"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declared that women were always ready to drop any man for higher game; and he attributed his own ill-luck to the Senator's appearance. The fellow was in fact crazy about her beauty and ready to beat his brains out in chagrin. Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment, but she soothed him with blandishments that increased his ardor, and she smiled to herself to think that he had, with all his protestations of love, never spoken of marriage. Probably the vivacious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... crossed the river. How peaceful and happy she looked in her last sleep—the sweet, deep sleep that knows no awaking! An innocent smile seemed to linger on her face. Never more would Hatty mourn over her faults and shortcomings; never more would morbid fears torment and harass her weary mind; never more would she plead for forgiveness, nor falter underneath her life's burden, for, as Maguire says, "To those doubting ones earth was a night season of gloom and darkness, and in the borderland they saw the dawn of day; and when the summons ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... there arriued in Tercera two great shippes, which were the Admirall and Viceadmirall of the Fleete laden with siluer, who with stormie weather were separated from the Fleete, and had beene in great torment and distresse, and readie to sinke: for they were forced to vse all their Pumps: so that they wished a thousand times to haue met with the Englishmen to whom they would willingly haue giuen their siluer and all that euer ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... position, of intellectual quickness, of unusual sensitiveness of spirit; yet she has thought out this woeful question differently from the great majority of her sex. To her, thirsty for sympathy and love, bound to a man who gives her neither, grown feverish and delirious with the torment of an empty heart, it has seemed that the sanctity of a second marriage will somehow cover the violation of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... we are fighting in Korea are right and just. They are the foundations of collective security and of the future of free nations. Korea is not only a country undergoing the torment of aggression; it is also a symbol. It stands for right and justice in the world against oppression and slavery. The free world must always stand for these principles—and we will stand with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... work of God, to alter this creation. [For it is manifest, and many have confessed that no good, honest, chaste life, no Christian, sincere, upright conduct has resulted (from the attempt), but a horrible, fearful unrest and torment of conscience has been felt by many until the end.] Therefore, those who are not fit to lead a single life ought to contract matrimony. For no man's law, no vow, can annul the commandment and ordinance of God. For these reasons ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various
... of a lion with the face turned half round, and the third of a dog who looks straight before him; to signify that things of the past afflict by means of thoughts, but not so much as things of the present which actually torment, while the future ever promises something better; therefore behold the wolf that howls, the lion that roars and the dog ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... him, the constant scared uncertainty of what he might say, what she might feel, what they both might do, from one moment to the next . . . she could forget, in those fiery and potent draughts, everything, all this that was so hard and painful and that she could not understand and that was such a torment to try to understand. Everything would be swept ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... been the most ardent and most deep. A disposition, on his own side, to form strong attachments, and a yearning desire after affection in return, were the feeling and the want that formed the dream and torment of his existence. We have seen with what passionate enthusiasm he threw himself into his boyish friendships. The all-absorbing and unsuccessful love that followed was, if I may so say, the agony, without being the death, of this unsated desire, which lived on through his life, and filled his poetry ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... mounted to the assault, covering themselves as well as they could with their shields. In vain, however, did they mount. The defenders poured down showers of boiling pitch and oil, which penetrated the crevices of their armour, and caused intolerable torment. Great stones were toppled over from the battlements upon them; and sometimes the ladders, seized by the poles with hooks, were cast backwards, with all upon them, on the throng below. For half-an-hour, encouraged ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... fairies' protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a torment and have ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the ropes which were fastened round his waist. He tottered rather than walked, and was almost unrecognisable from the effects of his sufferings during the night;—he was colourless, haggard, his face swollen and even bleeding, and his merciless persecutors continued to torment him each moment more and more. They had gathered together a large body of the dregs of the people, in order to make his present disgraceful entrance into the city a parody on his triumphal entrance on Palm Sunday. They mocked, and with derisive gestures called ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... easily catched—I thank him—I want but to be sure, I should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should depart this ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a pleasant exercise-ground for a jealous man who does not dance. No "bolgia" of the hell invented by the sombre imagination of the great poet could have surpassed, in torment, the Circolo ball-room on that last Carnival night to ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... don't help worth a farthing. I cannot get rid of him now. Ever since he came to me last summer, on one accursed day, he has been my constant visitor, and he cannot be driven away, Understand this, father, and do not wonder any longer at my behaviour—and do not torment me." ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... from my palaces in utter pain, Seeing the world as dust and vanity, A desert of despair, a raging sea Of torment.... ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... "It was long enough for me, and I was out in the open and stirring. It must have been a slice of torment for you here alone all day, not even knowing if I'd ever get back or have any ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... When he charged her with it there's nothing so sweet and gentle on earth as that girl! What had she done? Nothing at all, but torment a poor fellow until his nerves and will were wrecked. How could she ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... long, deep ravine, and the smoke-streaked clouds of fire, trailing like a yellow mist over them, with a fierce white blast shooting up here and there when the lid of an oven was raised, as though to add fresh temperature to some particular male-factor in some particular chamber of torment. Humanity about was joyous, however. Laughter and banter and song came from the cabins that lined the big ravine and the little ravines opening into it. A banjo tinkled at the entrance of "Possum Trot," sacred to the darkies. ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... escape of their booty, but now, hymning with tranquil dignity the high and terrible office they had among mortals, they claim the head of Orestes, as forfeited to them, and devote it with mysterious charms to endless torment. At the intercession of the suppliant, Pallas, the warrior-virgin, appears in a chariot drawn by four horses. She inquires the cause of his invocation, and listens with calm dignity to the mutual complaints of Orestes and his adversaries, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... My friend, I am only grieved that you of all others should have been so deceived. I have seen you with Anna, and I have not known whether to be glad or sorry. I have been in torment all the while to know whether it was to Anna or to Annabel that you were making love so charmingly. Nigel, do you know that ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... experience is not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely come when desire will no longer be our torment and no man shall be wretched but by his ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... will entrap a young Christian when there is illness in the home, and under pressure he will fly to magic incantations and heathen practices, in order to get deliverance from the malignant spirit which he still believes has power to torment him. Many a convert has fallen on the occasion of a funeral. It takes more faith than a Westerner can realise, to defy the legions of gwei which at that time threaten your home and its inhabitants with numberless ills; and strength of mind is required ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... wife is in torment, it is as well for him to nod his head and let her believe that she does not ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors—first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed a love-match, and whom she abuses—and then to her second husband, Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 to the court of England, upon whom she attempted to palm off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... certain, that earnest desire has been the cause of the greatest events; and this ought to instruct us that the world stands in need of a great many instincts, which, examined according to the ideas of our reason, are ridiculous and absurd. For there is nothing so opposite to reason as to torment ourselves in this life, that we may be praised after we are dead, since neither philosophy, nor experience, nor faith, nor any thing whatsover, makes it appear, that the praises given us after death can do us any good. It would ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... idiotic terror, and he would have caught a staring and meaningless look in the glassy eyes which were naturally so bright and blue. But he really did not know—being merely an overgrown stupid fellow—the mischief he was doing, and the absolute horrible torment that ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... furious, and hitting Charlie Black he felt would relieve his feeling almost as much as a fight with Tim Roon. The two bad boys never lost an opportunity to torment him or Meg, and Bobby felt that here was a heaven-sent opportunity to even up ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... illuminating passage on the importance of the effectiveness of reasoning things out: "I have a student's lamp, of which the flame vibrates most unpleasantly unless the collar which bears the chimney be raised about a sixteenth of an inch. I learned the remedy after much torment by accident, and now always keep the collar up with a small wedge. But my procedure is a mere association of two totals, diseased object and remedy. One learned in pneumatics could have named the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... withered, it shook beneath the gem; He took the vivid ruby, the ransom of a land, And tied it firmly, tightly, within his garment's hem; And then he shuffled forward, but like a thorn within His soul he bore the torment of bitterness ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its somber and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of one's soul—than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Sidonia herself never appeared in the nuns' choir. She gave Dorothea many excellent and convincing reasons for her absence. (But in my opinion, it was caused by hate and abhorrence of the sacrament and the holy Word of God; for such are a torment and a torture to the children of the devil, even as the works of the devil are an abomination to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... said he; "fiend! devil! you were born to torment me. There is no hotter hell than thine! Do thy work. I must bear all,"—and Jaspar felt that he was sold to the ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... repressed a shiver when the lean, hard fingers closed suddenly upon his own. A tremor ran through them, and then the pressure increased, until Seaforth was glad that it grew painful. He dare not glance at his comrade, he would not look at Tom, and sat very still in torment for a space, while he felt that Alton's arms had grown rigid by the cruel ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... recesses of her suspicious and silent nature. She would never consent to explain things; she herself knew not what was the matter with her; but she felt ill whenever the doctor drew too near to her mother; and would press her hands violently to her bosom. Her torment seemed to sear her very heart, and furious passion choked her and made her cheeks turn pale. Nor could she place any restraint on herself; she imagined every one unjust, grew stiff and haughty, and deigned no reply when she ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... know no greater torment, among those minor ones which are the worst, than the intelligent conversation—full of suggestion and fine analysis, perhaps, and descriptions of other places—which reveals to us that the kindly speaker is indeed occupying the same ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... sake. I have no love for learned discourses. I like to take life easy, and it is too much trouble to be intellectual. Such ambition does not trouble my head, and I am perfectly satisfied, mother, with being stupid. I prefer to have only a common way of talking, and not to torment myself to ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... front. The upward reaching fingers of coppice and brush had their occupants, fragments of commands under cover, bands of sharpshooters. And everywhere over the open, raked by the guns, were dead and dying men. They lay thickly. Now and again the noise of the torment of the wounded made itself heard—a most doleful and ghostly sound coming up like a wail from the Inferno. There were, too, many dead or dying horses. Others, still unhurt, galloped from end to end of the field of death. In the wheat-field there were several ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the torment of their lives, for some of the devils said to haunt Vailima seemed to have entered into them, and no sty could be made strong enough ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Solar Walk or Milky Way; Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill an humbler heav'n; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the wat'ry waste; Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To BE, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire: But thinks admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... destroyest not only thyself but thy father. The king will shed not only thy blood but mine." His wife tried to console him, saying: "Do not torment thyself. With the sale of my jewels I will obtain 10,000 gold pieces, and with this sum you will buy ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... growing people will need such a man as you to lead them, and you will lead them more grandly than others who have had an easier school. You have learned the first principles of true education—it is, the habit that can not do wrong without feeling the flames of torment within. Every sacrifice that you have made to your conscience has given you power. That power is a godlike thing. You will see all one day, as I ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... man. The Sun was so to move as to affect the earth alternately with a cold and heat almost unbearable; to the Moon were assigned her motions; the other planets were to join in various ways, often "unbenign." The winds were assigned their stations to torment the earth and sea, and the thunder was set to strike terror to the heart of man. The poles of the earth were pushed aslant, and soon the effects of the changes were felt in ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... you real talent,—real feeling for art? Then study music;—do something worthy of the art,—and dedicate your whole soul to the beloved saint. If without this you have a fancy for quavers and demi-semi-quavers, practise for yourself and by yourself, and torment not therewith the Capellmeister ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Edmonstone. 'You have begged every one's pardon, and it had better be forgotten as fast as possible. They have made more fuss already than it is worth. Don't torment yourself about it any more; for, if you have made a mistake, it is on the right side; and on the first opportunity, I'll go and call on Mrs. Deane, and see if she ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... own chamber, and held long and anxious self-communion. The course of her thoughts may be gathered from the terrible revelations made by Mother Demdike to Alizon. A prey to the most agonising emotions, it may be questioned if she could have endured greater torment if her heart had been consumed by living fire, as in the punishment assigned to the damned in the fabled halls of Eblis. For the first time remorse assailed her, and she felt compunction for the evil she had committed. The ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... torment; but, truth to tell, they did not often attack him, for Soeren had sunk into apathy. That was the Sheriff's view of his case. "My clerk was quite a clever fellow in his time," he used to say. "But, you know, his hasty marriage, his large family, and all ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... evening already alluded to by Hellyer the coastguardsman, for running the risk; while, as for Rover, he fairly revelled in the water, paddling round and round Bob and Dick, thereby executing a series of concentric circles never dreamt of by the Egyptian mathematician whose problems have been the torment of the boys ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... another, and several joined in with their remarks.—'Nae muckle o' a deevil was there to gang oot! He was aye an unco hairmless cratur!'—'And that saft-hertit til a' leevin thing!'—'He was that! I saw him ance face a score o' laddies to proteck a poddick they war puttin to torment, whan, the Lord kens, he had need o' a' his wits to tak care o' himsel!'—'Aye, jist like him!'—'Weel, the Lord taks care o' him, for he's ane o' ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... it till you have another, in order that you may have something to tell you how well I love you." As she sent it from her she did not know how much of solace there was even in the writing of a letter to him she loved, nor had she as yet felt how great was the torment of remaining without palpable ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... good swords have won. Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leech-craft may not cure, Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the poor. Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers bore; Still let your dens of torment be noisome as of yore; No fire when Tiber freezes; no air in dog-star heat; And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for free-born feet. Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate; Patient as sheep we yield us ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... please all who look at them; and that when they triumph in their beauty, they experience a joy to which their lovers very little contribute. He argues further, that if one is not beloved, it is a yet greater torment to see one's mistress at an assembly; that the more she is admired by the public, the more unhappy one is not to be beloved, and that the lover is in continual fear lest her beauty should raise a more successful passion ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... Castlemaine's, and supped, every day Lady Castlemaine do speak of going to lie in at Hampton Court Let me blood, about sixteen ounces, I being exceedingly full Lust and wicked lives of the nuns heretofore in England Only wind do now and then torment me . . . extremely See her look dejectedly and slighted by people already She also washed my feet in a bath of herbs, and so to bed Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember Slight answer, at which ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Meanwhile the torment of the two desert robbers had ended. And Dismas was at last set free from Barabbas, to whom a demoniacal fate had chained him his whole life long. Jesus had come between them, and had divided the penitent man from the impenitent. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... that she has something on her mind," continued Sir Alexander. "Upon my delicately hinting this opinion to Lady Hartledon, she denied it with a vehemence which caused me to suspect that I was correct. Does your lordship know of anything likely to—to torment her?" ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... disobedience of God's Word or a willful failure to live by its requirements. It is a serious thing to disobey God's law because it involves the destiny or end of our soul. It means living in either eternal torment or eternal bliss. To commit sin is a terrible thing and a very serious thing. That is the reason we need to search the Scriptures to find out how to live pleasing to the Lord in this world. We can't do this ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles
... the occasional observations of Jenny Dennison. This true-bred serving-damsel was, in her own person, a complete country coquette, and when she had no opportunity of teasing her own lovers, used to take some occasional opportunity to torment her young lady's. This arose from no ill-will to Henry Morton, who, both on her mistress's account and his own handsome form and countenance, stood high in her esteem. But then Lord Evandale was also handsome; he was ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... desperate measures, which I would willingly avoid; but if nothing else will keep them quiet, the grave must. Ay, the grave," he repeated in a hollow voice; "it is not my fault if I am compelled to send them thither. Fools to torment me thus!" ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... as I in torment lay 'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, An angel touch my arm, and say: 35 Go hence, and cool ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... recognition—of the law of universal unity and coherence. The separation which exists between individuals, between worlds, between the different poles of the universe and of life, the mental and physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare of the human imagination. That nightmares exist, and exist only to torment, every child knows; and what we need is the power of discrimination between the phantasmagoria of the brain, which concern ourselves only, and the phantasmagoria of daily life, in which others also are concerned. This ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... such sights to realise the enormity of human agony, grasp the torment that a stupid bit of flying steel can inflict upon a splendid human frame—so well, so happy, so full of hope but a second since. Oh, the pity of ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... with this letter on her lap. Perhaps it was true what the priest said. And all her religious doubts began to torment her conscience. And in her cowardly hesitation, which drives to church the doubting, the sorrowful, she went furtively one evening at twilight to the parsonage, and kneeling at the feet of the thin abbe, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... that they had been alternately shivering and burning, their wounds having received no attention, they had seen no one, not a living soul. They were tortured by a consuming thirst, and the beating of the rain against the window-panes added to their torment, but they could not move hand or foot. Hence, when they heard Silvine approaching, the first word that escaped their lips was: "Drink! Give us to drink!" that longing, pathetic cry, with which the wounded always pursue the by-passer whenever the sound of footsteps arouses them from their ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the darling and torment of father and mother. She intrigued with each secretly; and bestowed her fondness and withdrew it, plied them with tears, smiles, kisses, cajolements;—when the mother was angry, as happened often, flew to the father, and sheltering ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did not forget what he had seen; the memory of it was a constant torment and a misery to him. And now the chance had come, and he hit "that ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... for revenge. But as the fulfilment of every wish proves to be more or less a delusion, so is also the wish for revenge. The expected enjoyment is mostly embittered by pity; nay, gratified revenge will often lacerate the heart and torment the mind, for the motive which prompts the feeling of it is no longer active, and what is left is the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... new heir, a bridegroom, or some godfather left the church, saying, "Here, this is for all of you; don't torment any of my party," Toupillier, appointed by the beadle to receive these alms, pocketed three-fourths, and distributed only the remaining quarter among his henchmen, whose tribute amounted to a sou a day. Money and wine were his ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... stair-carpet, with one or two pieces of sheet music; but true gratitude does not despise even the humblest means of expression. The succeeding day he came as before; but after being relieved of his torment, he found nothing prepared for him. But when he took to thoughtfully licking one of the little girl's hands, "that answered not with a caress," the mother thought better of it, and drove in a ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... my linen, I will only say that the washerwomen have struck work, as they have no fuel. I believe my shirt was once white, but I am not sure. I invested a few weeks ago in a pair of cheap boots. They are my torment. They have split in various places, and I wear a pair of gaiters—purple, like those of a respectable ecclesiastic, to cover the rents. I bought them on the Boulevard, and at the same stall I bought a bright blue handkerchief which ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... morning he had resolved that, let the torment of the day be what it might, he would bear it,—unless by chance he might be turned out of the house. But no tragedy such as that came to relieve him. Aunt Polly gave him his tea at breakfast with a sternly forbidding look,—and Julia was ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... image, often a complication of images. He is never afraid of the colloquial, never afraid of slang even, and he often weaves lovely patterns with obsolete or technical words. These lines, in which Saltus paid tribute to Gautier, he might, with equal justice, have applied to himself: "No one could torment a fancy more delicately than he; he had the gift of adjective; he scented a new one afar like a truffle; and from the Morgue of the dictionary he dragged forgotten beauties. He dowered the language of his day with every tint of dawn and every ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... soul, and reading all the guilt and crime that's written there. O, Louise! was it not enough to drive me, by your unrelenting scorn and bitterness, to commit the act which has brought me here, without seeking to torment your victim by penetrating his dungeon to mock at the misfortune ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... hurried mouthfuls and we were on the tramp again. Our sleepless night, and the strong emotions that had kept us awake, made us feel tired and listless, but the bare idea of being exposed to the same torment and fear another time, gave us courage and strength to press on as far as possible in search of some nocturnal refuge, more secure from the four-footed inhabitants of the land, before sunset should have enticed them ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... are there even in Protestant churches who can give a reason for their belief? If the heathen worship degrades mankind because it is a superstition, with fear for its motive, how large a part of Christian preaching consists also of an appeal to terror! Is not the fear of everlasting torment in hell the motive power of much which is called Christianity? Consider Catholics eating their God: is that the worship of the Father in spirit and truth? Think of the religious wars, of the religious persecutions: ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, Rob Roy ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... reply will give satisfaction or displeasure remains yet to be ascertained. Thackeray's feelings are not such as can be gauged by ordinary calculation: variable weather is what I should ever expect from that quarter, yet in correspondence as in verbal intercourse, this would torment me.—Yours faithfully, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... must be an unpardonable sin, and I have committed it. Some say that all wrong-doers may get right— I wonder if there is a chance for me, a single chance? No, no, I am sure there is none—none whatever. But, oh, if only I could see my boy alive again! I would be willing to suffer any torment for that, but better still—if only he might be immortal—if only he could live forever in happiness on some other plane, as good people believe, I'd ask nothing for my part—absolutely nothing! I brought him into the world. I am responsible ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... I doomed by the trick of some police spy to pass what bade fair to be the remainder of a life that had been so bright and full of fair promise in hopeless exile, torment, and degradation—and all because I protested against injustice and made myself ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... the pleasant sailing with wind and tide, and the many agreeable objects with which I was constantly entertained during the whole way, were all suppressed and overcome by the single consideration of my wife's pain, which continued incessantly to torment her." The second despatch of a messenger, in great haste to bring the best reputed operator in Gravesend recalls Murphy's words: "Of sickness and poverty he was singularly patient and under pressure of those evils he could quietly read Cicero de Consolatione; but if either of them ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... withstood, And, conquered, mourned their hardihood. Thou hast encountered, face to face, King Yama(912) with his murdering mace. Fierce as the wild tempestuous sea, What terror had his wrath for thee, Though death in every threatening form, And woe and torment, urged the storm? Thine arm a glorious victory won O'er the dread king who pities none; And the three worlds, from terror freed, In joyful wonder praised thy deed. The tribe of Warriors, strong and dread As Indra's self, o'er earth had spread; As giant trees that towering stand In mountain glens, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences if women are permitted to intrude farther into the domain of man. The closing lines express so well the conflicting emotions which torment the minds of the opponents of the woman suffrage movement, that I venture to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of pouring boiling pitch and oil on their heads. At length, Nicote was taken and carried to the king of Ova, who ordered him to be impaled on an eminence in view of the fort, where he lived two days in torment. His wife, Donna Luisa de Saldanna, was kept three days in the river to be purified, as the king designed her for himself; but when brought before him, she upbraided him for his cruelty, and he ordered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the way of man with woman since the world began, and Sypher knew it by his man's instinct. It was a temptation such as he had never dreamed was in the world. He passed through a flaming, blazing torment of battle. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... up, not that he wished to save the "biped" any anguish, but the wise man vomits comfortably when he can, the necessity being bad enough without additional torment. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... last glimpse,—the two girls being in tears,—in that dreary half-hour after all was arranged, and the flocking-in of the neighbors was waited for, Benjamin, as calm as the dead face below him, was asking himself if the poor gentleman, his father, had not gone away to a place of torment. He feared it; nay, was he not bound to believe it by the whole force of his education? and his heart, in that hour, made only a feeble revolt against the belief. In the very presence of the grim messenger of the Eternal, who had come to seal the books and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... She thought it was a Will-o'- the-wisp. What could he be after? Was he looking for her? She dared not run, lest he should see and pounce upon her. The light came nearer, and grew brighter and larger. Plainly, the little fiend was looking for her—he would torment her. After many twistings and turnings among the pools, it came straight towards her, and she would have shrieked, but ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... habitudes. The blood of wholesome kindred is infected. Their tables and beds are surrounded with snares. All the means given by Providence to make life safe and comfortable are perverted into instruments of terror and torment. This species of universal subserviency, that makes the very servant who waits behind your chair the arbiter of your life and fortune, has such a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, and to deprive them of that assured and liberal ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... might at last die a death more cruel than that of the meanest beggar in the kingdom? And it was not enough that I should be condemned to so horrible a fate; not enough that before my own end I should behold my father and mother perish in intolerable torment, when I would have willingly given my own life twenty times over to save them; all this was not enough, but before my own death I must hear words of love such as I had never before dreamed of. It was necessary that he should break my heart with his words; that my bitter lot should be rendered ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... long afternoon the thing continued to worry him; added to the torment he was suffering from the burning letter in his vest-pocket, it was well-nigh unendurable. He had to work vehemently to make the time pass. Toward six o'clock, he began to realise that he had been shaping the time toward ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Prometheus Filched fire from the altars of the gods To warm the world, Incurring Jove's dread wrath And endless torment. ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... and crushing materialism, when He determined upon sending among men, Anselm, the saint; Angelo, the tone artist; Zophiel, the poet; and Jemschid, the painter. The spirits murmured not, although they knew they were to relinquish their heaven life for that torment of perpetual struggle which the forbidden knowledge of Good and Evil has entailed upon all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... letters to seal, saying, "It is not worth keeping." She afterwards much regretted the loss of this enigmatical memorial. After having burnt the paper, her Majesty said to me, "That man is born to be my torment; he has always some mad scheme in his head; remember, the first time you see him, to tell him that I do not like diamonds now, and that I will buy no more so long as I live; that if I had any money to spare I would rather add to my ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... are a means of setting a mark on a family, and placing it at issue with a considerable portion of the neighbourhood! What a pernicious engine for the gratification of pride, scandal, envy, and malice! What an inquisition of the few bad by which to torment the many good! What a dagger in the hands of tolerated assassins! In short, what a perversion of reason, what a disease in the very bosom of society, what a lurking demon stationed at the threshold of every happy family, to blast and ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... without acquainting you with the fact, although I ought not so to do. The pity of it all is that, while you are depriving yourself of everything, I keep solacing myself with various amenities— which is why I am telling you this, that the pangs of conscience may not torment me. Frankly, I confess that I am in desperate straits—in such straits as I have never yet known. My landlady flouts me, and I enjoy the respect of noone; my arrears and debts are terrible; and in the office, though ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Puritan ministers, whose hair was cut short. For if a man with long hair had gone into the pulpit to preach, I would have gone out of the Church again, though he might preach better than the other." All through this time visions of hell and torment, and devils and damnation troubled him; now and then there were "elevations in my mind, but these were few and far between; a while after all was lost again." He soon consoled himself for his matrimonial disappointment; he married and had three daughters, then ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... by her dark auburn hair, An oil-jug he plung'd her within. Seven days, seven nights, with the shrieks of despair Did Ellen in torment convulse the dim air, All cover'd with ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... queen-mother, and a handsome Italian, with whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a graceful mover, brave in mien, and was all that a lover should be to bestow a heart full of love upon an honest married woman too tightly squeezed by the bonds of matrimony, which torment her, and always excite her to unharness herself from the conjugal yoke. And you can imagine that the young gentleman grew to admire Madame, whose silent love spoke secretly to him, without either the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the children came home yesterday, they said something about your having told them some story of old times here; of a ghost, or some such thing. I never heard of anything of the sort. Do you—do you remember what it was? I ought not to torment you!" she added, remorsefully; for Mrs. Peyton put her hand to her head, and her brow contracted slightly, as ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... concerned, although keenly conscious of his misfortune and of his dependence upon his daughter. Thereupon, all the evil that lay dormant in the depths of his nature was aroused and let loose. His selfishness amounted to ferocity. Under the torment of his suffering and his weakness, he became a sort of malevolent madman. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil devoted her days and her nights to the invalid, who seemed to hate her for her attentions, to be humiliated by her care as if it implied generosity and forgiveness, to suffer ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... nearly everything save that we were very merry. Almost the only thing that remains with me as a permanent impression was the fact that Theobald one day beat his nurse and teased her, and when she said she should go away cried out, "You shan't go away—I'll keep you on purpose to torment you." ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... indicated their fate were singularly multiplied. "To destroy, to kill, to cause to perish." And while the murder of a nation was thus made a legal execution, the mode was left to the option of the executioners; and every torment that malignity could devise might be inflicted, while all were stimulated by the promise of the plunder of their victims—"and to take the spoil of ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... or Chet, as it was usually styled, was accustomed to be strangled the greater part of the morning by the baby. Most of the afternoon it was worried by Zackey, and, during the intervals of torment, it experienced an unusually large measure of the vicissitudes incident to kitten life—such as being kicked out of the way by Maggot senior, or thrown or terrified out of the way by Mrs Maggot, or dashed at by stray dogs, or yelled at by passing boys. The only sunshine ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... being sent by the Great Spirit from the far-off happy land to which my fathers have gone, to smooth my path of pain, and lead me to those blessed fields of sunbeams and flowers where the cruelty of the enemies of my people will no more have power to torment me?" ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... to be out in the world and doing, for our ill-fated First Revolt, that had miscarried in the Chicago Commune, was ripening fast. Yet he possessed his soul with patience, and during this time of his torment, when Hadly, who had been brought for the purpose from Illinois, made him over into another man* he revolved great plans in his head for the organization of the learned proletariat, and for the maintenance of at least ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... fellowship in this. They are commonly, next their creditors, most bitter against the lawyers, as men that have had a great stroke in assisting them hither. Mirth here is stupidity or hard-heartedness, yet they feign it sometimes to slip melancholy, and keep off themselves from themselves, and the torment of thinking what they have been. Men huddle up their life here as a thing of no use, and wear it out like an old suit, the faster the better; and he that deceives the time best, best spends it. It is the place where new comers are most welcomed, and, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... and accordingly she was condemned to suffer the most cruel death that could be invented, and her sentence was, to be nailed to a cross, and kept alive as long as possible. The sentence was put in execution; when she fainted with the cruel torment, the hangman gave her strong liquors, &c. to revive her; the sixth day she died. Her long sufferings, youth, and good constitution, made her flesh so tender, delicious, and valuable, that the executioner sold it for above eight tallies; for there was such thronging ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... unchastity, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. Each of these mortal sins is again analyzed extensively. The Weimar edition of Luther's Works remarks: "If these catalogs were employed for self-examination, confusion, endless torment, or complete externalization of the consciousness of sin was bound to result. We can therefore understand why the Reformer inveighs against this 'enumerating of sins.'" ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... more. He now reigns on Little Bulwan, sometimes called Gun Hill, below Lombard's Kop. His range is nearer, he can even reach the Manchesters' sangars with effect, and he is far the most formidable of the guns that torment us. ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... changed. He seemed to have died and passed into hell, and the flames, as they rose in imagination about him, were penetrating every fiber of his being, and he cried out in his distress. But as though the vision had been only to teach him of the reality of that place of torment, Edwin felt himself caught up, as it were, and he was seemingly suspended in an endless space with the eternal realities of life opened up for him to view. For miles and miles nothing but space appeared to stretch before, above, and around him, with the glaring flames that he had just ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... of England and Irelande;" and, for fear they should forget his design of solely pleasing them, he addresses them directly in the course of his narrative: "Now, gentilwomen, doe you thinke there could have been a greater torment devised, wherewith to afflicte the harte of Silla?" Shakespeare, an assiduous reader of collections of this kind, and who, unfortunately for their authors, has not transmitted his taste to posterity, was acquainted with Riche's tales, and drew from this ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the Devil does in great wrath, make a descent upon them. The Devil is a Do-Evil, and wholly set upon mischief. When our Lord once was going to Muzzel him, that he might not mischief others, he cry'd out, Art thou come to torment me? He is, it seems, himself Tormented, if he be but Restrained from the tormenting of Men. If upon the sounding of the Three last Apocalyptical Angels, it was an outcry made in Heaven, Wo, wo, wo, to the inhabitants of the Earth ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... intreating her to take notice of that melancholy condition in which he then lay, miserable through the wants under which he suffered, and still more miserable from the apprehensions of a shameful death, and the fear of being plunged also into everlasting torment. Having finished this letter, he began to withdraw his thoughts as much as possible from this world, and to fix them wholly where they ought to have been placed throughout his life; praying to God for His assistance, and endeavouring to render himself ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... mayst thou be doubly shamed," replied the doctor sternly, "to torment her into frenzy with thy jealous fancies, and she already at death's door. Thou sawest naught, whatever thou mayst have dreamed; and mark me now, Desire Minter, I forbid thee to speak one word more, good or bad, to Priscilla Molines while thou stayest here; and if thou heedest not, I'll put thee ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... France has never recovered from this blow. Maximilian openly expressed his execration of this deed, though the pope ordered Te Deums to be chanted at Rome in exultation over the crime. Not long after this horrible slaughter, Charles IX. died in mental torment. Henry of Valois, brother of the deceased king, succeeded to the throne. He was at that time King of Poland. Returning to France, through Vienna, he had an interview with Maximilian, who addressed him in those memorable ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott |
