermine, the most bloodthirsty little pirate of all the wild—was making ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... most lively terrors, and often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death. And however the general experiences in the fishery may amend such reports as these; yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters. So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... [Footnote: Do., p. 532.] The North Carolina Legislature, becoming impatient, passed a law summarily appropriating certain lands that were claimed by the unfortunate Cherokees. The troubled peace was continually threatened by the actions either of ungovernable frontiersmen or of bloodthirsty and vindictive Indians. [Footnote: Do., p. 560.] Small parties of scouts were incessantly employed in patrolling the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... benevolent and amiable expression of countenance, I would have been arrested long ago by the Rangers on general suspicions of murder and horse stealing. In fact, I owe all my present means of lugubrious living to my desperate and bloodthirsty appearance, combined with the confident and easy way in which I tackle a Winchester rifle. There is a gentleman who lives about fifteen miles from the ranch, who for amusement and recreation, and not altogether without an eye to the profit, keeps a general merchandise store. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... day there came day mosquitoes, creatures of the sunlight and matching it in a way, seeing that they were big grey-striped fellows with keen and strident voices. By night there were small vicious mosquitoes, in colour an appropriate black and in habit more bloodthirsty than Uhlans. After dark the flame of his kerosene lamp was to them as the traditional light in the traditional casement is to returning wanderers. It brought them in millions, and with them tiny persistent ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... on which is inscribed the number of inhabitants in the village. Most people favor the former theory, but consider it a pity that he has not distinctly pointed to the latter by stating that the figures there inscribed represent the number of persons hanged. That would have rendered the tale bloodthirsty, interesting, absolutely perfect,—from a foreign point ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... patriotic too in its way, and not without a rough idea of justice. So far like that of Greece; but here the resemblance ends. The mob of Rome, for in the times of real popular eloquence it had come to that, was rude, fierce, bloodthirsty: where Athens called for grace of speech, Rome demanded vehemence; where Athens looked for glory or freedom, Rome looked for increase of dominion, and the wealth of conquered kingdoms for her spoil. That in spite of their fierce and turbulent audience the great Roman orators attained ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... His first impulse was to break away from his captors, and run the risk of being overtaken by a trio of musket balls; for death from the quick action of a bullet seemed preferable to the fate which his fears conjured up if he should be taken by the bloodthirsty rebels. But the chances were too decidedly against him, and he reluctantly brought his mind to the condition ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... interference with the liberty of commerce and of industry, without any violation of property," in a word and above all, without any class war. A truly "immortal" idea and worthy the admiration of all bourgeois, peace-loving, sentimental, or bloodthirsty—white, blue, or red! ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... she interrupted, holding up her riding rod. "I'll have no dissembling, there hath been enough of that, Giles Headley. Thou hast sold him, soul and body, to one of yon cruel, bloodthirsty plundering, burning captains, that the poor child may be slain and murthered! Is this the fair promises you made to his father—wiling him away from his poor mother, a widow, with talking of teaching him the craft, and giving him your daughter! My son, Tiptoff here, told me ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... some indication of the underlying temper which the parrot had so rashly put to the test with such dramatic consequences for itself. The servants, who had come to regard the defunct bird as a regular member of the household, and one who gave really very little trouble, were scandalized to find his bloodthirsty aggressor installed in his place as ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... reputation. "The Forerunners" is a sequel to "Above the Battle." The precursors of whom Rolland writes are those of kindred spirit to the persons to whom the book is dedicated. It is published "in memory of the martyrs of the new faith in the human international, the victims of bloodthirsty stupidity and of murderous falsehood, the liberators of the men who ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... at every corner: the reformers who could not reform themselves. The believers in universal brotherhood who hated half the people. The denouncers of tyranny demanding lamp-posts for their opponents. The bloodthirsty preachers of peace. The moralists who had persuaded themselves that every wrong was justified provided one were fighting for the right. The deaf shouters for justice. The excellent intentioned men and women labouring for reforms that could only ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... as sometimes supposed, to the inter-tropical regions of America. They are found in great numbers even to the shores of the Arctic Sea, and as fierce and bloodthirsty as anywhere else—of course only in the summer season, when, as before remarked, the thermometer in these Northern latitudes mounts to a high figure. Their haunts are the banks of rivers, and particularly those of a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... the battle and had received a kick, but he bore no malice. If he had had a sweet, he, like the girls, would have given it to Henry Bodker, and would have put up with ungentle treatment too. He worshipped him. But he measured himself by Nilen —the little bloodthirsty Nilen, who had no knowledge of fear, and attacked so recklessly that the others got out of his way! He was always in the thickest of the crowd, jumped right into the worst of everything, and came safely out ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... France had certain interests in common, is often used as a text for sermons on the subject of the unpatriotic cynicism of international finance. It is easy to paint them as a ring of cold-blooded devils trying to stimulate bloodthirsty feeling between the nations so that there may be a good market for weapons of destruction. From their point of view, they are providers of engines of defence which they make, in the first place, for the use of their own country, ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... Piru, and Lempo, is the chief of the forest-demons, and is inconceivably wicked. He was brought into the world consentaneously with Suoyatar, from whose spittle, as sung in The Kalevala, he formed the serpent. This demon is described as cruel, horrible, hideous, and bloodthirsty, and all the most painful diseases and misfortunes that ever afflict mortals are supposed to emanate from him. This demon, too, is thought by the Finlanders to have a hand in all the evil done ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... mate said, "that our poor comrades there—" and he nodded towards the grave, "—have not the best of it. The inhabitants of most of these islands are bloodthirsty pirates who, if they find us, will either cut our throats at once, or keep us as slaves. Our only hope is that we may not be discovered, until we have time to build a boat in which to sail away to Singapore, or ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... getting a few shillings, which very often we don't get regular. We're in for this job, ah, and we're going to see it through, too, because we think it's the right thing to do and because we wanted to do a turn of fighting. We ain't bloodthirsty, and I'm not going to say we shall be miserable when it's all over, but while it's going on we like it. There's risks everywhere, even with the quietest jobs. I knew a chap once as drove a goat-cart for children at the seaside, and one day when the wind was strong it blew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various

... there saw wading the sluggish streams bloodthirsty men and perjurers, and him who the ear beguiles of another's wife. There Nidhoegg sucks the corpses of the dead; the wolf tears men. Understand ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... Netherlands were interested. They were combating that horrible institution, the Holy Inquisition. They were doing their best to strike down the universal monarchy of Spain, which they described as a bloodthirsty, insatiable, insolent, absolute dominion of Saracenic, Moorish Christians. They warred with a system which placed inquisitors on the seats of judges, which made it unlawful to read the Scriptures, which violated all oaths, suppressed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... flower-beds, and white statue of Our Lady in a shrine of pine boughs. All the surroundings wore an air of peace and homeliness suggestive of some quiet country village in far-away France, and I could have lingered here for hours had not large and bloodthirsty mosquitoes swarmed from the woods around and driven me reluctantly back ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... with never a light to show upon its front, there was a ferocious hullabaloo, something between the angry snorting of a buffalo and the puffing of a railroad engine going up a steep grade. It was the wolfish welcome of three canine brigands, the bloodthirsty watch-dogs that surrounded and guarded this lonely and poverty-stricken little farm-house from the approach of any one evil- ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... didn't want to get mobbed. He ran as hard as he could run in order to escape. Then he remembered Louis was caught, for he had heard him calling for help. Johnny came back around the buildings, but, alas! the bloodthirsty mob had done its work and Louis was no more. Johnny, now safely at home, lay moaning on his bed and would not be comforted. Fanny remembered having seen the great crowd over by the Dahomey village, but she had not dreamed of ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... swarm of parasites—are able, for the sordid motive of gain, to turn to their own account the best and the worst instincts of mankind. They profit by human ambition and by human pride; by men's grudges and men's hates. They draw equal gains from the bloodthirsty imaginings and from the courage of their fellow-mortals; from the thirst for self-sacrifice, from the heroism which makes men eager to spill their own blood, from ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... barked their approval, as the bulls butted each other. Meeko is always glad when mischief is afoot. High overhead floated a rare woods' raven, his head bent sharply downward to see. Moose-birds flitted in restless excitement from tree to bush. Kagax the weasel postponed his bloodthirsty errand to the young rabbits. And just beside me, under the fir tips, Tookhees the wood-mouse forgot his fear of the owl and the fox and his hundred enemies, and sat by his den in broad daylight, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... it will not be long before he suffers death," Harry answered, and then added: "I am not bloodthirsty, nor do I favor the hoisting of the black flag, as so many appear desirous of doing. But for a wretch like Awtry, I have not the slightest pity, and would hear of his execution with pleasure. If even there is no proof discovered of his being a spy, his ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... he remained there, listening to the hideous growling of his bloodthirsty enemies. At last the thought came to him that he must go; but how was he to drag himself to the place where Pierre was waiting for him? It was so far! so far! He would faint twenty times before reaching there. Was he about to fail now after all ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... is that the quadrupeds composing this group are all animals of small dimensions. Were they equal in size to lions and tigers, the human race would be in danger of total extirpation: for it is well-known that weasels are the most ferocious and bloodthirsty creatures upon the earth. None of them, however, much exceed the size of the ordinary cat: unless we include the gluttons and wolverenes among the weasels, as naturalists sometimes do, notwithstanding that these animals ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... to his swollen and inflamed ankle, declared himself unable to walk. Some half a dozen of his comrades were standing around him, with feelings painfully wrought up, waiting the denouement of an affair which, from the angry appearance of Salazar, they now feared would be tragical. Once more the bloodthirsty savage, pointing to the main body of prisoners, ordered the cripple to hurry forward and overtake them—he could not! 'Forward!' said Salazar, now wrought up to a pitch of phrenzy. 'Forward, or I'll shoot you on the spot!' 'Then shoot!' replied McAllister, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... pre-eminency which we are about to describe involved bloodthirsty combats extending almost uninterruptedly over five centuries, it may be of interest to inquire of what consisted the paraphernalia of warfare in those days. It appears that among the Chinese federal princes, who, as we have seen, only occupied in the main the ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... New Guinea, known to the native traders as "Papua Kowiyee" and "Papua Onen," is inhabited by the most treacherous and bloodthirsty tribes. It is in these districts that the commanders and portions of the crews of many of the early discovery ships were murdered, and scarcely a year now passes but some lives are lost. The Goram and Ceram traders are themselves generally inoffensive; they are ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... such inhabitants of the back settlements as were known to be favorable to the British. Thus the feeble colonists were to be not only encircled by a cordon of fire, but a conflagration was to be lighted which should consume every patriot's dwelling. It was an able but pitiless and bloodthirsty plan, for it would let loose upon the settler every savage atrocity and make his worst foes those of his own household. If successful, it would have strangled in fire and blood the spirit of independence in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... say that the natives will never attack without provocation. Even Cook, who certainly was both careful and just, was treacherously attacked in Erromanga, for the Melanesian is bloodthirsty, especially when he thinks himself the stronger. But to-day it may be stated as a certainty that no attack on a recruiting-ship or on any white man occurs without some past brutality on the part of a European to account for it. As ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... the work these fellows make with velvet hangings and embroidery. I saw one hag boiling her camp-kettle with part of a picture frame; the picture itself has probably gone to Prussia. With all this greediness and love of mischief, the Prussians are not bloodthirsty; and their utmost violence seldom exceeds a blow or two with the flat of the sabre. They are also very civil to the women, and in both respects behave much better than the French did in their country; but they follow the bad example quite ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... is showing the true qualities of a soldier, Weyler continues the atrocious method of warfare that more closely resembles that of the bloodthirsty red Indian, than ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... help it. We know so many estimable people that it would be delightful to meet somebody bloodthirsty, for a change. Everything in Waybourne is so painfully commonplace that we are simply spoiling for a mystery, as the Americans would say. Now, Mr Talbot won't commit himself to a definite charge, but his silence is more impressive than words. I'm sure there's a mystery: something ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the Huns (375-453), under Attila, the Avars (566-799), both of Mongolian race, and the Gepidae (453-566), of Gothic race—all savage, bloodthirsty raiders, passing and repassing over the Rumanian regions, pillaging and burning everywhere. To avoid destruction the Daco-Roman population withdrew more and more into the inaccessible wooded regions of the mountains, and as a result were in no wise influenced ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... compiled by the Chicago Tribune were given the first of this year (1892). Since then, not less than one hundred and fifty have been known to have met violent death at the hands of cruel bloodthirsty mobs during ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... picture of abject terror, the unfortunate redskin, who believed the third one shot at to be dead, drew himself out of his covert, and, putting his leg upon the horse, exposed himself to the pistol. Once more the bloodthirsty little scout fired, and with an agonized yell, the Indian sprawled in the marsh-mire. His leg he seized just above the knee, as if the bullet ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... was not bloodthirsty; having vented his spite, he let the fellow go. "You saved my life," he said to Texas. "When we get back you shall be ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... women, how disappointed they are!" says Lambert. "Mrs. Lambert, you bloodthirsty woman, own that you are balked of a battle; and look at Hetty, quite angry because Mr. George did ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... which they had to deal, they had to deal with yet wilder men. Except in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and perhaps Italy, they came in contact everywhere with savage races; they had to enter into close relations with men treacherous, bloodthirsty, covetous—men who were almost always thieves, who were frequently cannibals, sometimes wreckers—who regarded foreigners as a cheap and very delicious kind of food. The pioneers of civilisation, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... bloodthirsty and cruel, but these qualities always found for themselves a comfortable apology in the Old Testament. The Boer prided himself on his likeness to the Israelite of old, and his enemies to the Canaanite, whom it was doing God ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... they ran, the bloodthirsty horde raced for the veranda. A dozen of them fell to the arrows of the defenders; but the majority reached the door. Heavy gun butts fell upon it. The crash of splintered wood mingled with the report of a rifle as Jane Clayton fired through the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Eve, I feel as if I could take and jump into the sea with you, so as I might feel you'd be safe from the life I'm certain you're goin' to be dragged down to. You may think fair now of this man, because he's only showed you his fair side; but they who know him know him for what he is—bloodthirsty, violent, a drunkard, never sober, with his neck in a noose and the gallows swinging over his head. What hold will you have over one who fears neither God nor devil? Yes, but I will speak. You shall listen to the truth from me," for she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... are distant from Guatimala four hundred miles, did make it to his urgent and dayly business to procure Ruin and Destruction by slaughter, Fire and Depopulations, compelling all to submit to the Spanish King, whom they lookt upon to be more unjust and cruel then his inhumane and bloodthirsty Ministers. ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there would be worse before it was done. We were given a suit of sailors' togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk and one of biscuits, and a compass. Prendergast threw us over a chart, told us that we were shipwrecked ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... quarrelled with the United States and with every European Power, and disposed of his political opponents by the simple expedient of placing them against a wall with a file of soldiers with loaded rifles in front of them. For eight years this ignorant, bloodthirsty savage enjoyed absolute power, until he was forced in 1908 to flee to Europe. I do not know whether he followed the national custom by taking most of the exchequer with him. A typical sample of Castro's administrative powers was ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... was better than a knock on the head—the sort of welcome he would have found on this river forty or fifty years ago. Then leaning forward slightly, he became earnestly serious. It seems as if, outside their own sea-gypsy tribes, these rovers had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible, bloodthirsty hatred. Meantime their depredations had been stopped, and what was the consequence? The new generation was orderly, peaceable, settled in prosperous villages. He could speak from personal knowledge. And even the few survivors of that time—old men now—had changed ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... are firm and strong, for they are composed of three hundred thousand swords, and thousands of cannon and muskets. If the lion is determined to use his teeth, lie will easily succeed in destroying the were-wolf; for this rapacious and bloodthirsty were-wolf is brave and invincible only when he has to deal with lambs; only the feeble and disarmed have ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... all the fisher-people at the shore, even old Dinnett, who lived an apparently desolate life by himself in a hut and was reputed to have been a bloodthirsty pirate in his youth. He was consequently feared by all the children, and for misdemeanors in his latter days avoided generally. Kate talked with him awhile one day on the shore, and made him come up with her for a bandage ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... also left a name commonly given to the nine of diamonds, which is called "the curse of Scotland," because it is said that on that card Cumberland wrote his bloodthirsty order. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... an account of his exploits in the forest, gives us the assurance that "all real sportsmen are tender-hearted men, who shun cruelty to an animal, and are easily moved by a tale of distress;" and that although man is naturally bloodthirsty, and a beast of prey by instinct, yet that the true sportsman is distinguished from the rest of the human race by his "love of nature, and of noble scenery." In support of this pretension to a gentler nature than the rest of mankind, the author proceeds to attest his ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... time to carry off their shells, so they had left them behind. But they had had time to empty the bottles. Absinthe, brandy, rum, champagne, beer, and wine had all been consumed, and the labels lay alongside of each other. Drunken, bloodthirsty brutes, thieving, sickening, nauseous beasts were what had descended upon France and passed through her country. Ruins, ashes and filth were the traces left ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... the chief strongholds of the slave-dealers, which the Yorubans most had to fear, has since been taken possession of by the British, and has been declared an English colony or settlement; but Dahomey, governed by its bloodthirsty monarch, with his army of six thousand Amazons and five thousand male warriors, still exists as a terrible scourge ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... very dainty, and very small. "You find me here, sitting by the wayside,—and a very desolate figure I must look, I'm sure,—you find me here because I have been driven away by the tantrums of an undutiful god-daughter, and the barbarity of a bloodthirsty buccaneer. I mean the Captain, of course. And all because I had the forethought to tell Cleone her nose was red,—which it was,—sunburn you know, and because I remarked that the Captain was growing as rotund as a Frenchman, which he is,—I mean fat, of course. All Frenchmen are fat—at ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... that the negroes intend to rebel on the night of the 25th of December, 1835. We find the most vicious and wickedly disposed on large farms, and poison their minds by telling them how they are mistreated. When we are convinced that we have found a bloodthirsty devil, we swear him to secrecy and disclose to him the secret, and convince him that every other state and section of country where there are any negroes intend to rebel and slay all the whites they ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... what to do in her extremity, a short, quick bark, far in the forest behind her, succeeded by a prolonged howl, the bloodthirsty cry of the "timber wolf,"—which, when once heard, can never be forgotten,—broke on her ear. She had lived too long in the wilderness not to know what that meant, and she fled with wondrous swiftness down the path, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... as the little man gave vent to this bloodthirsty sentiment in an undertone; he wrung my ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... follow as quickly as possible. Getting in touch with the enemy, the horse-artillery came into action, but their fire, good and accurate as it might be, was not sufficient to stay the determined advance of large bodies of bloodthirsty and fanatical ghazis. The General, therefore, ordered the cavalry to charge, the two regiments acting independently under their ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... bloodthirsty mosquitoes from every drop of stagnant water. They found their way through the musty mosquito-net which separated his bed from Asako's. They eluded his blow in the evening light; and he could only wreak his vengeance in ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... I cannot say. Though, indeed, can anything ever be concealed in a little town? You can fancy how Liza received him, how all the family of the Ozhogins received him! As for me, I suddenly became an object of universal indignation and loathing, a monster, a jealous bloodthirsty madman. My few acquaintances shunned me as if I were a leper. The authorities of the town promptly addressed the prince, with a proposal to punish me in a severe and befitting manner. Nothing but the persistent and urgent entreaties of the prince himself averted the calamity that menaced me. ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the name of Jerry, who told him stories in which it occurred frequently. To judge from his stories of his own adventures, Jerry had made some two or three thousand voyages, and had been invariably shipwrecked on each occasion on an island densely populated with bloodthirsty cannibals. Judging, also, by these same exciting adventures, he had been partially roasted and eaten frequently and had been scalped ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... return thanks to the God of Jacob for the protection which he had afforded her, and to implore its continuance for her and for her father. Another name glided into her petition—it was that of the wounded Christian, whom fate had placed in the hands of bloodthirsty men, his avowed enemies. Her heart indeed checked her, as if, even in communing with the Deity in prayer, she mingled in her devotions the recollection of one with whose fate hers could have no alliance—a Nazarene, and an enemy to her faith. But the petition was already breathed, nor could ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... him. His devotion to the National cause did not mean simply the waving of the flag and the delivery of patriotic orations; it meant cold and hunger, separation from his family, loss of property, possibly loss of life. He endured all, and faced his bloodthirsty enemies with a courage superior to their own. He won their respect by his brave resistance, and was finally released from jail and banished from the Confederacy. He came North, and remained until the progress of the National arms enabled him to return ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... morning the condition of the tempers of the crew of the Rattletrap was reversed. Jack was feeling better and was quite amiable, and inclined to regret his bloodthirsty language of the night before. But Ollie and I, on our diet of gooseberries, had not prospered, and woke up as cross as Old Blacky. The first thing I did was to seize the empty gooseberry can and hit the side of the wagon a ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... "a foreign embassy being mixed up in a plain case of grand larceny!—robbing with attempt to murder! My dear but bloodthirsty young lady, I can ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... was the wild, bloodthirsty clamor of that vast throng, when they beheld the six flower-decked prisoners appear upon the circular winding road which led to the lofty and wind-swept summit of the great conical pyramid of the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... him, the nasty, ugly, ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted, down- looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep—"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... no means friendly to the Spaniard their complaint is, that the Spaniards will not let them have fire arms and amunition, that they put them off by telling them that if they suffer them to have guns they will kill each other, thus leaving them defenceless and an easy prey to their bloodthirsty neighbours to the East of them, who being in possession of fire arms hunt them up and murder them without rispect to sex or age and plunder them of their horses on all occasions. they told me that to avoid their enemies who were eternally harrassing them that they ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... Jeffreys, in a tone which astonished his bloodthirsty young confidant; "you're old enough to know better than talk ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, at the bidding of a priest, to propitiate a goddess. It is still further applicable to the long chain of outrageous wrongs which have been inflicted upon the innocent at the instigation of a stupid and savage fanaticism. What is worst of all, much of this bloodthirsty religion has claimed a commission from the God of love, and performed its detestable deeds in the insulted name of that "soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit," whom the loftiest and best of men delight to adore as the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... abhorrence of the man, and he had told her that he felt the same about him. She shuddered now, thinking of what her brother had told her of the man's cruelty. Dunlavey had often boasted that Yuma was the most venomous and bloodthirsty of his ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... belly and left him. These Shânbah banditti (who, to my surprise, are lauded in the French works published by the Minister of War, as the most enterprising camel-drivers and merchants in The Sahara,) are, without doubt, what the people say here, the vilest and most bloodthirsty miscreants in The Desert. How strange it is they are Arabs! It is always the Arab, who is the most thorough-going, hereditary, eternal robber of The Desert! Is it because we read, "And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... to take no pleasure in anything but a savage outpouring of human blood, now took delight in the sweets of peace, and passed the days in holiday-making and dancing with enemies who but lately had been as bloodthirsty as themselves." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... was necessary, however, that our first visit to this lovely island paradise should be made with all due circumspection; for although no sign or trace of inhabitants had as yet been discovered, the place might for all that be peopled, and peopled, too, with cruel, bloodthirsty savages, for aught we could tell to the contrary. While, therefore, I was exceedingly anxious, for reasons of my own, to get a nearer peep at the place without a moment's unnecessary delay, I felt bound to point out to the ladies the absolute necessity for determining the question whether or not ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... The howling familiarity of the mob never touched the real dignity of the royal woman, and their brutality was only a murderous form of Yankee servant's mean "independence." I cannot treat the subject at all without going into necessary subtleties which never occurred to an enraged mob or a bloodthirsty and insolent official; I cannot accept the bald jeers of a comfortable, purse-proud citizen as being of any weight, and I am just as loath to heed the wire-drawn platitudes of the average philosopher. If we accept the very first maxim of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... bloodthirsty it may be, I don't quarrel so long as he sincerely believes in it. But for private assassination I have no time and no sympathy." It was the old Nicol Brinn who was speaking, coldly and incisively. "That—something ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... timorous indifferent to them; and when General Cos did not return, and nothing was heard of Santa Anna, every one began to take up their ordinary life again. The temper of the Americans also encouraged this disposition. They were discovered neither to be bloodthirsty nor cannibals. It was even seen that they enjoyed the fandango and the monte tables, and that a proposition for a bullfight at Christmas ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... believe that so short a time ago the ship was surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies," observed Murray to Jack, as they stood together looking out into the darkness. "Besides the poor fellows who have been hit, I dare say that our running rigging and sails will show that we have been engaged; yet now how calm ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... in love with hunting—for a woman. There seems something bloodthirsty in it. And Bates says that if ladies only knew how their horses' backs get wrung in the hunting season, they would hardly have the heart to hunt. It was very nice to ride by papa's side when I was a little girl. I would have ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... swiftly the weasel followed, hungry, bloodthirsty, relentless on the trail. Terrified into folly by the suddenness and deadliness of this peril, the squirrel ran too far up the tree and was almost cornered. Where the branches were small there was no chance ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... wane of the Valencian Moor, while beautiful maidens listened from behind the blossoming rose-bushes. And then the catastrophe came. In a torrent of steel, barbarians swept down from the arid hills of Aragon to appease their hunger in the bounty of the plain—the almogavares—naked, wild, bloodthirsty savages, who never washed. And as allies of this horde, bankrupt Christian noblemen, their worn-out lands mortgaged to the Israelite, but good cavalrymen, withal, armored, and with dragonwings on their helmets; and among the Christians, adventurers ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... nothing short of Smithfield," said the ancient person definitely, rising and moving to a more remote distance as he spoke the words, yet never for a moment relaxing the aggressive angle at which he thrust out his staff before him. "You're a bloodthirsty race in my opinion, and when they get this door open in China that there's so much talk about, out you go through it, my lad, or old England will know why." With this narrow-minded imprecation on his lips he left ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... precept, "Spare the citizens." The way in which he repeatedly forgave his enemies when they were in his power was an example to many a Christian conqueror. The best of his antagonists showed themselves bloodthirsty in word or act; and most of them, not excepting Cicero, were basely ungrateful for his forbearance. His treatment of Cicero was certainly most handsome—our knowledge of it is derived mainly from Cicero's letters. Perhaps this magnanimity ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... vital statistics except in its fordings; even the Tetons were as calm as they were lovely; while the wapiti and bear, innocent of strikes and corners, laid no traps. In return the party treated them with affection. Never did a band less bloody or bloodthirsty wander over the roof of the continent. Hay loved as little as Adams did, the labor of skinning and butchering big game; he had even outgrown the sedate, middle-aged, meditative joy of duck-shooting, and found the trout of the Yellowstone too easy a prey. Hallett Phillips ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... to select those delicacies for which he had been sent. The devoted Jacket was at his side. The little Cuban exercised no restraint; he seized whatever was most handy, meanwhile cursing ferociously, as befitted a bloodthirsty bandit. Boys are natural robbers, and at this opportunity for loot Jacket's soul flamed savagely and he swept the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... me, what hast thou done? Ah, Tremelio, trusty Tremelio! I sorrow for thy death, and since that thou Living didst prove faithful to Segasto, So Segasto now living shall honour the dead corpse Of Tremelio with revenge. Bloodthirsty villain, Born and bred to merciless murther, tell me How durst thou be so bold, as once to lay Thy hands upon the least of mine? Assure thyself Thou shalt be us'd according to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... instanter the traitorous faction. In the press, and the mess, They would hear nothing less Than to make the advance, spite of rhyme or of reason, And at once put an end to the insolent treason. There was Greeley, And Ely, The bloodthirsty Grow, And Hickman (the rowdy, not Hickman the beau), And that terrible Baker Who would seize on the South, every acre, And Webb, who would drive us all into the Gulf, or Some nameless locality smelling of sulphur; And with all this bold crew Nothing would ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... Paradise, still, through the power of the devil, has some temples and altars in your great and noble city. But because it is grievous to the Christian and clement heart of the Emperor to avenge the persecutions and death which so many holy martyrs have endured at the hands of the bloodthirsty and cruel heathen on their posterity, or on the miscreant and—misbelieving enemies of our holy faith—and because the Lord hath said 'vengeance is mine'—Theodosius Caesar only decrees that the temples of the heathen idols ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... horrible yells, their long weapons glittering in the sunshine as they brandished them about. With such fury did they fight that in a few moments all the combatants lay stretched out on the grass, excepting three boys wearing the red badges. One of these bloodthirsty young miscreants then snatched up the trumpet and blew a victorious blast, while the other two shrieked an accompaniment of vivas and mueras. While they were thus occupied one of the white-headed boys struggled to his feet, and, snatching up a knife, charged the ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... desolate cub, took it under his protection, and carried it to a milch-goat, who suckled it. The little wild beast thrived upon the milk of the tame animal and, softened by human fellowship, grew up much attached to its master. Bears, I may tell your ladyship, are not bloodthirsty by nature. Henceforth the bear went forth with the herdsman and the herds, helped to drive the goats together of an evening, and enlivened the long dreary days by turning somersaults—an art at which bears excel. At night it slept by Juon's side and made itself cosey ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... work no corruption on them, for it is under taboos and conventions; but if all the restraints are taken away it enters into their life for just what it is in its character,—sensual, cruel, bloody, obscene, etc. What had been savage and bloodthirsty when the Romans were warriors became base and cowardly when they never risked their own blood in any way. Condemned criminals were compelled to take roles in which they suffered torture and a frightful death, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... enemies. Hochstrat had induced two universities to condemn his doctrines. In sundry places his books were burned by the public hangman. Eck had gone to Italy, and was "moving the depths of hell" to secure the excommunication of the prejudged heretic. And could his bloodthirsty enemies have had their way, this would long since have come. But Leo seems to have had more respect for Luther than for them. Learning and talent were more to him than any doctrines of the faith. The monks complained of him as too ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... was not in the city from which he took his title when it fell. He had hurried on to Carcassonne to prepare that for defence. There he exerted himself with the utmost energy, with rage and despair, to be ready against the bloodthirsty, and yet blood-drunken ruffians who were pouring along the road from smoking Beziers, to do to Carcassonne as they had done there. Pedro, king of Aragon, interfered; he appeared as mediator in the camp of the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... of people, the one fierce and barbarous, the other the civilised builders and carvers of this strange city of the past. Here it is, all written down, how, in spite of all their efforts for their protection, dwelling, as they must have been, in the midst of fierce and bloodthirsty tribes, they were attacked, conquered, and massacred to the very last. For I expect when we examine the terraces on the other side of this place, we shall find a repetition of all we have found here. There, enough of horrors ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... into such danger unwittingly, threw themselves before him, and declared that no harm should befall him, as he belonged to them. Tearing them away by the combined force of many men, the prisoner was immediately bound, and led forth by his bloodthirsty murderers to death. "Shoot the spy!" was hardly pronounced, when a villain stepped forward, and placing the muzzle of his musket close to his ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... his marriage—when the marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing to hope from him—especially as he did not know how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... be, as it were, a fair and healthful fruit-tree, or to be a poisonous one. There is something positively awful about the potentialities that are in human nature. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have grown up under influences which would have made him a bloodthirsty pirate or a sneaking pickpocket. The pirate or the pickpocket, taken at the right time, and trained in the right way, might have been made a pious, exemplary man. You remember that good divine, two hundred years since, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... reason for a metaphor is not quite clear to the modern mind. The bloodthirsty weasel is called in French belette,[67] little beauty, in Italian donnola, in Portuguese doninha, little lady, in Spanish comadreja, gossip (Fr. commere, Scot. cummer, p. 94), in Bavarian Schoentierlein, beautiful little animal, in Danish kjoenne, beautiful, and in older English ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... be to Him who has saved us thus far. We know the touch of cold steel at our throats, as well as ever I knew the poor misthress' handbell; and unless our Lady, and St. Lawrence, and the rest of them, keep the better watch on us, the rascals will only ransom us without our heads, so jealous and bloodthirsty they are. The Bey of Constantina sent for us once, but all we got by that was worse usage than the very dogs in Paris, and being dragged up these weary hills, where Maitre Hubert and I carried Mademoiselle every foot of the way on our backs, and she begging our pardon so prettily—only she ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... faith have been evolved from the brooding brain of Man himself, and have nothing 'divine,' in them. In the very early ages nearly all the religious creeds were mere methods for terrorising the ignorant and the weak—and some of them were so revolting, so bloodthirsty and brutal, that one cannot now read of them without a shudder of repulsion. Nevertheless, from the very first dawn of his intelligence, man appears always to have felt the necessity of believing in something stronger and more lasting than himself,—and his ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... for the favour of Fortune, he might have been one of those haled, on the morrow of the battle, more or less haphazard from the overflowing gaol at Bridgewater to be summarily hanged in the market-place by the bloodthirsty Colonel Kirke. There was about the Colonel of the Tangiers Regiment a deadly despatch which might have disposed in like fashion of all those prisoners, numerous as they were, but for the vigorous intervention of Bishop Mews, which put an end ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... the reasons which rendered the battle so furious, so bloodthirsty on both sides; which led the combatants to rend each other with actual pleasure, with exulting rage. Each yawning wound was hailed with a shout of joy by the person who inflicted it; each man who fell dying heard, ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... continued, "that this region is under the control of a Demon of a most cruel and bloodthirsty disposition. He is not like the ordinary spirits, whose images are enshrined in our temples, and whose main aim is to protect and guard their worshippers. This one has no love for mankind, but on the contrary the bitterest hatred, and his ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... implacable enemy of humanity, was entirely changed. Philip's inclination was to hate and persecute; and religion, in name, afforded him the pretext for giving vent, with impunity, to those propensities, and covering with a sacred veil all the excesses of a bloodthirsty and revengeful heart to which he could abandon himself. Some writers have doubted the sincerity of his religious sentiments, considering them as mere pretexts, of which he availed himself in order to suggest ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... we can see, in the glory of morn, The invincible flag that our fathers defended; And our hearts can repeat what the heroes have sworn, That war shall not end till the war-lust is ended. Then the bloodthirsty sword shall no longer be lord Of the nations oppressed by the conqueror's horde, But the banners of Liberty proudly shall wave O'er the world of the free and ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the overseas, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of a kingdom ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... is foolish to deny that in exceptional instances attacks may occur. Cougars vary wonderfully in size, and no less in temper. Indeed I think that by nature they are as ferocious and bloodthirsty as they are cowardly; and that their habit of sometimes dogging wayfarers for miles is due to a desire for bloodshed which they lack the courage to realize. In the old days, when all wild beasts were less shy than at present, there was more danger ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... were devoted to preparation. I had already, through the kindness of Major Wigram, secured a shikari, who immediately demonstrated his zeal and efficiency by purchasing a couple of bloodthirsty knives and a huge bottle of Rangoon oil at my expense. I pointed out that one "skian-dhu" seemed to me sufficient for "gralloching" purposes, but he said two were better for bears. My acquaintance with bears being hitherto confined ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... I removed from being a bloodthirsty individual that I would like to see the death sentence removed from our criminal code. It would be useless to repeat in support of my opinion the ideas expressed by many celebrated socialists in regard to the abolition of capital punishment, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... how my fellows looked upon you; only today they wanted to try you as a spy. The old one wanted to torture and then hang you; but I would not, because I remembered your glass of wine and your touloup. I am not bloodthirsty, as your friends say." I remembered the taking of our fortress, but I did ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... Dutchwoman seemed at once to consider her people as his people, and the Transvaal as his fatherland. These women were certainly the most bitter against the English; they urged their husbands in the district to go and join the commandoes, and their language was cruel and bloodthirsty. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... justification. If the charges were merely invented to ruin the Queen, one culprit besides herself would have been enough. To assume that Henry sent four needless victims to the block is to accuse him of a lust for superfluous butchery, of which even he, in his most bloodthirsty moments, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... had said to me; the circumstances under which he and his wife were killed; the knowledge that in some sort it was on my account; and the bitter attacks made on me personally;(for in some quarters I was depicted as a bloodthirsty ruffian, and it was charged that I was for political reasons prosecuting men whom I personally knew to be innocent), all combined to spur me to my utmost effort. And when the verdicts were rendered, I was conscious of a sense of personal triumph so fierce ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... apprised of this, permitted the Inquisition to take its course. Diego Salcedo was surprised in his Palace, and imprisoned by the bloodthirsty agents of the Santo Oficio. Some years afterwards, he was shipped on board a galleon as a prisoner to the Inquisitors of Mexico, but the ship had to put back under stress of weather, and Salcedo returned to his dungeon. There ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... text,' gruffed the Ordinary 'From out the Psalms: "Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." And firstly, we shall expound to you the heinous sin of murder, which is unlawful (1) according to the Natural Laws, (2) according to the Jewish Law, (3) according to the Christian Law, proportionably ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... been represented to the empress that your lust for war has made you so reckless, so bloodthirsty, and so impious, that camp-life will prove your ruin. In her excess of maternal love, she has taken the alarm, and has resolved to shield you from danger by withdrawing ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... thickets. There came a clatter of sliding stones, as the big beast went galloping up the rise toward the crest of the mountain. The men followed as best they might, guided by the baying. Uncle Dick listened with bloodthirsty hopefulness for the crack of Zeke's ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... is a soft "Ah, no!" but the girl, ignorant of course of this, and wholly undisturbed by the bloodthirsty tone of the question addressed to her, calmly fixed her eyes on the frenzied eyes before her, and answered with a swift light accent and rippling laugh, "It shall if you like, sir!" Rossetti's enjoyment of his discomfiture on this occasion seemed ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... remark, however, has produced cataclysmic effects. The conversation to which I refer took place on the night of young Bidlake's murder, and Mr. Ledsam, with my somewhat, I confess, bombastic words in his memory, has pitched upon me as the bloodthirsty murderer." ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Rust, "had been intended to test difficult questions, which could not be proved, disproved, or solved in the ordinary way, or for want of evidence, or which required the divine interposition of some particular deity, likely a bloodthirsty one; for as they had different deities, different temples, and different altars, they had also different judgment stones attached to them, and different ordeals through which the tried individuals, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... was to get far from the neighborhood of the old man and his wolf-hound. Neither of the two spoke a word. The stormy, roaring Cure was forgotten, the danger to life was forgotten; on, on they went, like deer pursued by a pack of bloodthirsty hounds, and neither of them paid any attention to the ominous noise of the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere



Words linked to "Bloodthirsty" :   bloodthirstiness, bloody, bloody-minded



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com