"Tortured" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this war that they exercised the cruelties which, about fourscore years afterward, were revenged by the son of Clovis. They massacred their hostages, as well as their captives: two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses or their bones were crushed under the weight of rolling wagons, and their unburied limbs were abandoned on the public roads ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... piano would stop me, if I wanted to sing. I don't need an accompaniment," Pixie declared, and Stephen shuddered in spirit. Unaccompanied songs were terrible ordeals to the listeners. Eyes as well as ears were tortured. One never knew where to look! He pondered as he drank his tea how the situation could be ameliorated, if not escaped, and reminded himself thankfully that if necessary he could hire a piano and send it in. Then, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... the glowering misery that possessed him by day and the despair to which he would give rein by night, it was always with dauntless ferocity that the tortured Wolfhound faced his enemy, the Professor. Short of starving him to death, or killing him outright with the iron bar, the Professor could see no way of making the Giant Wolf cringe to him; he could devise no ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... and that, I trust, none of you are. From him come every humane thought and feeling you ever had. All kindliness, pity, mercy, generosity; all sense or justice and honour toward your fellow-men; all indignation when you hear of their being wronged, tortured, enslaved; all desire to help the fallen, to right the oppressed;—whence do these come? From the world? Most surely not. From the flesh? St. Paul says not. From the Devil? No one, I trust, will say that, save his own children, the Pharisees, if there be any of them left, which we will hope ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... as a matter of course. It was clear that he had forgotten the catastrophe that had parted him from Hamlyn's Purlieu, and yet, strangely, he asked no questions. Lucy was tortured by the thought of revisiting the place she loved so well. She had been able to deaden her passionate regret only by keeping her mind steadfastly averted from all thoughts of it, and now she must actually go there. The old wounds would be opened. But it was impossible ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... cannot bear the idea of returning to his palace, but encamps near the grove of the penitents. He fears that he may not be able to win the girl's love, and she is tortured by the same doubt regarding him. "Did Brahma first paint her and then infuse life into her, or did he in his spirit fashion her out of a number of spirits?" he exclaims. He wonders what excuse he can have for lingering in the grove. His companion suggests gathering the tithe, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... introduced the two, and after a few formalities was got over I had Minna telling in a heartfelt manner what teaching a public school was like, and what a tortured life she led among creatures that should never be treated as human. Homer listened with glistening eyes that got quite moist at the last. Minna went on to say that children's mothers was almost as bad, raging in to pick a fuss with her every ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... all the time that he had been so calmly addressing his captive, was tortured with cruel doubts as to the Cap'n's sanity. But he believed in discharging his duty first. And he remembered that insane people were more easily prevailed upon by those who appeared to make no account of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... and the dimly-burning light revealed the horror-stricken faces of his murdered family. Not one was left to tell the tale, but the story pictured before him was unmistakable in every detail. The treacherous natives had first tortured and then butchered them. For a time he stood transfixed with horror, unable to remove his eyes from the awful scene, or his feet from the spot where he had first beheld it; then, with the cry of sudden madness, he threw himself beside the bleeding corpses and lost all consciousness. How long ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... of wind to westward; there was a sudden cry of men mortally hurt, of horses suddenly tortured. Out from the windows of the Phipps Building a flood of flame sprang west; expelled from the tottering structure by some inward impulse, perhaps by an explosion of smothered air, this sheet of heat and flame, of unburned and ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... think of that budding flesh nibbled bit by bit by four or five hundred gormandizers; the horrified imagination refuses to picture the anguish suffered by the tortured wretch. But is there really any pain? We have leave to doubt it. Pain is a patent of nobility; it is more pronounced in proportion as the sufferer belongs to a higher order. In the lower ranks of animal life, it must be greatly ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... was volatilized or hurled away by the awful forces of the Kondalian attack. So much destruction had already been wrought that the edge of the apron and its molten moat were already fully a mile below the normal level of that cratered, torn, and tortured plain. ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... heavy shoulders. He knew that every hour counted in his favor, would make it more difficult for the tortured man to come forward and tell the truth. "Sure. Look it over upside and down. Don't hurry. But, man, what's there to think about? I thought you hated this guy—wanted to get ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Boone men were encouraged to believe that none of them would be tortured; for their bodies were ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... details of the old man's life we have only the scandal of Rome to rely on, and scandal was easily quickened by the veil of solitude and secrecy which Tiberius flung around his retirement. The tale of his cruelties, of the fisherman tortured for having climbed the cliff which the Emperor deemed inaccessible, of criminals dashed into the sea down the steep of the "Salto di Timberio," rest on the gossip of Suetonius alone. But in all this mass of gossip there is little ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... most deeply considered speech of her whole life. The last words, ingenuous as a child's unconscious betrayal, tore at him as, he suddenly thought, it would be if he saw a child tortured and in fear: as if he saw Nan. They told him how desperately lonesome and undefended she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... I feel; how I wish I had missed this fatal appointment! I thought I should find everything favourable; and, instead of that, my heart is tortured. ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... bitterness of that hour;—I cannot tell it. But through the darkness of my anguish and remorse that newly kindled love burned like a blessed fire, and, while it tortured, purified. By its light I saw the error of my life: self-love was written on the actions of the past, and I knew that my punishment was very just. With a child's repentant tears, I confessed it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the monster who did it, he says, "Nobody did it." There is a Slavonian story, also, in which a cunning smith puts out the eyes of the Devil, and says that his name is Issi, "myself;" and when the tortured demon is asked who hurt him, he says, "Issi did it;" and then ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... leather cushions in the nasty smoking-room, sucking limes, drinking seltzer, and trying to be interested in the card games. He dozed a little and awoke, feeling wretched, covered with a cold sweat, racked by a pain in the back of his head, and tortured by an abominable nausea. He groped his way out upon the swaying, gusty deck, descended to his ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... bearded man hotly, 'in poor stricken-down groaning Russia, what other argument have they left us? Are we to be hunted to death without real law or trial, tortured into sham confessions, deluded with mock pardons, arraigned before hypocritical tribunals, ensnared by all the chicanery, and lying, and treachery, and ferreting of the false bureaucracy, with its spies, and its bloodhounds, and its knout-bearing police-agents; and then are we not to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... pastoral landscape distorted by the paralysis of suffering and death, and Jeb realized that not for many years would these tortured fields regain their tranquillity. Where were rises, now lay depressions; the loamy top soil was blown into dust and scattered to the winds, while sterile clay and pebbly strata had been boiled up from below to take its place. Mixed with this mass of unprofitable ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... far is that men choose to have it so. A gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, "Is it so?" he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese women shall have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... died. If an Indian should go to the white man's house and commit that crime, he would be killed; and what man is there who would say that is too bad, this Indian to be killed in that manner? But every man will say amen, only he ought to have been tortured before he was killed; and let the man who killed this bad and wicked Indian be rewarded! This is what would be the result if the Indian would have done the same thing as this white ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... ethical hortation; and literature abounds with such applications of it. In Plutarch's account of what Thespesius saw when his soul was ravished away into hell for a time, we are told that he saw the soul of Nero dreadfully tortured, transfixed with iron nails. The workmen forged it into the form of a viper; when a voice was heard out of an exceeding light ordering it to be transfigured into a milder being; and they made it one of those creatures that sing and croak in the sides of ponds and marshes.14 When Rosalind finds ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... antiquity; that it has been believed is one proof among thousands of the indescribable simplicity of mankind. Few legends carry like it the stamp of lie on their faces and few legends have millennium after millennium caused so many evils and horrors. It has tortured and murdered by ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... at length dismissed from the palace, returned home; his heart tortured with love for the daughter of the sultan. On his arrival, the sage inquired if he had seen the princess. "I have," replied the youth, "but one look is not enough, and I cannot rest until I shall sit beside her, and feast my eyes till they are wearied with gazing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... feared his wife and her sons; the latter were rowdies, born criminals, that's true. Jake would never tell what he had done with his granddaughter, as I said, and the war commenced. His family just tortured him almost into his grave, and so one morning Jake went out in his boat and he, too, disappeared, and then the family set up a claim against his money and property, and as the granddaughter could not be found, by ginger! they got it—yes, they produced some sort of will—a forgery ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... the broad Atlantic becomes a mere lake. I am more struck, just now, with the supreme silence which reigns in the sea beneath us, notwithstanding its agitation, than with any other phenomenon presenting itself. The waters give up no voice to the heavens. The immense flaming ocean writhes and is tortured uncomplainingly. The mountainous surges suggest the idea of innumerable dumb gigantic fiends struggling in impotent agony. In a night such as is this to me, a man lives—lives a whole century of ordinary life—nor would I forego this rapturous delight for that of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... groaned aloud. His sun-scorched eyes seemed fairly shriveling with the glare. His wilted linen collar slopped like a stale poultice around his tortured neck. In his sticky fingers the bridle-rein itched like so ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a thing!" said Henry Ware. "All the men would be killed, tortured to death, and all the women and children would be taken away into slavery. Hold on! Jim Hart will ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... came out into the yard later, where her lover was awaiting her, her lips were pale and her eyes tortured. She went straight into his outstretched arms and with her head on his shoulder sobbed out a misery that shook her. At last the man asked softly, "What did the doctor say?" And ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... was increasing. The two walked along in silence; but when George walked into the hall at home he turned and saw a look on his father's face that smote him to the heart, for he was not yet a hardened soul. Mr. Hardy had lived years in that experience. No one could tell how he had been tortured by what he had endured that night; but the mark of it was stamped indelibly on his face, and he knew that he would ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... to himself after a few seconds' attention; and he once more resumed his slow march up and down, the motion seeming to calm him, for when standing still his thoughts tortured him. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... common things assumed fantastic shapes. The one thought, "If I do not succeed they will kill themselves," fell upon her soul with reiterated blows, as the bar of the executioner fell upon the victim's members when tortured on the wheel. She felt herself breaking; she lost her energy in this terrible waiting for the cruel moment, short and decisive, when she should find herself face to face with that man on whom the fate of the condemned depended. She chose ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... distance across the roofs of lower buildings, the girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story of which seemed to be a dancing hall. The windows of that were also open, and through them they heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick transition, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... With what tortured phrases was this dull tormentor teasing me. I was ashamed to listen to him, yet dared not to ask a single question or interrupt his vile insinuations. I was alone on the promenade; the poisoned arrow of suspicion had entered my heart. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... as she was to sleepers and all their horrors, found her lower eight unbearable. With the bravery of desperation she groped about for her cinder-strewn belongings, donned slippers and kimono, waited until the tortured porter's footsteps had squeaked their way to the far end of the car, then sped up the dim aisle toward the back platform. She wrenched open the door, felt the rush of air, drew in a long, grateful, smoke-steam-dust laden ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... -of a past condition of things. So the neighbors explained the diabolical appearances in the old palace of the Visconti near San Giovanni in Conca, at Milan, since here it was that Bernab Visconti had caused countless victims of his tyranny to be tortured and strangled, and no wonder if there were strange things to be seen. One evening a swarm of poor people with candles in their hands appeared to a dishonest guardian of the poor at Perugia, and danced round about him; a great figure spoke in threatening tones on their behalf, it ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Shiraz, although they have their own quarter, in the lowest, most poverty-stricken part of the town, and other privileges are granted them by the Government. Shortly before my visit, a whole family was tortured and put to death by a mob of infuriated Mohammedans. The latter accused them of stealing young Moslem children, and sacrificing them at their secret ceremonies. [A] Guilty or innocent of the charge, the assassins ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... that they return in full force in every serious illness. As soon as the feverishly seething blood rushes over my brain and drowns my consciousness, the oldest devils, driving out and disarming all laterborn ones, come back again, and that best shows, without doubt, how they must once have tortured me. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... in the end that which kills! But let me try to forget that side of it, and remember, rather, as we leave the smells behind, that the calcined bones become artificial manure, and go back again into the tortured fields of France, while other bye-products of the factory help the peasants near to feed their pigs. And anything, however small, that helps the peasants of France in ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slaves sprang up and ran. Then he resumed his mysterious promenade, still carefully keeping an eye upon us, and smiling by way of conversation. It was long before I could imagine what we were to do. Boy, fairly tortured, cried "Come home, mamma! why don't you come home? I don't like that man." His Excellency halted, and sinking his voice ominously, said, "You no can go!" Boy clutched my dress, and hid his face and smothered his sobs in my lap; and yet, attracted, fascinated, the poor little ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... true no fairies haunt our verdant meads, No grinning imps deform our blazing hearth; Beneath the kelpie's fang no traveller bleeds, Nor gory vampyre taints our holy earth, Nor spectres stalk to frighten harmless mirth, Nor tortured demon howls adown the gale; Fair reason checks these monsters in their birth. Yet have we lay of love and horrid tale Would dim the manliest eye and ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... those mean and wretched villagers: an angel was among them, and they knew it not; she had tasted no other drink but the bitter waters of affliction; no hope had brightened, no love sustained, her earthly course. And now her young orphan son, his heart dead within him for anguish, his conscience tortured by remorse, was kneeling in that agony which no weak words can paint, was kneeling for the last time, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... had been a heartbreak one, Of roots and rocks and tortured trees, And pools, above my horse's knees, And wandering paths, where spiders spun 'Twixt boughs that never saw the sun, And silence of lost centuries. The road ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... conventicle they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were easily defeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she put her luggage into the cloak-room, deciding to see what could be done in the way of rooms, without the expense of going from place to place in a cab. The places Miss Abercrombie had recommended her to struck her as being expensive, and it seemed to her tortured nerves as if the landladies viewed her with distrustful eyes. She finally decided to take a bus down to Chelsea; she remembered having heard from someone that Chelsea was a cheap and frankly Bohemian place to ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... left thigh; the eager weapon pass'd Right through the flesh, and in the bone was fix'd; The stroke of death his father turn'd aside. Sarpedon from the field his comrades bore, Weigh'd down and tortured by the trailing spear, For, in their haste to bear him to his car, Not one bethought him from his thigh to draw The weapon forth; so ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... wrestles with the problem of the meaning of the mystery of sorrow. Whether history or a parable, its worth is the same, as tortured hearts have felt for countless centuries, and will feel to the end. Perhaps no picture that was ever painted is grander and more touching than that of the man of Uz, in the antique wealth and happiness of his brighter days, rich, joyful, with his children ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Hermolaus, one of their number, who had been punished with stripes for anticipating the king during a hunting party in slaying a wild boar. Hermolaus and his associates, among whom was Callisthenes, a pupil of Aristotle, were first tortured, and then put to death. It seems certain that a conspiracy existed; but no less certain that the growing pride and haughtiness of Alexander were gradually alienating from him the hearts of ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... weep for grief, no voice to cry with woe, No memories panged beyond belief for joys of long ago, Has she no tortured dreams to smart, no anguish for her brow, Has she no broken bleeding heart, that you must curse ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... was not put to death at once, as you will hear in the account of the Tower; he was tortured on the rack to make him give up the names of those who had been in the conspiracy with him. Again and again he refused, but at last the awful suffering weakened him so that he hardly knew what he was doing; and when the torturers told him some of his comrades had been ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the hopes there buried in her heart. One could scarcely believe that this timid, pious queen could worship an earthly object, or yield herself one moment to the bare passion of hate. Truly Elizabeth Christine hated no one, not even Barbarina—this woman who had given the last blow to her tortured heart, and added the passion of jealousy to her despised love. Elizabeth Christine was indeed jealous, but not in the common way; she felt no scorn, she uttered no reproach; silent tears and earnest prayers for strength were her ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... and nobody came. I wanted water. I was so thirsty!" She muttered the words feverishly and the brightness of her big eyes told its own story of a tortured brain. "I heard somebody ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... to the world: and one would marvel at the hellions, indeed one would, were they in their turn not moving heaven and earth, with their best battle-breaking champions in the fore-front, to maintain their strangle-hold on her tortured and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to sing. It was a relief to her; she could not have talked; all the love and sorrow, all the fear and despair that tortured her, could find vent in music. So she sat in the evening gloaming, and Lord Airlie, listening to the superb voice, wondered at the pathos and sadness that seemed to ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... reached Major Buford's farm at noon, and Chad went to the woods and came in at dusk, haggard and spent. Miserably now he held his tongue and tortured his brain. Purposely, he never opened his lips to Harry Dean. He tried to make known to the Major the struggle going on within him, but the iron-willed old man brushed away all argument with an impatient ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... where he was likely to be found. They rushed on him with fierce cries, and bound his hands with a rope, and kicked and dragged him along to the place where Priam and the princes were wondering at the great horse of tree. Sinon looked round upon them, while some were saying that he ought to be tortured with fire to make him tell all the truth about the horse. The chiefs in the horse must have trembled for fear lest torture should wring the truth out of Sinon, for then the Trojans would simply burn the machine ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... school-house with these words for company, and it was less her discovery than her confession that tortured me. How much I slept that night you ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... been directed. She had proved the only exception when all the other attendants of Octavia had joined Sabina in attacking their mistress, despising the one because she was in misfortune and toadying to the other because her influence was strong. Pythias alone had refused though cruelly tortured to utter lies against Octavia, and finally, as Tigillinus continued to urge her, she spat in his ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... her prayers sounded like an echo down in the hollow form that confined the imprisoned, miserable soul. That soul was overwhelmed by the unexpected love from those realms afar. One of God's angels wept for her! Why was this vouchsafed to her? The tortured spirit gathered, as it were, into one thought, all the actions of its life—all that it had done; and it shook with the violence of its remorse—remorse such as Inger had never felt. Grief became her predominating ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... brought him to the home which shall be theirs. The heart of the wild, where the mountains rise sheer to the sky above; where no man comes, where a dark peace reigns, and has ever reigned. Where snow is not, and summer and winter are alike. It is the fitting home for a tortured spirit. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... place besides. I went to him, and in the presence of witnesses said that I now had all the slaves of which I had been possessed at the time I bought the place, and I was ready, if he wished, to give them up to be tortured, thinking that this would be the strongest test of his assertions and of the facts. 35. But he would not take them, saying that there was no trusting slaves. It seems to me strange that slaves when tortured make damning statements about ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... the natural affections. Sometimes these wounds are given by passions real and most affecting, rendered eternal by the dignity of those who feel them; sometimes by latent hatreds which slowly freeze the heart and dry all tears when the hour of parting comes. Tortured yesterday and to-day, wounded by all, even by the suffering children who were guiltless of the ills they endured, how could that poor soul fail to love the one human being who did not strike her, who would fain have built a wall of defence around her to guard her from storms, from harsh ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... her hat in the woods, and the wind and the rain had held high carnival in her loosely-arranged hair, whose color Tom so detested, and which streamed down her back in many little wet tags, giving her the look of a drowned rat after it has been tortured in ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... faith with knaves deserving none. It was in pursuit of this that Michele da Corella was now pressed with questions, which, however, yielded nothing, and that Asquino de Colloredo (the sometime servant of Cardinal Michaeli) was tortured into confessing that he had poisoned his master at the instigation of Alexander and Cesare—as has been seen—which confession Pope Julius ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... past differences and animosities, come to soothe Mole's captivity, in this manner, or—horrible thought!—was it a strain of malice or revengeful triumph that emanated from the long-suffering and tortured instrument. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... tortured herself, as a loving woman will do, by imagining all the most terrible things happening to the man of her heart. She feared no longer the perils of the forest for him. She felt that he was master of man or beast in it. But fever ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... temptation gripped him, and, as he took another "eyeful" sweep of the azure arch overhead, to again find the coast clear, he tortured himself with the vision of a pot of boiling coffee to go with his otherwise ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... faintly so that it might be the melody of fairydom heard at eves on grassy hillocks by the gifted ear, the melody of the gentle other world, had he not known that it had the words of "The Rover." Nan was singing it to keep up her heart, far from cheerful, tortured indeed with doubt and fear, and yet the listener found in the notes content and hope. When he came back with his spray of white heather he was so uplifted with the song that he ran up to her for once with no ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... himself, Woldemar concluded it unattainable, and laid the hope aside. "I found," he says, "that, collectively and singly, we nourish too many and too eager desires, are too deeply harassed by the pursuits, cares, joys, and pains of life, are too much tortured, excited, distracted, for two men anywhere, in these times, to become and remain so completely one as my loving enthusiasm had made me dream." But Henriette revived this long-forgotten dream in Woldemar, and made it real; and in his friendship ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of Champlain with the Indians secured the inveterate hostility of the Iroquois tribes. Not long after, they seized the missionaries who came among them, tortured and put them to death. This cut off any farther explorations toward the south. The French, therefore, turned their attention ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Klem hunted to their prolonged death. Indeed it was time ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... of herself. Even a heart of stone might have softened at the sound of that despairing, heart-wrung voice—at sight of that death-like, tortured face. And Edith's, whatever she might say or think, was not ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... to see her. He was mad to see her. The thought of her tortured and tempted him without end. Suppose she, too, had learned that love is stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... daily dose of the whip. There was besides the father of your elder cousin Chen, of the eastern mansion. He had a disposition that flared up like a fire over which oil is poured. If anything was said, and he flew into a rage, why, talk about a son, it was really as if he tortured a robber. From all I can now see and hear, Mr. Chen keeps his son in check just as much as was the custom in old days among his ancestors; the only thing is that he abides by it in some respects, but not in others. Besides, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... It will not be long before you have the right to do it. Sit down here now beside us, too. (REGINA sits down quietly and hesitatingly at the other side of the table.) And now, my poor tortured boy, I am going to take the burden off ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... across the room. The Prince touched a bell, the doors were opened. Ghastly pale, his head swimming, the tortured man dashed out into the street. The Prince leaned back amongst his cushions, untied a straw-fastened packet of his long cigarettes, lit one, and ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him some trouble to do that," Roger said, shrugging his shoulders. "Still, I will be careful, Dorothy, for I would not on any account bring trouble upon you, here. But, thank Heaven, England is not Spain, where men are forever being tortured and burned for their religion. The English would never put up with that. It may be that there will be persecution, but methinks it is rather those whose opinions lead them to make speeches that are regarded as seditious, and who ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Towards dusk a great jaguar went prowling past, looked at him with green fierce eyes, snarled low, and went on. Vultures alighted near him, but they too passed by; they could wait. Then it was night, and many of the insect pests grew luminous. They flitted and danced before his eyes till tortured nature could bear no more, and insensibility ended ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... tortured bosom long shall feel The pangs o' this last sad fareweel; Far, far to foreign lands I stray, To spend my hours in deepest wae; Fareweel, my dear, my native soil, Fareweel, the braes ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... line of the enemy," darkly mused Alan Hawke, as in the unrestrained intimacy of their long, morning rides, he influenced the Swiss woman's heart, love-tortured, to a greater ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... another.—Their feet getting entangled among the cordage, and between the planks, bereaved them of the faculty of moving. Maddened by these misfortunes, suspended, and adrift upon a merciless ocean, they were soon tortured between the pieces of wood which formed the scaffold on which they floated.—The bones of their feet and their legs were bruised and broken, every time the fury of the waves agitated the raft; their flesh covered with contusions and ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... contiguous to it, was a tournament-ground. Obstinate heretics used to be brought thither, convenient for burning hard by. Harry VIII., the Defender of the Faith, seized upon the monastery and its possessions, and hanged and tortured some of the monks who could not accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform. Finally, a great merchant bought the house and land adjoining, in which, and with the help of other wealthy endowments of land and money, he established a famous foundation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the past winter. She turned it over and over in her hand, and the temptation to see the love-token inside became greater every moment. This was a thing her husband had never designed any human eye but his own to see. Whatever revelation there was in it, much or little, would be true. Tortured by doubt and despair, she felt that impulse to rely on chance for a decision which all have experienced in matters of grave moment, apparently ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... refused to fly; they were afraid of being captured and tortured; they thought they would be spared, and taken to the wigwams of the savages, who, we then learned, belonged to the tribe of the Cayugas. They told us that thirteen Indian prisoners had already been eaten, but no white people. The Comanche ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Tortured with these suggestions, afraid of public disgrace, and dreading the consequence of legal conviction, she fell on her knees before the injured Fathom, and, after having imputed her crime to the temptations ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... said, "that the other day at the Jews' Market you told me the story of the man who tortured his friend, until the man shot him—simply because he was tired of life and too proud to commit suicide. Why did you ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... people who were considered criminals have been tortured. Well, and have they ceased to exist? No; their numbers have been increased not alone by the criminals corrupted by punishment but also by those lawful criminals, the judges, procureurs, magistrates and jailers, who judge and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Not a syllable is said of any defence the culprit made:; and,' had my father been guilty of such violence and injustice, it is totally incredible that he, whose minutest acts and his most innocent were so rigorously scrutinized, tortured, and blackened, should never have heard that act of power complained of. The present Lord Barrington who opposed him, saw his fall, and the secret committee appointed' to canvass his life, when a retrospect of twenty years was desired and only ten allowed, would certainly have pleaded ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... regenerate ones, that he was my uterine brother. Indeed, at Pritha's words I have come to know that Karna was the eldest born! Having caused my brother to be slain, my heart is burning exceedingly. If I had both Karna and Arjuna for aiding me, I could have vanquished Vasudeva himself. Whilst I was tortured in the midst of the assembly by the wicked-souled sons of Dhritarashtra, my wrath, suddenly provoked, became cooled at sight of Karna. Even while listening to the harsh and bitter words of Karna himself on that occasion of our match at dice, to the words, that Karna uttered from desire ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a tiny girl baby, fussed and fidgeted in her mother's arms, tortured by prickly heat when the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... attributed to us, that were never entertained, and our plan is tortured into a design to emancipate the Slaves of the South. We are made to disregard this description of property, and to touch without reserve the rights of our neighbors. We are said to tread this almost forbidden ground with firm step, and ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her lessons these first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all about Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly tortured. This lady, however, had formulated the position of things with an acuteness that showed how little she needed to be coached. Her explanation of everything that seemed not quite pleasant—and if her own footing was perilous it met that ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... of those Saints that inhabit within her, which cry out by reason they are then deprived of their wonted happinesse, and cannot heare the musicke of the Spheares, but are forced to behold the torments, and wailing of those damned soules which are represented to them as they are tortured in the region of the aire, but whether this or what ever else was the meaning of this superstition, yet certainly 'twas a very ridiculous custome, and bewrayed a great ignorance of those ancient times, especially since it was not onely received by the ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... the spirit of good will toward all, unfortunately, has not yet taken hold. An already tortured peace seems to be constantly threatened. We shall try to use our influence to increase the possibilities of improved relations among the nations of that region. We are working hard at ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... these things, but I set them down that my story may lack nothing. Those who have escaped the dark and terrible aspects of life will find my brutality, my flash of rage in our final tragedy, easy enough to blame; for they know what is wrong as well as any, but not what is possible to tortured men. But those who have been under the shadow, who have gone down at last to elemental things, will have a ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... imitation, may be said to have started with Herrera. It was further advanced by another independent painter, Zurbaran (1598-1662), a pupil of Roelas. He was a painter of the emaciated monk in ecstasy, and many other rather dismal religious subjects expressive of tortured rapture. From using a rather dark shadow he acquired the name of the Spanish Caravaggio. He had a good deal of Caravaggio's strength, together with a depth and breadth of color suggestive of the Venetians. Cano ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... present was indeed very dismal, even to those who preserved the blessing of health; to the sick, whose crippled limbs were tortured with excessive pain, it was insupportable. The ocean about us had a furious aspect, and seemed incensed at the presumption of a few intruding mortals. A gloomy melancholy air loured on the brows of our shipmates, and a dreadful ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and thought I was free, but in fact I was bound," he acknowledged. "The words I spoke on the steps that night escaped me unaware. I was tortured by jealousy, and tempted by love. I had no right to speak them then; nothing can excuse or palliate the weakness which allowed me to. I should have waited until I could come to you untrammeled—as now. I attempt no justification of my madness, Princess. I have no excuse but ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country. He grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal hand; his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention; and his prisoners were tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a discovery of their secret treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with only five followers on horse-back, and thirty on foot; yet even this allowance appears too bountiful;—the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville passed ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... face to face with his iniquities. With great skill he pointed out condemnation arising from particular transgressions,—the defaulter fleeing from his country, the murderer with his victim's bloody form ever before his mind's eye, the lustful man tortured and consumed with the rewards of his own folly. Continuing, he proceeded to tell the final punishment of these sinners. In those days ministers at camp meetings preached a literal hell; and as the speaker uncovered the ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... became almost a second "Black Hole of Calcutta." The one window was shut and darkened, making the air of the room unbearable. To add to the horror of the situation, Colonel Palmer was now cruelly tortured before his comrades' eyes, one of his feet being twisted by means of a tent peg and rope. This was done in the hope that he or some one of his fellow-captives would reveal the hiding-place of a phantom "four lakhs of rupees," which the Afghans declared ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't been tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... glorious thing to realize that neither she nor I will have to sit and be tortured by waiting to see what those men ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... was condemned and was removed from among men. And the office which began with him ended also with him. For no other man has been made adrastadaran salanes. Rufinus also slandered Hypatius to the emperor. As a result of this the emperor reduced him from his office, and tortured most cruelly certain of his associates only to find out that this slander was absolutely unsound; beyond this, however, he ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... quite humane and tolerable. On the other hand, however, in the process of opposing evil conditions, one cannot avoid contact with the human products of them—sometimes in a stern and conclusive manner. Without going the length of the Spanish Inquisition, which tortured the body on earth in order to save the soul for heaven, it is not to be denied that punishment for evil deeds is latent in the bowels of the evil doer and will make him suffer in one way or another. We cannot strike a bad condition without hitting somebody who is carrying it out; and I am in the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... confiscatory and exterminatory periods. They would not set men upon calling from the quiet sleep of death any Samuel, to ask him by what act of arbitrary monarchs, by what inquisitions of corrupted tribunals and tortured jurors, by what fictitious tenures invented to dispossess whole unoffending tribes and their chieftains. They would not conjure up the ghosts from the ruins of castles and churches, to tell for what ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... luxuriant tapestry of ferns and ivies and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), where the sheep pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out of the red-fronted cliffs the querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine, and make their plaintive moan. Near Lynton there is the famous Valley ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself—still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blindness! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Marriages of the Hotel du Ville, we came suddenly upon souvenirs of a much later period than that of Joan, for here, in this room, Francis II died. He and Mary came here from Chenonceaux, and becoming violently ill from a malady in his ear which had tortured him for some time, the poor young king took to his bed never to rise again. His mother followed him here, and at Mary's instance the great surgeon Ambrose Pare was summoned. He wished to operate; the young Queen had full confidence in his judgment and skill, but ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... thee! There's only one thing to pray God for, that she may soon be dead, that she may not be tortured ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and the mangling and disfiguration of the tomahawk and scalping knife, scarcely one could be distinguished from another. Friends tortured themselves in vain, to find friends, in the huge mass of slain,—fathers to recognize their sons. The mournful gratification of bending over the lifeless bodies of dear relations and gazing with intense anxiety on their pallid ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... researches! A confession that problems have arisen at every step, and that not a single one has been solved! Indeed, underlying all this is the problem of problems: how to make that place attractive and joyous where hitherto the body has been tortured and contorted, and the blood poisoned by weariness! It is impossible to educate without doing harm; but we must do harm that will give pleasure! This is truly an embarrassing position! And this is why an interminable string of notes ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... hovels fewer. Then the filth and misery grew scarcer, patches of cultivated land appeared, from which weary-eyed faces looked up, half wondering, here and there, but only to sink listlessly again as their owners toiled on, with taskmasters ready to urge them on with their labour, as they tortured their sluggish oxen toiling at water-wheel or grinding ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... advocate, tortured by increasing alarm, and with his imagination filling with tragic touches the picture of the possible fate of Amanda, had lost both recollection and temper; and for the first time when conducting a cross-examination, had been ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... European clerk and his wife to escape, and showed his disinterestedness by refusing to take a gold ring, the only reward they had to offer him. He then joined Havelock's force, and rendered excellent service as a spy; and although taken prisoner more than once, and on one occasion tortured, he never wavered in his loyalty to us. Accompanying Outram to Lucknow, he volunteered to carry a letter to Cawnpore, and after falling into the hands of the rebels, and being cruelly ill-treated by them, he effected his escape, and safely ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... harrowing thoughts that hurried through her tortured mind, one feeling was predominant—the necessity of instant flight. There was no other cause for her to pursue. The bridal train was awaiting her down stairs. Soon they would send to summon her again. How could she meet them? What could she say to them? How could she ever look upon ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... educated class plus an obedient army. You can see by the women that it is a peasant people—not a jumper or a short skirt in the whole of Belgrade. They are quiet-eyed and modest. The Serbs are much harder than the Russians, and bear deeper in their souls the marks of their historic chains. A tortured look in the face and a certain dreadful impassivity of countenance are not uncommon. There is a mixture of geniuses and of people who have not yet begun to live. They have their Mestrovic, Velimirovic, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... to them, and the hearts of his listeners stood still with awe and misery. And yet, dreadful as it was, they all felt that the certainty of knowing that Violet was no more, did not equal the agonizing suspense which had tortured them during the last ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Jacques Dubois and the Bishop of Bayrut, who urged the Comte d'Estampes to use his authority with the vicars to proceed energetically against the prisoners. Soon afterwards the matter was brought to a crisis; the fate of the tortured convicts was decided, and amidst thousands of spectators from all parts, they were brought out, each with a mitre on his head, on which was painted the devil in the form in which he appeared at ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... purity when they forced me, like ogres, to marry a man for whom they knew I never cared? Had I gone with him,—had I now eloped with that man who ought to have been my husband,—whom would a just God have punished worst,—me, or those two old women and my uncle, who tortured ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... attentions of the good old doctor, her father's freedom from pain, and the fact that he would be spared the dread of his lifetime—a separation from the old home. Joan saw nothing but clouds and darkness, and tortured herself with useless questionings. Why—why—why—why should all this trouble fall upon her? Why should other girls have father and mother and money and opportunity, and she be deprived of all? Why should the accident have been allowed to happen when her father's ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cavern, though burning very dimly, would have shown him the big-beaded drops of sweat that now started from the brows of the sleeper. But he could hear; and now a word, a name, falls from the outlaw's lips—it is followed by murmured imprecations. The feverish frame, tortured by the restless and guilt-goading spirit, writhed as he delivered the curses in broken accents. These, finally, grew ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... French "Lac St. Sacrament," was discovered by Father Jacques, who passed through it in 1646, on his way to the Iroquois, by whom he was afterward tortured and burned. It is thirty-six miles long by three miles broad. Its elevation is two hundred and forty-three feet above the sea. The waters are of remarkable transparency; romantic islands dot its surface, and elegant villas line its shores. Fort William Henry and Ticonderoga, situated ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... denominations, and is confined exclusively to no one. Nor is it the worst element in a congregation that is guilty of it; I am sorry to say that it is prevalent among even the best members. Even that excellent woman, Mrs. Boyzy, whose mind is often tortured by the apprehension that absence from church service will seriously affect my future prospers, often regales me after church with keen criticism of the sermon and the weak points of our preacher. And yet that estimable woman, on hearing our eldest daughter indulge last Sunday in a similar ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... me, and I grew angry. That he was doubtless very miserable ceased to plead for him, nay, it aggravated his offence. What the deuce right had this fellow to make misery repulsive? And it was over my wedding song that he had tortured himself into this ludicrous condition! Yet again it was a pleasant paradox of Nature's to dower this carcass with the sensibility which might have given a crowning charm to the beauty of Coralie. In him it could attract no love, to him it could bring no happiness. Probably it caused him ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... resolutions of 1834 there is not a single paragraph or even phrase which can be tortured into showing that the French Canadian agitator and his friends were in favour of responsible government. The key-note of the whole document is an elective legislative council, which would inevitably increase ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... twice his own length between himself and the Prussian officer when the brute, who was shamming wounded all the time, levelled his revolver at the tortured boy, and lodged two blunt-nosed bullets ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... and very white and very still. Only his face twitched. A muscle in one cheek jerked and jerked and jerked at his mouth. It was as though he controlled a desire to smile. That jerking, suppressed smile upon his white and tortured countenance was terrible. I could see the blood drain down from his forehead, down from his cheeks. He became ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... shame. He made useless plans, tortured himself to find some means of getting out of the scrape, and could not even sleep at night. One morning without any one's knowledge he left the palace at dawn, walked on till he came to a meadow, and wandered along absorbed in thought, without knowing where he ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... good-principled young man, but his associates were disreputable, and he was at times compromised by their actions. But still sadder for Mary was the fact that Fanny, in addition to domestic grievances, was tortured by the unkindness of an uncertain lover. She had met, not long before, Mr. Hugh Skeys, a young but already successful merchant. Attracted by her, he had been sufficiently attentive and devoted to warrant her conclusion ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... hard to find her at home alone; perfumed dandies like flies over a piece of sugar—were always flitting about her. They spoke to her in French, sang and laughed, while he looked at them in silence, tortured by anger and jealousy. His legs crossed, he sat somewhere in a corner of her richly furnished drawing-room, where it was extremely difficult to walk without overturning or at least striking against something—Foma sat and watched ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... weeks passed on, and I was miserable beyond what I can tell you. Nothing more was said on the subject, however, except by Frank, who tortured me by alternate entreaties and reproaches, and sometimes by occasional fits of thoughtfulness and kindness, in which he would leave me to myself, only appealing to me by unobtrusive acts of courtesy and devotion, which gave me more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... grim destiny Mrs. Orme had so systematically planned the hideous "death in life," upon which she was deliberately preparing to enter, a leap over that wall into the placid sea beneath would have been welcome as heaven to tortured Dives; but despite the loathing and horror of her sickened and outraged soul, she contemplated her future lot as calmly as St. Lawrence the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... close to the wood below Trinity—the race as good as won, for Trinity was of course the winning post. Suddenly the captain cried out, 'He is passing us!' and, as he said the word, he looked as wild as a tortured redskin, and bit his lips more savage than ever, and caught hold of the quarterdeck railing as if he would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... woman be upon you. I have seen many changes. I have seen my people possessors of this island, save a small settlement which they had, even then, the folly to allow the Spaniards to possess. I have seen them swept away by the oppressor, my husband tortured and killed, my brothers burned alive, all that I loved slain by the Spaniards. Now, it does my old eyes good to see two of the race who will, in the future, drive those dogs from these fair lands, as they ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... Southland are floating Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain, And women heart-stricken are weeping O'er their tortured and slain. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... whom the world sought, was a man with a mask before his face; that accident and the excitement of the music had enabled me to see the face behind the mask. I understood, or supposed I understood, Mrs. Ascher, too. All her foolish fine phrases and absurd enthusiasms were like cries in which tortured creatures find some kind of relief from pain, or the low, crooning laughter of a young mother with her baby at her breast. They were the inevitable, almost hysterical gaspings of a spirit wrought upon over highly and over often by the passion of romantic love. A mask hid the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... boys that tongue is a superfluity. The simple truth is that not one boy in ten understands Greek. Unhappily this act of tardy justice (and mercy) can have no retrospective effect. Think of the generations of unhappy children who have been tortured by that infernal language, and of the imprisonment in summer days of which it has been the cause. Who can give us back our lost time and liberties infringed? I don't wish to revive ancient customs of a vindictive nature, but I should like to see the Greek grammar burnt by the common ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... chatter of voices ceased, somewhat permitting the struggling orchestra to make itself felt and heard. Winston shut his teeth, and waited uneasily, the hand upon the rail clenched. Even more than he had ever expected, awakened memory tortured. He would have gone out into the solitude of the street, except for the certainty of disturbing others. The accompanying music became faster as the inner curtain slowly rose, revealing the great stage set for the first ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... it," answered Meschini in a muffled voice. Her presence tortured him beyond expression. "That is a long time, and I am ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... was not the kind to communicate his occasional doubts to anyone except his roommate. Had Darrin talked on the subject with other members of his class he would have found that many of his classmates were tortured by the same doubts that assailed him. With midshipmen who were destined to get their diplomas such doubts were to be charged only to modesty, and were therefore to their credit. Yet, every spring dozens of Annapolis first classmen ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... gathered from the tears of tortured experience, had become an obsession. She was silent, brooding over it; but she herself was there, larger, less puzzling and negative than hitherto,—an awakening force. The man lost his anchor of convention and traditional reasoning. He felt with her an excitement, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick |
