"Cruel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he used to hold respecting the state of Italy, his hatred of the Archbishop, and his love of liberty; and he would imprison the Muses in that court. To whom can we now give our faith, when Silvanus, who formerly pronounced the Visconti a cruel tyrant, has now bowed himself to the yoke which he once so boldly condemned? How has the Visconti obtained this truckling, which neither King Robert, nor the Pope, nor the Emperor, could ever obtain? You will say, perhaps, that you have been ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... understand," he said. "There's something even friendship can't wipe out, though such friendship as your father's can bridge it over. But it's always there—a black, cruel gulf. And ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... is more, I have got them on this moment-look! neat, I think, and monstrous warm. Now, I have hitherto kept my own counsel. I have not said to Jessop, 'Beware—that is the man who took me in.' But this concealment is a little on my conscience. On the one hand, it seems very cruel, even if the man did once commit a crime, in spite of your charitable convictions to the contrary, that I should be blabbing out his disgrace, and destroying perhaps his livelihood. On the other hand, if he should still be really a rogue, a robber, perhaps dangerous, ought I—ought ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advanced to the next higher grade. This is the Fire Makers' ode to Fire that they intoned as Ethel lighted the Council Fire: "Oh, Fire, long years ago when our fathers fought with the great animals you were their protection. From the cruel cold of winter you saved them. When they needed food you changed the flesh of beasts into savory meat for them. During all the ages your mysterious flame has been a symbol to them for Spirit. So (tonight) we light ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... are said to embody many incidents of the early life of the writer, though portions are too strongly tinged with romance to belong to sober reality. The Younger Son is driven from his native hearth by a cruel father. His proud spirit revolts at such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... never will," insisted May—"not until they come to die. You were not meaning that? Oh! you could not be so cruel, so barbarous," cried May, passionately, "when death is such a long way off, I trust. I know that God is good whether we live or die, and that we shall meet again in a better world. But we are not parted yet, and it is not wrong to pray that we may ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... was the reverse of cruel and imperious. My heart was touched with sympathy for the children of misfortune. But this sympathy was not a barren sentiment. My purse, scanty as it was, was ever open, and my hands ever active, to relieve distress. Many were ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... this he would have persuaded himself, but dares not till he hears her speak; and yet fears she should not speak his sense; and this fear makes him sighing break silence, and he cried in a soft tone: 'Ah! why, too lovely fair, why do you come to trouble the repose of my dying hours? Will you, cruel maid, pursue me to my grave? Shall I not have one lone hour to ask forgiveness of heaven for my sin of loving thee? The greatest that ever loaded my youth—and yet, alas!—the least repented yet. ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... His door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an old Russian aristocrat with a face that reminded one of Alexander III. "Well, Count?" Davidson would query when he saw him, and smile cheeringly; "anything fresh?" The Count had a rather characterless and cruel lower lip like a bit of rubber. He was capable of a great deal, but he was quiet and obedient in the presence of Davidson as if he had found a ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... later a third cable correcting this cruel error and saying the Embassy was renewing efforts to locate Cummings—apparently still ignorant even of the place ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Nancy at the head of the brave national guards, and there he fell pierced by five bayonet-wounds, and by the hand of those who, ... I demand, if I am condemned to behold here the assassins of my brother." "Well, then, leave the chamber," cried a stern voice. The tribunes applauded this speech, more cruel and poignant than the thrust of a dagger. Indignation enabled M. de Gouvion to overcome his contempt. "Who is the dastard who himself in order to insult the grief of a brother?" cried he, glancing around to discover the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in this place. Let it suffice that the world lost in a moment its joyousness, the sunshine its warmth. The greenness and beauty round me, which an instant before had filled me with pleasure, seemed on a sudden no more than a grim and cruel jest at my expense, and I an atom perishing unmarked and unnoticed. Yes, an atom, a mote; the bitterness of that feeling I well remember. Then, in no long time—being a soldier—I recovered my coolness, and, retaining ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... without you, or you without me? And what must my case be when at the same time I miss a daughter: How affectionate! how modest! how clever! The express image of my face, of my speech, of my very soul! Or again a son, the prettiest boy, the very joy of my heart? Cruel inhuman monster that I am, I dismissed him from my arms better schooled in the world than I could have wished: for the poor child began to understand what was going on. So, too, your own son, your ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... surly, churlish, disagreeable, ill-conditioned, morose, unamiable, crabbed, dogged, ill-humored, sour, unlovely, cruel, gruff, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... cruel treatment;' the general charge that is made to cover so many abominable sins, because we women shrink from exposing the crimes we have been in a measure partners to. My attorney assured me that, under the circumstances, Mr. Seabrook would not make ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... means—yet I shudder At dagger or ratsbane or rope; At drawing with lancet my blood, or At razor without any soap! Suppose I should fall in a duel, And thus leave the stage with ECLAT? But to die with a bullet is cruel— Besides 'twould be ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... questions. She has a pleasant, romantic sentiment for Mr. Wayne—you know how one feels to one's first lover. She is a sweet, kind, unformed little girl, not heroic. But think of your own spirited son. Do you want this persistent, cruel responsibility ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... conscience from a little of this burden. Only that I dare not speak of it, I would try to convince you that I am doing what my dear husband himself would have wished. You can't believe it; no one will ever believe it; even Alma, I am afraid—and that is so cruel, so dreadful; but he did not mean to wrong people in this way. It wasn't in his nature. Who knew him better than I, or so well? I know—if he could come back ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... when you were a little girl and you used to stay at Cousin Jane Selden's. And about the poor boy who lived on the next place—and the apple tree and the little stream where you played, and the mockingbird he gave you. And how his father was a cruel man, and you cried because he had to work so hard all day in the hot fields. You haven't told me that story for ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... rage against himself overwhelmed him as he thought of the hurt he had given her the previous evening. He should have managed differently. How, he did not know, but the sense of the outrage he had put upon her abruptly recoiled against him with cruel force. Now, he was sorry for it, infinitely sorry, passionately sorry. He had hurt her. He had brought the tears to her eyes. He had so flagrantly insulted her that she could no longer bear to breathe the same air with him. She had told her parents all. She ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... together on a spit of sand with their arms raised in supplication. It went to all our hearts, I think, to leave them in that wretched state, but we could not risk another mutiny, and to take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness. The doctor hailed them and told them of the stores we had left, and where they were to find them, but they continued to call us by name and appeal to us for God's sake to be merciful and not leave them to die in such ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for ere long I heard a voice mocking me with rough and cruel words. "Aha, Sir Wiseacre," said the voice, "I am breaking twigs off these tall trees, so that at midnight I may light a fire in which to roast you." Then, before I could answer, the black thing grinned at me and ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Rat has come to town," and the noise of the drums, are instances of this. It seemed like halting the action to bring in a country circus procession, but its necessity is shown in the final scene when the little boy, William, passes away. It is always cruel to see a child die on the stage. The purpose of the coming of the circus was to provide a pleasant memory for the child to recall as his mind wandered away from earth, and to have his death a happy one. This was made ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... negative thought of the day. It came to him then and there with cruel, biting plainness, that no one else in the house felt as he did toward his chief treasure. Allan didn't. He had spent hardly a moment with it. Clytie didn't; he had seen her pick it up when she ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... a clean breast of the whole matter, but the cruel lash cut my sentence short. I had on no coat, only my waist, and I am sure a boy never received such ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... mettlesome steeds, with bits so powerful as to throw their horses on their haunches when they meet with any obstacle. They ride animals that look too proud to touch the earth, on high-peaked saddles, with pistols in the holsters, short stirrups, and long, cruel- looking Spanish spurs. They wear scarlet caps or palmetto hats, and high jack-boots. Knives are stuck into their belts, and light rifles are slung behind them. These picturesque beings—the bullock-waggons ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was not in luck. He lay quietly down at the feet of his mistress and we soon knew that life had passed from his faithful body. The first stroke of grief, dealt her in such cruel and sudden form, overbore the poor girl's pride and reserve; she made no attempt to remember or heed surroundings, but kneeling and placing her arms about the neck of her dead servant, she spoke ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... said, vehemently. "To keep you suffering for sixteen years away from your only child, and with the knowledge that at any moment a word on his part might lead out your father to a cruel death—oh, mother mother, you may ask me to ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... southward and up the stream of the river. There was no song among the leaves for him, but his heart was still full of cruel passions. He did not dream that a boat containing the one whom he hated most had lain in the cane within twenty yards of him. He was thinking instead of Wareville and of the way in which he would spy out every weak place there. He and Early had become great friends, and ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in Bharata's race, Nandini, alarmed at the sight of Viswamitra's troops and terrified by Viswamitra himself, approached the Rishi still closer, and said, 'O illustrious one, why art thou so indifferent to my poor self afflicted with the stripes of the cruel troops of Viswamitra and crying so piteously as if I were masterless?' Hearing these words of the crying and persecuted Nandini, the great Rishi lost not his patience nor turned from his vow of forgiveness. He replied, 'The Kshatriya's might lies in physical strength, the Brahmana's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... all, one that transgresses all restraints, one that is deceitful, one that is destitute of wisdom, one that is envious, one that is wedded to sin, one whose conduct is bad, one whose soul has not been cleansed, one that is cruel, one that is a gambler, one that always seeks to injure friends, one that covets wealth belonging to others, that wicked-souled wight who never expresses satisfaction with what another may give him according to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... might, an' they—know—why!" (Laughter.) "They certain'y do— Law'! ain't Miss Ramsey got the sa-a-ame o-o-ole la-a-afe, on'y sweeteh'n eveh? Sweeteh an' mo' ketchin'! You certain'y have. No wondeh yo' call' the Belle o' the Bends. But, all the same, yo' cruel. Yo' fame' fo' yo' cruelty!" (Laughter.) "They say he's just telegrayphed yo' ma to come aboa'd at Natchez. That's just ow Southe'n hospitality. But won't that ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... cruel haste Copperhead bound his hands behind his back and as a further precaution threw ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... correspondents kindly inform me whether there is any foundation for the superstition, that if a slow-worm be divided into two or more parts, those parts will continue to live till sunset (life I suppose to mean that tremulous motion which the divided parts, for some time after the cruel operation, continue to have), and whether it exists in any other country or county besides Sussex, in which county I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... frankly that, in my heart of hearts, I am not grateful for these cruel kindnesses, and if he says that the other Serene Highnesses have been less ungrateful than I am, Ifear this is again one of his over-confident assertions. My publishers in America may be grateful to him, for I am told that, owing to Professor Whitney's ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... already in jail afflicting any one, orders would forthwith be given to have them more heavily chained. Every once in a while, a wretched prisoner, already suffering from bonds and handcuffs, would be subjected to additional manacles and chains. This was one of the most cruel features in these proceedings. It is ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... him to find employment in Paris, we are not told. One of the many stories to his prejudice which were current in his after-career describes Buchanan as dependent on Major and ungrateful to him, repaying with a cruel epigram the kindness shown him. But there seems absolutely no foundation for this accusation which was probably suggested to after-detractors anxious for evidence that ingratitude, as one of them says, "was the great and unpardonable blemish of his life"—by ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all the men penned in far-off places among strange ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... to take her place among the Duchessinas. His own personal feelings were in no degree mitigated. To be a Post Office clerk, living at Holloway, with a few hundreds a-year to spend,—and yet to be known all over the world as the claimant of a magnificently grand title! It seemed as though a cruel fate had determined to crush him with a terrible punishment because of his specially democratic views! That he of all the world should be selected to be a Duke in opposition to his own wishes! How often had he been heard to declare that all hereditary titles were, of their very nature, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... fear of it," observed Paddy, as he watched the shark dart forward towards the bait. Murray managed the line with the bait, Paddy kept the bowline to draw it tight when the shark should get his head well into it. Silently and cautiously the monster glided on, his cruel green eye on the bonetta, which Murray gradually withdrew till it was close up to the counter. Then suddenly the shark, afraid of losing his prey, made a dart at the fish till the bowline was just behind his two hind fins, when Paddy, giving a sudden jerk to it, brought ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... justice of English Parliaments. Irishmen lay under disabilities, political, social, and ecclesiastical, so severe and numerous that it really seems to have been a question what they were expected to do except to break some of these arbitrary laws, and so incur some cruel penalty. Down to our own century, and for the avowed purpose of injuring the only flourishing trade of the country (that of linen), the English cotton and woollen manufacturers procured the passing of acts better called destructive than protective; and in sober truth, if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... each did Pallas give a cruel marking-sign; For, Thymber, the Evandrian sword smote off that head of thine: And thy lopped right, Larides, seeks for that which was its lord, The half-dead fingers quiver still and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to the present hour." It is for lack of this ballast that the Jews have become victims of a fanaticism in which Christians from a mistaken idea of kindness have frequently encouraged them. In reality nothing is more cruel than to encourage in the minds of a nervous race the idea of persecution; true kindness to the Jews would consist in urging them to throw off memories of past martyrdom and to enter healthfully into the enjoyment ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the corners of her mouth more disgust, her eyes expressed more scorn, while her hands, busy preparing the tea, trembled as she said, with an accent so agitated that her friend regretted his cruel plan: ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... must belong to my keeper. No one can imagine my feelings in my reflecting moments, but he who has himself been a slave. Oh! I have often wept over my condition, while sauntering through the forest, to escape cruel punishment. ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... happening on the skin to light, And there corrupting to a wound, Spreads leprosy and baldness round.[5] So have I seen a batter'd beau, By age and claps grown cold as snow, Whose breath or touch, where'er he came, Blew out love's torch, or chill'd the flame: And should some nymph, who ne'er was cruel, Like Carleton cheap, or famed Du-Ruel, Receive the filth which he ejects, She soon would find the same effects Her tainted carcass to pursue, As from the Salamander's spue; A dismal shedding of her locks, And, if no leprosy, a pox. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... diversion was duck and drake, and whole volleys of stones were thrown into the water, to the great annoyance and danger of the poor terrified Frogs. At length, one of the most hardy, lifting up his head above the surface of the lake;—"Ah! dear children!" said he, "why will ye learn so soon to be cruel? Consider, I beseech you, that though this may be sport to you, ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... and throwing it open to us, not only without an equivalent, but in the face of our prohibitory duties, are the cause of all your poverty and stagnation. They are rich and able to act like fools if they like in their own affairs, but it was a cruel thing to sacrifice you, as they have done, and deprive you of the only natural carrying trade and markets you had. The more I think of it the less I blame you. It is a wicked mockery to lock men up, and then taunt them with want of enterprise, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations. Complaints of the severity of it were also daily brought to my Lord Mayor, of houses causelessly (and some maliciously) shut up. I cannot say; but upon inquiry many that complained ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... writing about the same district of Thusis, described 'the little bridges, under which one hears the Rhine flowing with a great roar, and sees what a horrible cruel wilderness the place is.' In Conrad Gessner's De admiratione Montium (1541)[6] a passage occurs which shews that even in Switzerland itself in the sixteenth century one voice was found to praise Alpine scenery in a very different way, anticipating ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... whales, dreadful animals that I've sometimes encountered in herds of 200 or 300! As for them, they're cruel, destructive beasts, and they ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... even the crumbs were gone she folded her hands and counted the flowers on the wall-paper, and discovered among them a grinning face which certainly had been no acquaintance of the designer's, but had started suddenly out of the pattern merely to make cruel fun of Hetty's uneasiness. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... pathetic to hear this poor old soul talk of her dead and lost ones, and try, in spite of all Mr. Johnson's theories and her own arrogant generalizations, to establish their whiteness, that we must have been very cruel and silly people to turn her sacred fables even into matter of question. I have no doubt that her Antoinette Anastasia and her Thomas Jefferson Wilberforce— it is impossible to give a full idea of the splendor and scope ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... drew his sword from the heart of the Lady Maud, he winced, for, merciless though he was, he had shrunk from this cruel task. Too far he had gone, however, to back down now, and, had he left the Lady Maud alive, the whole of the palace guard and all the city of London would have been on his heels in ten minutes; there would have been ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to hunt, to kill things," she mused. "Are they as cruel about it as he is? Would Wayne have watched the little things playing for ten minutes and then, when he tired of it, shot them in ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... engagement and have not as yet given sufficient proof of their abandoning their malignant principles and courses, but come not the length of comprehending these men of blood who followed James Graham and in the most barbarous and cruel way, shed the blood of their own brethren and God's people. Because the most part of these are not excommunicated nor forfaulted, nor notoriously flagitious and profane, nor such as have from the beginning been, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... which he is in no way to be blamed. He has just risked his life in the most reckless manner in order to overcome what he considers, and what he knows that some persons consider, is cowardice, and it would be as cruel, and I may say as contemptible, to despise him for a constitutional failing as it would be to despise a person for being born a humpback or a cripple. But I cannot stand talking any longer. I shall be of more use on the ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... insidious persecution which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... was down the stair again, just ahead of me. I followed her. I was tottering and dizzy and full of pain. I tried to catch up with her in the dark of the store-room, but she was too quick for me, sir, always a little too quick for me. Oh, she was cruel to me, sir. I kept bumping against things, hurting myself still worse, and it was cold and wet and a horrible noise all the while, sir; and then, sir, I found the door was open, and a sea had ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... cruel," said kind little Brigitte, who had blamed the nixy in the story. "See how pale Hermann looks, he will faint in another minute; he has never been strong since he was out in that ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... speak to my husband in that manner," I broke in. Aubrey shook his head at me. It was cruel of him, for I ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... telephone for a coach. When he returned, his exasperation knew no bounds, for his good wife had not stirred from her warm couch. This was too much. From that point Hosley received the worst denunciations; his ferocity made the wife murderers of criminal history and the cruel Roman emperors seem like mud-pie and croquet efforts in this line of infamy. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... make us feel as if they must have their will. I have heard grandmother call them wolves and vultures, that are ready to tear us poor folk to pieces; but I am sure he seems gentle. I'm sure it isn't wicked or cruel for him to want to make me his wife; and he couldn't know, of course, why it wasn't right he should; and it really is beautiful of him to love me so. Oh, if I were only a princess, and he loved me that way, how glad I should be to give up everything and go to him alone! And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... anniversary of that ill-fated night is kept a jubilee in the grim court of pandemonium, let all America join in one common prayer to Heaven, that the inhuman, unprovoked murders of the 5th of March, 1770, planned by Hillsborough and a knot of treacherous knaves in Boston, and executed by the cruel hand of Preston and his sanguinary coadjutors, may ever stand in history without a parallel. But what, my countrymen, withheld the ready arm of vengeance from executing instant justice on the vile assassins? Perhaps you feared promiscuous carnage might ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... know how pained and hurt I am, that uncle should think I could be so ungrateful as to forget, in the moment of adversity, his unvaried kindness for six long years. Oh! it is cruel in him to judge me so harshly," ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... differ from the occasion. He had once seen her at a silly sort of picnic where everybody was making a great deal of noise and playing rounders, and she had sat alone under a tree. And once, as he was walking along Princes Street on a cruel day when there was an easterly ha'ar blowing off the Firth, she had stepped towards him out of the drizzle, not seeing him but smiling sleepily. It was strange how he remembered all these things, for he had never liked ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... judgments of men. Excited men suspect everybody. Every person who ever attended a public meeting is suspected. A political party is to be put under the ban. There is nothing so rash as fear. There is nothing so indiscriminating as fear. There is nothing so cruel as fear, unless it be mortified pride—and ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... while to stay behind," she said, "and my sorrow will be less, to know that you have ever been a good son to me. Oh, Mr. Hare, he might have lived to comfort me, and close my old eyes in death, if they had not been so cruel with him, and locked him within prison walls. He, who never dreamed of wrong, and never injured willingly a ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... though the Brunots sent to swear Mrs. Loucks in, as she, like ourselves, has no protector. I would like to tell everybody; but it will warn the Federals. I almost wish we, too, had been left in ignorance; it is cruel to keep it to ourselves. I believe the Yankees expect something; "they say" they have armed fifteen hundred negroes. Foes and insurrection in town, assailing ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... she passed quite half her time up at the beech-tree, where you first saw her, looking if brother was not coming home. It is a cruel thing to a wife to have ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in Nature. Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact it never does. And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic—knowing that the least concession is the inch which precedes the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Indian and a single Englishman could thus overcome their distrust for each other, the feelings of the two races could not be so easily altered. The Indians looked upon the English as cruel robbers, whose object was to drive them from their homes and possess their lands. They thought of them as enemies too powerful to be withstood by open force and therefore to be met only with cunning and deception. Many of the English looked upon the savages as ignorant, filthy, ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... thought, or something very like it, when the fighting was over, for a most cruel thirst crisped my palate, and, as ill luck had it, there was not a cup of water ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... time of bondage. You know, some people are ashamed to tell it, but I thank God I was 'llowed to see them times as well as now. It's a pretty hard story, how cruel some of the marsters was, but I had the luck to be with good white people. But some I knew were put on the block and sold. I 'member when they'd come to John Goodren's place to buy, but he not sell any. They'd have certain days when they'd sell off the block ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... several seconds gazing on the picture, as though she doubted the evidence of her own eyes. It seemed impossible that such a cruel plot should have progressed thus far without being thwarted. But the next moment her chest heaved with indignation, as she reflected that the red man stretched out before her was the very one that had tried to enter her apartment, and being frustrated by her ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... has tempted many composers. Prince Radziwill tried it, and then Spohr set a version of the theme at once coarse and cruel, full of vulgar witchwork and love-making only fit for a chambermaid. Since then Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz have treated the story orchestrally with more or less success. Gounod's treatment of the poem is by ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... already in th' enchanted Tow'r; Go impious, false and cruel, go To her who has inflam'd your Heart, but know, That now Melissa (justly enrag'd) Will soon raise all th' Infernal Monsters up, All ugly Harpies shall approach, Cerberus and Furies, Fire and Flames appear. And e'er ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... the springtime of life, by contrast with whom the preserved immaturity of Mr. Teddy and his partner, Miss Daisy, is shown for an artificial substitute. Baldly stated, the thesis sounds cynical and a little cruel; actually, however, you will here find Mr. BENSON in a kindlier mood than he sometimes consents to indulge. He displays, indeed, more than a little fondness for his disillusioned hero; the fine spirit with which Mr. Teddy faces at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... stands afore you, and who lost his leg in action aboard the Thunderer, seventy-four, when we took a Frenchman and hauled down his colours afore he knew where he was. There aren't many either, I've a notion, who've been worse rewarded, or more kicked about by cruel fate, or you wouldn't find him playing the fiddle and singing songs for your amusement. Howsomdever, that's neither here nor there, and I daresay you wish to hear the end of his stave, and so you shall when each on you has helped to load this here craft with such coppers or sixpences ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... they were all provided well, In armour and amonition, Then thither wester did they come, Most cruel of intention. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Cruel, ungrateful man!" replied his friend; "can you speak to me thus? Know you not, have I not proved to you, that friendship holds the place of every passion in my heart? Can I survive the least of your misfortunes, far less your death. Still, let me influence you not ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... draught, to faithful love, Bruennhilde, I drink to you!" With which secret toast to the absent beloved he sets the horn to his lips and drains it—to the motif of Evil Enchantment, the motif of the Cup of Forgetfulness, closely resembling the Tarnhelm-motif, but sweeter,—cruel as a treacherous caress. This whole passage, surpassingly exquisite to the ear, is painful to the heart as hardly another in the opera, fertile as this is in tragic moments. It marks the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... many professed pacificists felt that for the abolition of slavery they must need take arms. In our own recent history men like Havelock, Gordon, and Roberts have regarded as sacred trusts the tasks of saving women and children from massacre, of suppressing fanatical and cruel tyranny, of preventing intolerable wrong. The Church with confident consistency has rightly sanctioned and sanctified their heroic enterprises. While condemning wars of ambition, conquest, or revenge, she has taught that those ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... occasion, as he did in 1744, omitted to disarm Saxony, to hobble it in every limb, and have it, at discretion, tied as with ropes to his interests and him. [Helden-Geschichte, iii. 945-956.] His management was never accounted cruel; and it was studiously the reverse of violent or irregular: but it had to be rigorous as the facts were;—nor was it the worst, or reckoned the worst, of Saxony's miseries ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... point to be noticed is the stern legal right of the creditor. It sounds harsh, cruel, almost brutal, that the man and his wife and his children should be sold into slavery, and all that he had should be taken from him, in order to go some little way towards the reduction of the enormous debt that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... one way or another of this arrogant young outsider and her high-handed pride. The condition of his mind was so far from normal that he failed to see that the things he said to himself, the plans he laid, were grotesque in their folly. The old cruel dominance of the man over the woman thing, which had seemed the mere natural working of the law among men of his race in centuries past, was awake in him, amid the limitations ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to bring it about. The noble- minded, the refined, those who have the courage of their feelings, believe themselves at the top of the tree; they are mistaken! In our actual order of things the Philistine, the vulgar, common, flabby, and at the same time cruel man of routine, reigns supreme. He, and no one else, is the prop of existing things, and against him we all fight in vain, however noble our courage may be; for unfortunately all things are in this slavery of leathern custom, and only ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... land-bird ever lighted on it. Fancy a red-robin or a canary there! What a falling into the hands of the Philistines, when the poor warbler should be surrounded by such locust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long bills cruel as daggers. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... am obliged to obey the wishes of my cruel parents," whined Hippy. "I am seriously contemplating wrapping a few little things in a handkerchief and leaving home forever. I remember once when I was very young and unsophisticated I decided upon this step. I was deeply incensed with Father because he had punished me for playing truant ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... children, they were exposed on Mount Cithaeron, but were found and brought up by a shepherd. Amphion became a great singer and musician, Zethus a hunter and herdsman (Apollodorus iii. 5). After punishing Lycus and Dirce for cruel treatment of Antiope (q.v.), they built and fortified Thebes, huge blocks of stone forming themselves into walls at the sound of Amphion's lyre (Horace, Odes, iii. 11). Amphion married Niobe, and killed himself after the loss of his wife and children ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of Normandy. He fell in an ambush at St. Aubin, and this man became count. For a time he was held prisoner by the duke, but afterwards he was freed, and received back his dominions as a vassal. His face is at once cruel and base. I told you the instructions Harold gave me, Beorn; the need for carrying them out has arrived, and I will try to make my escape without loss of time from this fortress to bear the tidings ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... its morals. This was a difficult task. The Puritans, during their supremacy, had imposed their own severity on others; and now the Court party was revenging itself by indulging in extreme licentiousness. Its amusements were cruel and vicious, and the Puritans did nothing to improve them, but denounced them altogether and held themselves aloof. It was Addison's task to refine the taste of his contemporaries and to widen their outlook, so that the Puritan and ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... through, day after day, in the hot sun. I am sure such arduous work is not good for you; and indeed I have more than once been tempted to refuse to help you, because I knew that, if I did, you would be compelled to desist. But when I saw how eager you were I thought it would be cruel; and I could not bring myself to be that, even though I felt that it would ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that poverty is in many ways eugenic in its effect, and that with the spread of birth control among people below the poverty line, it is certain to be still more eugenic than at present. It represents an effective, even though a cruel, method of keeping down the net birth-rate of people who for one reason or another are not economically efficient; and the element of cruelty, involved in high infant mortality, will be largely mitigated by birth control. Free competition may be tempered to the extent ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... never mind what I thought; besides, even now I can say nothing that would—— But oh, my dear, dear boy! When I was a lass on my father's farm everything seemed hopeful—everything! Of course, I had my troubles—my stepmother was cruel to me, and she did not understand the longings and fears of a lass such as I was; but still, I did not trouble. But ever since, Paul, ever since he came, it seems as though everything has added to the confusion, to the mystery, to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... memory the happy hours I had passed with M—— M——, my imagination began to kindle, and drawing close to her I began to talk of her seducer, telling her I was surprised that he had not helped her in the cruel position in which he had placed her. She replied that she was debarred from accepting any money by her vow of poverty and obedience, and that she had given up to the abbess what remained of the alms ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the table, upon which was tempting food. But morning came at last, and he was awakened from visions of delight to a more painful consciousness of his miserable condition by the sharp, chiding voice of his cruel mistress. Slowly, with stiffened limbs and a reluctant heart did he arise, and enter upon the repulsive and ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... high hopes, who had seen the victory so nearly won and so suddenly lost. Many of our wounded were lying where they had fallen. It was a terrible night to them. Their enemies, some of them, were hard-hearted and cruel. They fired into the hospitals upon helpless men. They refused them water to quench their burning thirst. They taunted them in their hour of triumph, and heaped upon them bitterest curses. They were wild with the delirium of success, and treated their prisoners with ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... lake burning with fire and brimstone, which burns at 500 deg. Fahrenheit; but the temperature of the original fire-mist was a thousand times hotter. Some of these scientists call such a fate as the Bible threatens against the wicked, cruel. But here is a hell manufactured by the evolutionists infinitely worse than that of the Bible; for the hell of the Bible is only for the wicked, but the evolutionists' hell is indiscriminately for all, saints and sinners, and all sorts of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the convicts had met their death, the hunters could not repress a shudder of horror. Around it lay the repulsive-looking crocodiles, placidly sleeping on the water, and amongst them floated a man's straw hat. It was all that remained of the cruel, merciless band. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... in a voice of anguish, "it can't be. Young and beautiful and good, to die—it's wrong. I forbid such a cruel, wanton sacrifice ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... estimate was a correct one. On the other hand, should he show disrespect toward women as a class, sneer at sacred things, evince an inclination for expensive pleasures in advance of his means, or for low amusements or companionship; be cruel to the horse he drives, or display an absence of all energy in his business pursuits, then is it time to gently, but firmly, repel all nearer ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... are similar every where, and present the same objects; good horses, cruel riders, knowing men, dupes, jockeys, gamblers, and a large assemblage of mixed company. But this is a gayer scene than most others; and every epithet, appropriate to a course, diminutive or otherwise, must be in the superlative ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... was distrusted, and an insurrection broke out in Sicily; with merciless severity he crushed the revolt, and by his savage bombardment of the cities won him the epithet "Bomba"; a reign of terror ensued, and in 1851 Europe was startled by the revelations of cruel injustice contained in Mr. Gladstone's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... look at the figures of the peasant in the far-off arid Campagna, the little government employee, the laborer, the little shop-keeper. When work is assured, when living is certain, though poor, then want, cruel want, is in the distance, and every good sentiment can germinate and develop in the human heart. The family then lives in a favorable environment, the parents agree, the children are affectionate. And when ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... Prussia, the Poles, after heroically struggling with the armies of Eussia, were finally subdued. Warsaw was captured; the Polish armies disbanded; the nobles degraded; and thousands of every rank, age, and sex subjected to the most cruel punishments, and the nationality of the country destroyed, so far as human ingenuity could accomplish so fell a destruction. Poland rose for a desperate struggle against the Russian giant, and astonished the world with its prowess; but it proved unequal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... settling on the great river and the palm fronds are gently stirring before the breeze that comes with nightfall on the Line. If you have nothing better to do, suppose you sit down beside me in a deck-chair and let me tell you something about these cruel and cunning monsters and the curious methods by which they are captured. Boy! Pass the cheroots and bring ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... breaking horses to the saddle here is interesting, though it is rough and cruel. The horses are kept all together in a large paddock; some of them already broken, and some that have never known saddle, bridle, or halter. Every morning they are driven up by the black boys. Selections are made of the animals required ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... was paling and blushing painfully. "Dear Olympia, I hate to say it; but you should know it. You will hear it elsewhere. Cruel things like this always come out. You know that feeling has been very bitter here since the dreadful attack on the Massachusetts soldiers in Baltimore? Radicals make no distinction between Democrats and rebels, and—I'm to say it—but Mr. Atterbury is charged with being a spy here—and—and ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... which strongly appeals to us for the reason that it sets aside the cruel theory of "negative reprobation," was defended by such earlier Scholastics as Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus, and by many eminent later writers, e.g. Toletus, Lessius, Frassen, Stapleton, Tournely, and is held to-day by ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... confinement and ill treatment received from the Rebels; the political and religious interrogations of Dick Monk; the situation of Lord Kingsborough; description of the Rebel Camp; General Roache's proclamation from Vinegar-hill; description of Messrs. Harvey, Keugh and Grogan; the unheard-of cruel manner of piking the Loyalists; the re-taking of Wexford by his Majesty's troops; the liberation of the prisoners, succeeded by a truly affecting scene—The general orders from Carrick-Byrne Camp;—Proposal of the Rebels to General Lake, and ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... it now," said he, absently "so long as I can't fight it out of my own mind. I tried not to know it. I tried not to believe it. I argued with myself, laughed at myself, invented a hundred explanations of this cruel thing that was gnawing at my heart and giving me no peace night or day. Why, man, Ogilvie, I have read 'Pendennis!' Would you think it possible that any one who has read 'Pendennis' could ever fall in ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... suffered greatly on sea and land, from hunger, cold, exhaustion, storms, hardships, exposure, and mortal perils. It often happened that he fell to the ground, while walking on the shore—sick, powerless to move, and among Indians most cruel in war, who had killed others of the Society; and yet he escaped, how, he knew not. Many a time did he eat no more than a handful of maize, planted and gathered by his own hands; for whatever else he might have must be given to poor soldiers. During a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... consequences of the day of Cannae, in which the flower of the soldiers and officers of the confederacy, a seventh of the whole number of Italians capable of bearing arms, perished. It was a cruel but righteous punishment for the grave political errors with which not merely some foolish or miserable individuals, but the Roman people themselves, were justly chargeable. A constitution adapted for a small country town was no longer suitable for a great power; it was simply ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honor, calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and, if we now shamefully fail, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... three would have burst into a roar on hearing this cruel prohibition. The placidity of the Lump was proof even against so severe a blow. He merely went on his way with a saddened air. Millicent ate the rest of the bun with eager thankfulness, brightening a little as the food ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... his three sons on the edge of their frontier clearing. Eighty-one years later the President himself met death by an assassin's bullet. The murderer of one was a savage of the forest; the murderer of the other that far more cruel thing, a ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... in the sympathy excited by excruciating bodily suffering. Suppose a man on the rack to be placed before us,—perhaps some miserable victim of the Inquisition; the cracking of his joints is made frightfully audible; his calamitous "Ah!" goes to our marrow; then the cruel precision of the mechanical familiar, as he lays bare to the sight his whole anatomy of horrors. And suppose, too, the executioner compelled to his task,—consequently an irresponsible agent, whom we cannot curse; and, finally, that these two objects compose ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... unknown cause of the captain's anger was as naught compared with the statement that he was about to leave the ship. That stabbed her with a nameless fear. "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;" she saw her idyl destroyed, her sweet dreaming roused into cruel reality. Her understanding heart told her that Courtenay meant to go without bidding her farewell. She had heard the lowering of the boat without heeding; he was already climbing down the ship's side. Soon he would be far from her, perhaps never ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... this business. It is cruel now to carry it on further. I confess myself to have felt as much repugnance as any one could feel, to renewing any thing beyond the barest possible intercourse with Ferrers; but let us consider, first, that it becomes us, while we are Dr. Wilkinson's ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... never knows!"—and a faint shudder came over him as he remembered Tom o' the Gleam, and the cruel, uncalled-for death of his child, the only human creature left to him in the world to care for. "One can never tell, whether in the scheme of creation there is such a being as a devil, who takes joy in running counter to the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... heard through the mother some things about Edwin's stupidity, as she called his extreme ignorance (for which she was herself to blame), and he had also heard of Edwin's willingness to suffer cruel punishments and unjust blame. "But," the mother had also said, "with all his block-headedness, he has never done anything to compare with what Elmer, his cousin, has done ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... rounded face was charmingly pretty; her features, so regular that no emotion seemed to alter their beauty, suggested the lines of a statue miraculously endowed with life: it was easy enough to mistake for the repose of a happy conscience the cold, cruel calm which served as ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... minute, while I walk a little." She then retreated, and paced up and down the garden walk. I still remained under the wall, so as not to be perceived from the house. In about three or four minutes she returned and said, "It would be very cruel—it would be more than cruel—it would be very wicked of you to deceive me, for I am very unfortunate and very unhappy." The tears started in her eyes. "You do not look as if you would. What is ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there is a letter from Dr. Birch to the Hon. Philip Yorke, giving an account of the debate in the House of Lords. The following is an extract:— "My Lord Chancellor expressed his surprise, that the bill should have been styled out of doors an absurd, a cruel, a scandalous, and a wicked one. With regard to his own share in this torrent of abuse, as he was obliged to those who had so honourably defended him, so,' said he, 'I despise the invective, and I despise the retractation; I despise the scurrility, and I reject the adulation.' Mr. Fox was ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... named Ccapac Yupanqui as his successor, his son by his wife Mama Tacucaray. This Ccapac Yupanqui, as soon as he succeeded to the Incaship, made his brothers swear allegiance to him, and that they desired that he should be Ccapac. They complied from fear, for he was proud and cruel. At first he lived very quietly in the Ynti-cancha. It is to be noted that although Ccapac Yupanqui succeeded his father, he was not the eldest son. Cunti Mayta, who was older, had an ugly face. His father had, therefore, disinherited him and named Ccapac Yupanqui as successor ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... in the other's eyes in the starlight, did not know which way to turn to control an overmastering impulse to laugh uninterruptedly for about five minutes, the cruel part of it being that the interrupter ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to his fund of humor is his capacity for pathos, especially manifest in his treatment of childhood. Dickens has a large gallery of children's portraits, fondly and sympathetically executed. David Copperfield, enduring Mr. Murdstone's cruel neglect, Florence Dombey pining for her father's love, the Marchioness starving upon cold potatoes, Tom and Louise Gradgrind, stuffed with facts and allowed no innocent amusement, and the waifs ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... childish tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered Magsie. "I know—I've known all along—how Richie feels to me. I suppose I could have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in time. But—but I've been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person— I love has been cruel to me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I worry and worry!" Magsie was frankly crying now. "I wish there was something I could do for Richie, but I can't tell him I ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Sophy.' But you unmarried ones are the happiest, after all. It's the married woman who drinks the cup to the last, bitter drop. There you sit, Sophy, fifty years old, and life hasn't even touched you. You don't know how cruel life ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... him realize; indeed, why should he? The smile must be ready. He had loved his mother deeply, and yet he had said he did not grieve to lay her to rest. Earth had not been kind. Then why should she sorrow for her mother? Again life had been not only unkind, but bitterly cruel. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... themselves in two lines, forming a lane that extended from the war-party to the lodges. The squaws seized clubs, axes, or whatever weapons of offense first offered itself to their hands, and rushed eagerly to act their part in the cruel game that was at hand. Even the children would not be excluded; but boys, little able to wield the instruments, tore the tomahawks from the belts of their fathers, and stole into the ranks, apt imitators of the savage traits exhibited by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... was a wonder of a bard. Despise them civilly with all my heart— 85 But to convince them is a desperate part, Why should you teize one for what secret cause One doats on Horace, or on Hudibras? 'Tis cruel, Sir, 'tis needless, to endeavour To teach a sot of Taste he knows no flavour, 90 To disunite I neither wish nor hope A stubborn blockhead from his fav'rite fop. Yes—fop I say, were Maro's self before 'em: For Maro's self grows dull as they pore ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... maker of the first bow and arrow was a more enterprising pioneer than our inventors of machine-guns. And greater than the builders of "Dreadnoughts" were those who "with hearts girt round with oak and triple brass" were the first to trust their frail barques to "the cruel sea." No doubt the hollowed tree trunk, and the coracle of osiers and skins, had long before this made their trial trips on river and lake. Then came the first ventures in the shallow sea-margins, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... whose fame fills the land, when they are at home or spouting about the country, sink into insignificance when they get to Washington. The sun is but a small potato in the midst of the countless systems of the sidereal heavens. In like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... out a man. "I am not surprised he doesn't want to go home. Geppetto, no doubt, will beat him unmercifully, he is so mean and cruel!" ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... we see what effect it has on us, but stand by to cut away if we see there is peril. Oh, I hope we shall be able to ride it out. That poor captain! He must have been stunned by a blow of the boom. It seems cruel to stand here without lifting a hand to save him. But what can we do? Jane, is there anything you can think of that ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... prisoners, especially of those who had made any attempts to escape, was shameful and often cruel. The food, in general, consisted of sour black bread, soup made largely from tree leaves, and some sort of drink made from acorns and called coffee. Needless to say, the prisoners were half starved. Indeed, two American girls who were ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... "That is mean, cruel, wicked, dastardly!" exclaimed Ruth, with flashing eyes. "It's inhuman. I shall hate the man who ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... within call of us will tell you that Gorman Purdy killed fifty men in his time," retorts a bystander. These words, so bitter yet so just, would be cruel indeed for the ears of Ethel Purdy; but she has lapsed into semi-consciousness. Harvey still holds her in his arms; he seems oblivious of the burden he has borne for more than a ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... indeed it were to be wished, that some other prohibitions were promoted, in order to improve the pleasures of the town; which, for want of such expedients begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... mother! I loved and respected her too much to question her on these matters. One day, however, impelled by an unworthy feeling of curiosity, I dared to ask her the name of our protector. She burst into tears, and then I felt how mean and cruel I had been. I never learned his name but I know that he was ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... in the work with very few blunders. The work was twofold in character. Fat cattle were to be cut out of the herd for shipment, unbranded calves were to be branded, and strays tallied and thrown back to their own feeding grounds. Into the crush of great, dusty, steaming bodies, among tossing, cruel, curving horns the men rode to "cut out" the beeves and to rope the calves. It was a furious scene, yet there was less excitement than Mose at first imagined. Occasionally, as a roper returned, he paused on the edge of the herd ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... authorities, so far as can be inferred from their actions, tried from the first to deal as gently with him as he would allow them to do. Is it conceivable that the Baptists would have left his family to starve; or that his own confinement would have been made so absurdly and needlessly cruel? Is it not far more likely that he found all the indulgences which money could buy and the rules of the prison would allow? Bunyan is not himself responsible for these wild legends. Their real character appears more clearly when we observe how he ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... "Stunned by the cruel revelation which he had received, unconscious of whither his steps were taking him, Gaspard de Vaux wandered on in the darkness from street to street until he found himself upon London Bridge. He leaned over the parapet and looked down upon the whirling stream below. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... ejaculated, drawing her chair nearer and leaning her elbows on the table. "What cruel shoes they did use to make for children. I remember I went up to Back Creek to see the circus wagons go by. They came down from Romney, you know. The circus men stopped at the creek to water the animals, an' the elephant got ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Mort a beggar's trull:—"pretending to be widows, sometimes travel the countries ... are light-fingered, subtle, hypocritical, cruel, and often dangerous to meet, especially when the ruffler is with them" (B. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... knight took away, the which King Pellinore at that time followed; then the king stablished all his knights, and them that were of lands not rich he gave them lands, and charged them never to do outrageousity nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour, upon pain of death. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... solitude as far less intolerable! To these especially the creakings of those said rough hinges of the world is one continued torture, for they are all too finely strung; and the oft-recurring grind jars the whole sentient frame, mars the beautiful lyre, and makes cruel discord in a soul of music. How much of sadness there is in such thoughts! Seems there not a Past in some lives, to which it is impossible ever to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... the social status, and constantly ambitious and brilliant youngsters from no estate married into the families of the planter princes. Meanwhile the one character utterly condemned and ostracized was the man who was mean to his slaves. Even the coward was pitied and might have been liked. For the cruel master there ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... closer than they ought.) Shall I have it out and be done with it? To see Mary at once (to carry bastion after bastion at the charge)—there were the true safety after all! Hurry—hurry's the road to silence now. Let them once get tattling in their parlours, and it's death to me. For I'm in a cruel corner now. I'm down, and I shall get my kicking soon and soon enough. I began it in the lust of life, in a hey-day of mystery and adventure. I felt it great to be a bolder, craftier rogue than the drowsy citizen that called ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the hard-hearted, and cruel murderer, took a large stone, and beat his brother's head with it, until his brains oozed out, and he wallowed in his blood, ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... enfeeblement, or death of vigorous men in the prime of life, the anguish of wives and sweethearts, the loneliness of widows, the lack of care for orphans-it is impossible for those who have not lived through a great war to realize the horror of it, the cruel pain suffered by those on the field, the torturing suspense of those left behind. It is, indeed, a sad commentary on man's wisdom that, with all the distress that inevitably inheres in human life, he should have voluntarily brought upon himself still ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the testimony goes the one way. What do we hear of him? That he was dwarfish; that he was hideously ugly; that he was all but deformed; that he was utterly unprincipled, vain, false, treacherous, and cruel; that he had not the slightest faith in the honor of men or the virtue of women; that he was silly enough to believe himself, with all his personal defects, actually irresistible to the most gifted and beautiful woman, and that he was mendacious enough to proclaim ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... no desire to put forward any claim for my client other than one founded on justice, but I cannot imagine a more cruel position than that in which Sir Charles Dilke would be placed in having a grave charge against him tried while the duty of defending his interest was committed to hands other than those ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the following day for the cruel execution of Moumouth, for he knew that Mother Michel on that day was to carry to the express office a package destined ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... caught at the table, and leaned on it to support herself. It was not from fear about her liberty or life; but because there was a cruel tone in the utterance of the last words, which told her that it was Lord Lovat who was threatening her; and she ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of masters, and still keep all he has given them. It may be a cleverer way of managing, but it is not so gentleman-like. The time of illusion is past, and we are tasting cruel experience. We are paying dearly to-day for our zeal and enthusiasm for the American war. The voice of honest men is stifled by members and cabals. Men disregard principles to bind themselves to words, and to multiply attacks on individuals. The seditious ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... started home on the omnibus, a plain, unsophisticated Christian came and said, 'O sir, let me have hold of your hand.' When he had seized it between both his, with tears streaming down his face, he said, 'Glory be to God that ever you came here. My wife before her conversion was a cruel persecutor, and a sharp thorn in my side. She would go home from the Prayer Meeting before me, and as full of the Devil as possible; she would oppose and revile me; but now, sir, she is just the contrary, and my house, instead of being a little ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... Ridgwell, "although Christine and I both love you, of course—lions must have been very cruel and savage once, otherwise they wouldn't have thought of eating ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... consuming wrath of ill-natured whites, but finally allowed an action to lie against the persons who killed a slave. This had a tendency to reduce the number of murdered slaves; but the fateful clause in the Locke Constitution had educated a voracious appetite for blood, and the extremest cruel treatment continued ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... your pledged word. Let me tell you simply that Emilia has become aware of your project to enter the Austrian service, and it has had the effect on her which I foresaw. She could bear to hear of your marriage, but this is too much for her, and it breaks my heart to see her. It is too cruel. She does not betray any emotion, but I can see that every principle she had gained is gone, and that her bosom holds the shadows of a real despair. I foresaw it, and sought to guard her against it. That you, whom she had once ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... happiness must be considered before his own. Consequently he should not press an unwelcome suit upon a young lady. If she has no affection for him, and does not conceive it possible even to entertain any, it is cruel to urge her to give her person without her love. The eager lover may believe, for the time being, that such possession would satisfy him, but the day will surely come when he will reproach his wife that she had ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... a stifled groan followed as a heavy section of lead pipe wrapped in a newspaper descended on the crass skull of Limpy. The wielder of the improvised but fatal weapon permitted himself the luxury of an instant's cruel smile—then vanished into the darkness leaving another complete job for the coroner and ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... forgotten. Seventeen years Brannan had remembered, and not a ship had been lost on a lee-shore because her longitude was wrong,—not a baby had wailed its last as it was ground between wrecked spar and cruel rock,—not a swollen corpse unknown had been flung up upon the sand and been buried with a nameless epitaph,— but Brannan had recollected the Brick Moon, and had, in the memory-chamber which rejected nothing, stored ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale |
