"Torturing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... driving him, a child of Christ, from the poor home he had won with so much toil; robbing him of all he possessed; burning his miserable refuge; frightening into madness his patient wife; braining his children; hounding the panic-stricken unfortunate from street to street, and torturing, mutilating, drowning, and assassinating him! For what, in the name of Heaven? Because he breathed the air of his native land, and dared to pray to the God that made him; because he wanted work for his black ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fancy presented to him. In these day-dreams his wealth, the beauty and dignity of his estates, the brilliant social atmosphere his rank assured him, had gained a value he had never recognised before. He remembered now, with torturing distinctness, the happy day when it had first entered his mind, that those things which had been his daily surroundings from his childhood would all be new pleasures to her, all in strong contrast to the atmosphere of ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of July, 1776, is now arrived; and America, manfully springing from the torturing fangs of the British Lion, now rises majestic in the pride of her sovereignty, and bids her Eagle elevate his wings!—The solemn declaration of Independence is now pronounced, amidst crowds of admiring citizens, by the supreme council of our nation; and received with ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... is more tenderly touched or more truly imagined than that long, torturing journey—Abraham silent, Isaac silently wondering, the servants silently following. And, like a flash, at last 'the place' was seen afar off. How calmly Abraham speaks to the two followers, mastering his heart's throbbing even then! 'We will worship, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... have not hesitated, out of selfish consideration for my own tranquillity, to forbid that frank avowal of the truth which her finer sense of duty had spontaneously bound her to make? Those were the torturing questions in Lady Janet's mind, while her arm was wound affectionately round Mercy's waist, while her fingers were busying themselves familiarly with the arrangement of Mercy's hair. Thence, and thence ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... the winter in torturing idleness; there is no indication of his movements till February, 1807. The time fixed for the great events was drawing near, and it was important to make them known. He decided on the plan of a manifesto which was to be widely circulated through the whole province, and would not ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... his mother. Gale shook off the tender memories. This desolate wilderness with its forbidding silence and its dark promise of hell on the morrow—this was not the place to unnerve oneself with thoughts of love and home. But the torturing paradox of the thing was that this was just the place and just the night for a man to ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... at night in bed could Natasha have told all she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... landed in Devonshire. During the following week London was violently agitated. On Sunday, the eleventh of November, a rumour was circulated that knives, gridirons, and caldrons, intended for the torturing of heretics, were concealed in the monastery which had been established under the King's protection at Clerkenwell. Great multitudes assembled round the building, and were about to demolish it, when a military force arrived. The crowd was dispersed, and several of the rioters were slain. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... marshal his scattered wits, and break the spell of the torturing brain picture. The shadows above him took on weird shapes; grinning faces with tangled gray locks; long snakelike bodies, and tails of red and yellow light twined and writhed sinuously about the beautiful ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the distance when the air around them began to show a definite tinge of purple. With the appearance of the purple hue there came a strange and swiftly increasing agony, a torturing vibration that seemed to be tearing every atom ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... sedentary on the Sunday afternoons after church-time. In fact, I affected any position rather than the sitting one. But all the Sundays were not joyless to me. One, in particular, though the former part of it had been passed in sickening fear, and the middle in torturing pain, its termination was marked with a heartfelt joyousness, the cause of which I must record as a tribute of gratitude due to one of the "not unwashed," but ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... had done to the woman who was ten thousand times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face like a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Since the middle of the seventeenth century, when by the reformation in Europe and the British Isles, the dragon was cast down from the symbolic heaven, he has been assailing in "great wrath" all ranks and degrees of men, not, as before, with fire and sword, with scaffolds, gibbets, thumb-screws,—torturing and destroying their mortal bodies, that he might reach their immortal souls: but by bringing them together in voluntary associations on principles of the covenant of works, subversive of the covenant ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... He again met Anita Rosario, the Spanish dancer, under whose guidance he had first turned to the halls for a livelihood, and once more took up with her. He seemed to have lost all thought or care for the feelings of his wife, for, after torturing her with jealousy over his attentions to the dancer, he took a house adjoining my own—on the borders of the most unfrequented part of the common at Wimbledon—established himself and Zuilika there, and brought the woman Anita home to live with them. From ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with the full determination to find out some speedy mode of putting my finny captives to death—as you are to understand that I have not the slightest compunction about killing, though infinite about torturing,—so my "slave," Jack, had orders to knock them on the head the instant he took the hook from their gills; but he banged them horribly, till I longed to bang him against the boat's side, and even cut their throats from ear to ear, so that they looked like so many Banquos without the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... you no touch of feeling that you look On horrors such as these without a shudder? Help me—take hold. What, will not one assist To pull the torturing arrow ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and its own capacities. It is pathetic to think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle were alive, but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... upon her bed in the night that followed this vain attempt at flight, and was torturing herself with anxious doubts whether Fidele had fallen a victim to his devotion, suddenly the tones of a huntsman's horn broke the silence; Marie Antoinette raised herself up and listened. Princess Elizabeth had done the same; and with suspended breath they both listened to the long-drawn and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... of the trench, head erect. If a splinter struck me it would wound me in the shoulders or the arms or knees. I bent low so that I might protect my stomach; I had seen men struck in that part of the body, the wounds were ghastly and led to torturing deaths. When a shell came near, I put the balls of my hands over my eyes, spread my palms outwards and covered my ears with the fingers. This was some precaution against blindness; and deadened the sound of explosion. Bill for a moment ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... and the Pope presented him with a consecrated hat and sword, an honour which had previously been bestowed only on reigning sovereigns. In Spain it was regarded not only as a sacred duty but a pleasant amusement for the King and his Court to watch the torturing of heretics. England alone—then a comparatively weak and insignificant country—stood out against this overwhelming combination. And in attempting to realize the position of affairs we must remember that in the sixteenth century the Papacy was ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... dollars," he concluded, "and of course if he had lived—," he paused, and walking to the window, his hands plunged deep into his homespun pockets, gazed uncomfortably upon the broad stretch of field and pasture so dear to the orphan nieces he was unwittingly torturing. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... here, driven out from bliss, condemned In this abhorred deep to utter woe! Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us without hope of end The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour, Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus, We should be quite abolished, and expire. What fear we then? what doubt we to incense His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged, Will either quite consume us, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... tip of my tongue, of course, to do so a hundred times. My life was passed in torturing myself with the question whether I had any chance, in hoping and fearing. But as often as I found myself alone with her I knew it was hopeless. Her manner to me—it was one of frank friendliness. There was no mistaking it. She ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Charlotte's marriage the only good thing." The beginning of the year had been saddened by the death of his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Scott; and the extravagance and waywardness of his son, now the laird of Abbotsford, had already greatly distressed the father and were to inflict more torturing anxiety and keener suffering as time went on. Walter Lockhart, in his happy, healthy boyhood, did not show the intellectual precocity of his elder brother; but he was a handsome, intelligent, and winning lad, with no foreshadowing of the recklessness of his later years. Mr. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... smothered her. Trina was but a reed before that giant strength. McTeague turned her face to his and kissed her again upon the mouth. Where was all Trina's resolve then? Where was her carefully prepared little speech? Where was all her hesitation and torturing doubts of the last few days? She clasped McTeague's huge red neck with both her slender arms; she raised her adorable little chin and kissed him in return, exclaiming: "Oh, I do love you! I do love you!" Never afterward were the two so happy as at ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... blow. Thus for five years each of her words had been a lie. A thousand jealous thoughts took possession of me, and madly, hardly knowing what I was about, I entered the room in which she was dying. All the questions that were torturing me burst forth over that bed of suffering: "Why did you go to Saint-Germain on Sundays? Where did you spend your days? Where did you spend that night? Come, answer me." And I bent over her, seeking in the depths of her still proud and ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... was called to appear before the Lord; and I am sure the recollection of having purposely given pain to others never disturbed the quietness of his death-bed. He felt the blessedness of having been merciful. For my own part, I never can see a man or boy driving cattle with sticks and goads; torturing the poor creatures for being tired, and lame, and thirsty, and faint; and cruelly punishing them for wishing to rest, or do drink, or to crop the green grass; or for being confused and frightened in the noisy, crowded streets of a city, ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... sordid and ugly, now that the glow was gone. All unknowingly, when Harlan pencilled: "The End," in fanciful letters at the bottom of the last page, he had had practically his last joy of his book. The torturing process of revision was to take all the life out of it. Sentences born of surging emotion would seem vapid and foolish when subjected to the cold, critical eye of his reason, yet he knew, dimly, that he must not change it ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... own part, who am but one man, of obscure condition, I do solemnly declare, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will suffer the most ignominious and torturing death, rather than submit to receive this accursed coin, or any other that shall be liable to the same objections, until they shall be forced upon me, by a law of my own country; and if that shall ever happen, I will transport ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... "The robbing and torturing of travellers, the plundering and burning of Saxon Villages... Almost all the Towns and Villages hereabouts are so plundered out, that many a one now has nothing but what he carries on his body. Plundering was universal: and no sooner ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... dealing with the half-deformed spoilt infant of which I have spoken. This evening that little brat was more than usually exasperating, and having exhausted the patience or repelled the company of all the rest, found itself alone, and set up a fretful, continuous scream, disagreeable even to me, and torturing to Martial ears, which, adapted to hear in that thin air, are painfully alive to strident, harsh, or even loud sounds. Instantly obeying a sign from her mother, Eveena rose in the middle of a conversation to which she had listened with evident interest, and devoted herself for ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... and began to beat him unmercifully, calling him the "hoss-steal." They easily could have murdered Kenton on the spot, but since he had proved such a terrible foe to them in the past, they preferred to enjoy their capture all the more by torturing him for awhile. He was carried by the Indians to Chillicothe, where he was several times forced to run the gauntlet. Finally, when tied to the stake to be burned, he was recognized by his boyhood friend, Simon Girty, who sent him to Detroit, ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... his jaw set and every muscle taut, his eyes leaping from one meter to another, his right hand slowly turning up the potentiometer which was driving more and ever more of the searing, torturing output of his super-power tube into that stubborn brain. The captive was standing utterly rigid, eyes closed, every sense and faculty mustered to resist that cruelly penetrant attack upon the very innermost recesses of his mind. Crane and Dunark scarcely breathed as the three-dimensional picture ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... put to. This unfortunate man, Russell, is a striking instance of divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him; he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach."—The Derwent Star, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... mechanical motion; and its so-called thought merged in the mere sense of life, and pleasure in the sense. The usual anodynes of social medicine became evident artifice. Stoicism was perhaps the best; religion was the most human; but the idea that any personal deity could find pleasure or profit in torturing a poor woman, by accident, with a fiendish cruelty known to man only in perverted and insane temperaments, could not be held for a moment. For pure blasphemy, it made pure atheism a comfort. God might be, as the Church said, a Substance, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... blind, so callous does impurity make even the refined and generous, that many a young man who can be a good son, a good brother, a noble friend, a patriotic citizen, will doom a girl whose only fault is that she is physically attractive—and possibly too affectionate and trusting—to torturing anxiety, to illness, to the horrible suffering of undesired travail, to disgrace, and in nineteen cases out of twenty to ostracism and the infamy of the streets. Murder is a small thing compared with this. Who would not ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... revolt; and a blind, childless prisoner, without counsellors or friends, was harmless. But to make the sight of his slaughtered sons the poor wretch's last sight, was a refinement of gratuitous delight in torturing. Thus singularly was Ezekiel's enigma solved and harmonised with its apparent contradictions in Jeremiah's prophecies: 'Yet shall he not see it, though he shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Sire. Forgive me for troubling you now but since our last meeting things have happened of a very serious nature ... hidden enemies want to destroy me ... to destroy us.... First of all they accused your Majesty of the murder of Susy d'Orsel, and now after torturing me with questions they have dared to say it was I!... I'm sure they overheard our last conversation and misunderstand ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... his brother's side, scarcely heeding what he saw, and torturing himself with the careless indifference with which Lucy had ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the inquisitors to be vigilant in searching out and punishing all guilty of this crime. Forms for the crime were regularly issued. For two hundred and fifty years the church was busy in punishing the impossible crime of witchcraft by burning, hanging and torturing men, women and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... kind would have made the interminable hours pass more quickly. The carving of a piece of wood might have kept him from torturing his own heart perpetually; but he did not turn to this slight solace. There were times when he sat for hours, for a whole age, as it seemed to him, in some lonely spot, hidden behind a great rock or half lost in a forest, thinking. And yet it was not ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... stealing a ship, collecting desperadoes, and torturing the local herdsmen till they gave up their masters' flocks, which were salted as provisions. Articles of service were then drawn up, on the principle "no prey, no pay." The spoils, when taken, were loyally divided as a rule, though Captain Morgan, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... her busy healthful life she had never been nervous before. It was not hard work that had worn upon her. The doctor told them when they were freshmen that no girl ever broke down from work unless worry was added. Gertrude knew perfectly well what torturing little worry was gnawing away in her mind. She kept telling herself that her speech to Sara had been true—it was so—Sara had broken her engagement—and she could not, could not, could not humble herself to apologize. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... went to her at her London home and informed her of all he had discovered, delighting in the fear and dread which she could not help showing. She knew now that this cruel man would always hold his knowledge over her head, torturing her with the threat of making it known ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... captured, and the frigate in which Hoche had embarked returned to port without having seen any of its companions. The invasion had failed, but the panic which it roused woke passions of cruelty and tyranny which turned Ireland into a hell. Soldiers and yeomanry marched over the country torturing and scourging the "croppies," as the Irish peasantry were termed from their short-cut hair; robbing, ravishing, and murdering at their will. The lightest suspicion, the most unfounded charges, were taken as warrants for bloodshed. So hideous were these ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... market again, was imprudent enough to carry under his belt the fine embroidered gloves of his master. Knowing these gloves could not belong to a merchant, the suspicious magistrates seized the boy again, and after torturing him, threatened to cut out his tongue unless he revealed his master's name. On learning the truth from the frightened lad, they informed the archduke, who sent soldiers to surround the inn. When the troopers questioned the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... did not seem to recognize in David a friend. He saw in him, apparently, but another of the stone-throwing, gun-shooting, torturing humans who were responsible for his present hateful captivity. With beak and claw and wing, therefore, he fought this new evil that had come presumedly to torment; and not until David had hit upon the expedient of taking off his ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... the night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching his splendid strength and towering will against ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in the steely light, her hands stretched forth in a suppliant gesture, confronted him from the far-off end of the verandah; and in the space between him and the obstinate phantom floated the murmur of words that fell on his ears in a jumble of torturing sentences, the meaning of which escaped the utmost efforts of his brain. Who spoke the Malay words? Who ran away? Why too late—and too late for what? What meant those words of hate and love mixed so strangely together, the ever-recurring names falling on his ears again ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... so satisfied with everything about his life that it was a kind of joy to meet him. The sourness of my own discontent was dissolved in the alembic of his joviality. Yet it was certain that he lived a life of the most torturing anxiety. There were recurring periods when his fortune hung in the balance, and his financial salvation was achieved as by fire. When he sat silent for a moment, strange things were written on his face. Haggard lines ran across the brow; the hollows underneath the eyes grew deep; and one could ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... For five weary, torturing nights did I go up to that room alone, and, with no sound of human proximity to cheer me or to break the wretched feeling of utter solitude, I endured the same experience. At last I could bear it no longer, and determined to have a change of ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... you," Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as though he were jumping from the top of a house. "Call Dmitri; I will fetch him—and let him come here and take your hand and take Ivan's and join your hands. For you're torturing Ivan, simply because you love him—and torturing him, because you love Dmitri through 'self-laceration'—with an unreal love—because you've ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... kidnapped by persons who might have pretended to be your relations and carried you off and murdered you for your clothing," said old Aaron Rockharrt, unconscious in his native rudeness that he was frightening and torturing a ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in his position, the next best thing to men, King John spared no means of getting it. He set on foot another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was quite in his way), and invented a new punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of money, the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... view, and indeed the whole view of this temple of Wrath or Justice, was suggestive of a frightful Inferno, with its rows of demon gods, hideous beyond Western conception, engaged in torturing writhing and bleeding specimens of humanity. Demon masks of ancient lacquer hung from the pillars, naked swords gleamed in motionless hands, and in a deep recess whose 'darkness' was rendered 'visible' by one lamp, was that indescribable horror the executioner ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... cried; "the false hounds have imprisoned her also. It is Sybilla's voice. God in heaven—they are torturing her!" ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... explain, but his captor rubbed the face of the outlaw deeper into the torturing spines ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... acclaiming Argives praised; Yea, silver-looted Thetis smiled, and gave The singer fleetfoot horses, given of old Beside Caicus' mouth by Telephus To Achilles, when he healed the torturing wound With that same spear wherewith himself had pierced Telephus' thigh, and thrust the point clear through. These Nestor Neleus' son to his comrades gave, And, glorying in their godlike lord, they led The steeds unto his ships. Then Thetis set Amidst ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... unrealised or from the milder malady of nerves. The medical or the spiritual adviser who should prescribe a course of Labrador whenever we are physically or spiritually "run down" would be of little use to the majority of us. We see here the monkish side of Mr. Wells' temperament deliberately torturing the social and worldly side of him, the spirit suggesting to the flesh and the devil that they ought to be content with spiritual contemplation. The mystic has the final word in those humorous-passionate conversations in which first and last things are discussed by the man ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Did he die like a craven, Begging those torturing fiends for his life? Was there a soldier who carried the Seven Flinched like a coward or fled from the strife? No, by the blood of our Custer, no quailing! There in the midst of the devils they close, Hemmed in by thousands, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... could not bear my own thoughts, the revulsion was too sudden, too full of turbulent, fierce, torturing emotions; I fled for a short relief to the house to which Madeline's father had invited me. But in vain I sought, by wine, by converse, by human voices, human kindness, to fly the ghost that had been raised from the grave of time. I soon returned to my own thoughts. I resolved ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from cruel boys,—for, though "he could kill game for food as a necessity, and dangerous wild animals, his soul shrunk from torturing even a fly." Dear heart, we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... that was irresistible,—'twas done. Long engagements are fearful strains, and our social license of questionings renders them wellnigh intolerable to men and women, who naturally shrink from speaking of matters which are to them so sacred. Ray declared that she should not be harassed by any such torturing talk and prying and questioning as that which has to be undergone by almost every girl whom civilized society fancies to be engaged. She could never doubt him for an instant, he felt assured, and he—well, he couldn't begin to realize his blessed fortune at all, so she must excuse his ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... not know. "Do I love him? Do I love him?" A thousand times she put the question to herself during the next two or three days. At night she hardly slept, but lay broad awake for hours in her little, gayly painted bed, with its white netting, torturing herself with doubts and questions. At times she remembered the scene in the station with a veritable agony of shame, and at other times she was ashamed to recall it with a thrill of joy. Nothing could have been more sudden, more unexpected, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... her long enough to put the plain business question which had been torturing his soul for ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... pumpkin. Now he brought the offerings personally in embarrassing bulk. One offering was a gramophone which nearly drove her mad. Even in its present stage of development it offends the sensitive ear; but in its early days it was an instrument of torturing cacophony. And Jaffery, thinking the brazen strains music of the spheres, would turn on the hideous engine, when he came to see her, and would grin and roar and expect her to shew evidence of ravished senses. She did her best, poor child, out of politeness and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... when we no longer believe in anything but a notary's signature—that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.—Let us see the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and then another day of torturing suspense. The fan came, but it had to be set up before anything could be done. As volumes of black smoke continued to pour from the shaft, the opening was made tight with a board and canvas cover; it was necessary, the bosses said, but to Hal it seemed the climax of horror. To seal ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... visions which had been torturing him the possible catastrophe of the Comas logs roaring through past the mouth of a useless canal; he could look ahead still farther and see the grins of the sawmill men down the Noda, setting their ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... revolutionary war. The sentence of death was accordingly remitted by the President, but his name was struck off the army list, and this republican hero, who had forgotten the art of war, went in his old age, broken-hearted and disgraced, to a living grave, with a worm in his vitals, gnawing and torturing him, more terribly than thousands of Indians, practising the most unheard of cruelties could have done, until death, so long denied, came to ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... out of all this walking and thinking, there emerged, after an hour of stupor, that it would be a misnomer to call sleep, two fixed results. The first of these was that he hated his father as a lost soul must hate its torturing demon, blindly, madly, impotently hated him; and the second, that he could no longer delay taking his wife into his confidence. Then he remembered the letter he had received from her on the previous ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... long climaxes. Furious gusts of emotion would come sweeping over her, shaking her as the tempest shakes the trees upon the hills; all her frame would quiver and throb with them—it was as if some dreadful thing rose up within her and took possession of her, torturing her, tearing her. This thing had been wont to set Jurgis quite beside himself; but now he stood with his lips set tightly and his hands clenched—she might weep till she killed herself, but she should not move him this time—not an inch, not an inch. Because ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to give people pain. You take a fiendish delight in torturing others. But if you think you can influence me in the slightest degree, you're ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... prominence, would surely have been check'd, had the eye of the public been properly educated by familiarity with the exquisite beauty of line of a well-shaped bust. I might show how thorough acquaintance with the ideal nude foot would probably have much modified the foot-torturing boots and high heels, which wring the foot out of all beauty of line, and throw the body forward into ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... bough of the apple-tree began to twitter. For a moment Lillie listened, then again she looked at me, in her eyes that which I had noticed several times before, a look of torturing fear and pain ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... And suddenly the latent fear that had been torturing him for the last two weeks died out utterly: this man would never need watching to prevent any attempt at self-destruction; this man before him was not of that caste. His self-centred absorption was of a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... to your bloody rites again: Preach—perpetuate damnation in your den; Then let your altars, ye blasphemers, peal With thanks to Heaven, that let you loose again, To practice deeds with torturing fire and steel, No eye may search, no tongue may ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... torture of being threatened to be tortured; secondly, the torture of being conveyed to the place of torture; thirdly, the torture of being, and bound for torture; fourthly, the torture of being hoisted on the torturing rack; and fifthly, and lastly, the torture ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... the trigger at once. He took a fierce delight in torturing the man who had wrecked his life,—even while he told himself he could not believe his boast. Now he watched the colour fade from Conward's cheek; the eyes stand out in his face; the livid blotches more livid still; the cigarette ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... existing cause of lynching is the perpetration, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape—the most abominable in all the category of crimes, even worse than murder. Mobs frequently avenge the commission of this crime by themselves torturing to death the man committing it; thus avenging in bestial fashion a bestial deed, and reducing themselves to a level with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to wrap Clifford up in her great, warm love, and make it all the world to him, so that he should retain no torturing sense of the coldness and dreariness without! Her little efforts to amuse him! How pitiful, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... new armies in the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pass to the sea we knew nothing. Day by day and night by night we were regaled with stories of 'heavy German losses' and futile tales of the deaths of German princes; neither ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... under the strain I put on him and on the rest of my torturers. So desperate did he become that he dared words with the Warden and washed his hands of the affair. From that day until the end of my torturing he never set ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and choked her. Then clear, dry, keen wind sung in her ears and whipped her hair. The light about her darkened. The King had headed into the pines. The heavy roar of the gale overhead struck Lucy with new and torturing dread. Sage King once in his life was running away, bridleless, and behind him there was fire on ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... them; I repeat, they would stop at nothing to save themselves if worst came to worst; their fear will make them fiends. One couldn't suppose they would dare seize Martinez in all defiance of law—but they did. One can't believe they would dream of torturing him for information—but I haven't a doubt that's what they've done. So you see why I'm worried about you. If anything happened, if any harm came ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... woman, that he doesn't need me any more, I feel free, quite free of him. And now I can say truthfully, I love you. Because everything is clear in my soul. My only worry is the divorce, and all the waiting to be gone through before we can—— Ah, that's torturing. ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... were once engaged, the engagement would not then be broken off because of any previous folly with Miss Neefit; and, again, if he were once engaged to Mary Bonner, Neefit would see the absurdity of torturing him further in regard to Polly. On the Wednesday evening he went up to town, and on the Thursday morning he put himself into a cab and ordered the man to drive him ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... strong a phrase for the occasion. Looking like the hunted and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-lipped, wild-eyed, draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and anger, and torturing himself with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he went by them in the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so completely did the force of his expression ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... genuine old copy: in faded yellow morocco binding— apparently not having been subjected to the torturing ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... replied Glaucon, 'I like to see them laying their ears alongside of their neighbours' faces—some saying, "That's a new note," others declaring that the two notes are the same.' Yes, I said; but you mean the empirics who are always twisting and torturing the strings of the lyre, and quarrelling about the tempers of the strings; I am referring rather to the Pythagorean harmonists, who are almost equally in error. For they investigate only the numbers of the consonances which are heard, and ascend no higher,—of the true numerical ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the storm is over and the calm has come, that we can look out again upon the broad and peaceful landscape. There are other trials that remind one of a nail in one's shoe: everywhere one goes, it is present, irritating, annoying, torturing. It hinders and detracts from all ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... looked up; she had grown white to the very lips. Raeburn, recognizing the form of a subpoena, came hastily forward, and in the merest glance saw how matters were. By no possibility could the most malicious of opponents have selected a surer means of torturing him. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... aloud to his aunt. Before he was halfway down the first column she was on the sofa with her smelling-salts, vowing she was more terrified than when she had expected to be killed every minute. When he had finished she upbraided him for torturing people unnecessarily, but remarked that he was even cleverer than she had thought him. The next morning she asked him to read it again; then read it herself. On the following ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... lupus, of which, happily, in America with our bright skies we know little. Lupus is the Latin word for wolf, and the ravenous ailment is fitly named, for it attacks by preference the face, and gnaws at the features, at nose, chin, or eye, with horrible, torturing persistence, killing slowly, while the patient shuts himself out from the world praying daily for ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... fringed lids quivered, drooped, the magnificent eyes closed as if to shut out some vision too torturing even for their brave penetrating gaze, and in her rigid whiteness she seemed some unearthly creature, who had done for ever with feverish life and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a hot and troubled sleep, and resumed his seat. Then suddenly, in full volume of voice, the prosecutor flung at him the lance for which he had been weakening Joe's defenses through those long and torturing hours. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... necessity of the occasion made me compel her to face the torturing attack of the icy shafts that were hurling themselves on us like ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... good claim to be called the foremost master of modern Hebrew prose. Ginzburg is the creator of a realistic Hebrew prose style, though he was permeated to the end with the style and the spirit of the Bible. Whenever the Biblical style can render modern thoughts only by torturing and twisting it, or by resorting to cumbersome circumlocutions, Ginzburg does not hesitate to levy contributions from Talmudic literature and even the modern languages. These linguistic additions made by him ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... he gasped. "How have you come? Oh, do not touch me — do not hurt me! Go — go quickly from this evil place, or perchance those devils will return and capture you as they have captured me, that they may torture you to death as they are torturing me. Oh, how did you come? I know the doors are locked and bolted. Are you devils in human guise, or hapless prisoners like myself? Oh, if you are still free, go — go ere they can return! They know that they cannot keep me much longer; they are thirsting for another victim. Let them ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... belabour the boy we found torturing it! He was much older and bigger than we were, but we were two to one, which we reckoned fair enough, considering his size, and that the cat had to be saved somehow. The poor thing's forepaws were so much hurt that it could ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... no further knowledge of this delightful couple to be thoroughly on the boy's side. It seemed to him that the man was quite capable of keeping a small animal at hand, for the fun of torturing it, and as for the woman—well, if there was her like in hell, Jim determined to be good for the ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... cavern in which he was kneeling filled with frightful figures; I saw all the sins, wickedness, vices, and ingratitude of mankind torturing and crushing him to the earth; the horror of death and terror which he felt as man at the sight of the expiatory sufferings about to come upon him, surrounded and assailed his Divine Person under the forms ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... less and less sure of myself. The pondering reached its height, as was inevitable, when there arose the question of choosing a profession and of planning the future rather than of following a vocation. But as long as this introspection lasted, I had a torturing feeling that my own eye was watching me, as though I were a stranger, a feeling of being the spectator of my own actions, the auditor of my own words, a double personality who must nevertheless one day become one, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... provost-marshal, strongly suspected that some of those who accompanied Carvajal had participated in this plot; he endeavoured to discover this by torturing Francisco de Guzman, one of the prisoners. Finding that Guzman made no confession on this head, he interrogated him particularly respecting a soldier along with Carvajal named Perucho de Aguira, and some of his friends, demanding ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... a cigarette, then with the refined cruelty that enjoyed torturing a victim who could not afford to ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... country. He had great military talent, wonderful energy, and a courage equal to any emergency. But Arnold did not start right. Even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfishness. He delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their sufferings. He scattered pieces of glass and sharp tacks on the floor of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys. Even in the army, in spite of his bravery, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... exclaimed, and Sophia was startled by the apprehension in her tone. Before evening the sciatica had indeed revisited Constance's sciatic nerve, and Sophia for the first time gained an idea of what a pulsating sciatica can do in the way of torturing its victim. Constance, in addition to the sciatica, had caught a sneezing cold, and the act of sneezing caused her the most acute pain. Sophia had soon stopped the sneezing. Constance was got to bed. Sophia wished to summon the doctor, but Constance assured her that ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... last that regrets were futile, Toni turned away and went home, there to spend a sleepless night torturing herself with all sorts of premonitions and visions ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... set up a whistle, inwardly pleased at the sketch he had made of Christine's head, and buoyed up by one of those flashes of hope whence he so often dropped into torturing anguish, like an artist ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out of heaven, but they are able to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures Him from their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces, His image in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has conceived of them, when they were not incorporated, and had no lead. They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then carried along with the general motion of religion in the community, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... quite distinct from the Spanish bull-fights. There is no brutality, no torturing of the beast with arrows and crackers, no goring of horses. The bull is uninjured, and, though he gets furious, clearly relishes the fight, and in some cases cannot be induced to abandon it. The old proconsular seat was draped, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit fallen, its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... not know—I am not sure. Sometimes I think it is, and then come these torturing doubts! I feel sure that she does not regard me with absolute indifference, for she could never look at me without having to go to bed with ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... masculine. Yes, that was the correlative element her being needed. The mere manliness of his pipe made its aroma in his clothes adorable. Or was it his big simplicity, in which she could bury all her torturing complexity? Oh, to nestle in it and be at rest. Yet she held him at arm's length. When they shook hands her nerves thrilled, but she was the colder outwardly for very fear ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... marked by care and anxiety, and he seemed ambitious to win a name. "Fear first assailed the child, and he trembled and screamed; but at a frown, with youth came love, torturing the hapless bosom, where fierce flames of rage, resentment, jealousy contend. Disturbed ambition presented next, to bid him grasp the moon and waste his days in angry sighs, add deep rivalry for shadows, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... hundreds, the savages dropped where they stood, life rived away by the torturing ultra-violet, burned away by the blast of pure heat, or consumed by the conflagrations that raged instantly wherever that wide-sweeping fan encountered combustible material. In the face of power supernatural they lost all thought of attack or of conquest, and sought only and ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... no torturing questions; I desire, Madam, a little conference with you. Ile thanke the rest ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... occasion of such door or lid: an open or swinging door frustrated this, and the fiends had to try some other locality. The friends of the departed were at least assured that they were not made the unconscious instruments of torturing the departed in their daily occupations. The superstition prevails in the North as well as in the West of England; and a similar one exists in the South of Spain, where I have ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... spare. Speak!—though this soft warm heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine, Be left more desolate, more dreary cold Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine— Speak, that my torturing doubts ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... what we will do. Instead of torturing each other with our unpronounceable names, let us at once adopt the familiar 'thou,' and call each ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... often occurred to me of late. By such a cause I was driven from home last winter. What the result will be this time I cannot tell; but if I did know, I would not wait, as I did then, until it came on me with such power as to be torturing in the extreme. Ah, what nervous strength and energy I feel at such times! If I speak of it to my brothers, they cannot understand me, never having had the same experience. My timidity, which does not wish to be thought of as desiring anything extra on account ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... them, and afterwards, on seeing the Russians, threw the naked bodies of these dying victims from the doors and windows of their houses into the streets, and there unmercifully left them to perish of cold; these vile barbarians even made a merit in the eyes of the Russians of torturing them there; such horrible crimes as these must be denounced to the present and to future ages. Now that our hands are become impotent, it is probable that our indignation against these monsters may be their sole punishment in this world; but a day will come, when the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Montaigne, denouncing the grasping spirit of the nobles. Then spoke Savaron, stinging them with sarcasm, torturing them with rhetoric, crushing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... anxious to get away from, doing the same tasks, day after day, that had once seemed so trivial and monotonous. She lay there picturing the whole scene, making herself more miserable every instant, yet finding a sorrowful sort of pleasure in thus torturing herself. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... elate over life. He'd help her on with her wraps and be polite over doorways. Perhaps. He turned to his wife and laughed softly. A way out. Give her to the man. Give her away. End her love for him—her damned, torturing love that made him turn over inside and weep at night when she was asleep; that hounded him like an unclean memory. It was only her love that made him unclean. He looked at her with his ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... as the monster, recovering itself, was turning madly to finish off its insignificant but torturing opponent, A-ya came leaping back to the rescue, with a blazing and sparkling faggot in each hand, and the old men, some with fire-brands, some with spears, clamoring resolutely behind her. With fearless dexterity, she thrust the fire straight into the monster's eyeballs, totally blinding ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... loveliness: its honied dew (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew) Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven, And fell on gardens of the unforgiven In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower So like its own above that, to this hour, It still remaineth, torturing the bee With madness, and unwonted reverie: In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head, Repenting follies that full long ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the birth of Epictetus is unknown. The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome, and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero. There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him; but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Encheiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age. It is not said how he became ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... sight! for I can bear no more: Let furies drag thee quick to hell; let all The longer damned have rest; each torturing hand Do thou employ, till Cleopatra comes; Then join thou too, and help to torture her! [Exit ALEXAS, thrust ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... feel this reflection. Had her husband been less kind, generous and true, she could have borne the present with a firmness worthy of her spirit. But the thoughts that now filled her breast were maddening, merciless and torturing. ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... was more than Paul could bear, and took him off with Pike alone into the leafless woods which crowned a hill at the top of the park. And then he would pause, and look out at the view, and the dull November sky, a madness of agonising unrest torturing his heart. ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... reside at the castle, torturing herself with jealous fears. She appeared before the Duke with eyes reddened by sleepless nights and bitter tears, and her habitual ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... hair into the bargain for stuffing chairs with; and between us, who knows—many rottener ship has come to land—but that some genty Miss, fond of plays, poems, and novels, may fancy our Benjie when he is giving her red hair a twist with the torturing irons, and run away with him, almost whether he will or not, in a stound ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... her world and time, not unsophisticated; but it chanced that she possessed a mind natively maiden. Through all her vigil, through all her questioning and novel self-criticism, her mind's-eye picture of Canning, as his arms went round her, ran like a torturing motif. The portrait became detestable to her. She hated him, she would hate him forever as the man who had cruelly revealed to her that love and his base brother can speak with the same voice ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture of tender ties,—he shrank from the parting with deeply-loved friends,—his soul was overburdened, his spirit was swollen to agony, and he rushed to his knees, and prayed, "Father, if thou ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... should come. He was beginning to feel the weight of age. He was nearly seventy years old, and the rude life of the country, the horseback rides in the rain, the rivers forded upon his swimming horse, the nights passed in the open air, had brought on a rheumatism that was torturing his best days. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... none confess but the guilty? What is all that we have read about the Inquisition and the old tortures? I have had to learn that torturing has not gone out of ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Mahatma? A man! One of those two-legged beasts that hunt hares; a thing like Giles and Tom—yes, Tom? Oh! not that—not that! I'd almost rather go through everything again than become a cruel, torturing man." ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King 140 Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain More torturing than the one whereon I roll. Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God, Being wise and kind: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich perfumers, are represented assuming a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... see him get clear down. I know this woman. I know what she means. Let me tell you, father. For two years she's been playing with Tom like a cat. I knew it when she began. I can't say how I knew it; but I felt it—felt it reflected in his moods, saw him nervous and feverish. She's been torturing him, father—she's strong. Also she's—she's hard. Tom hasn't—well, I mean she's always kept the upper hand. I know that in my soul. And he's stark, raving mad somewhere within him." A storm of emotion shook her and then she cried passionately, "And, oh, father, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... though he was seeing pictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, long ago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, in which dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit of reminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of his relationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that that relationship was finally, hopelessly closed. His was not a character that ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... wished to go from one plantation to another to carry passes in case they were stopped as suspected runaways. Frequently slaves would visit without benefit of passes, and as result they suffered severe torturing. Often the sons of the slaves' owners would go "nigger hunting" and nothing—not even murder was too horrible for them to do to slaves caught without passes. They justified their fiendish acts by saying the "nigger tried to run away when ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Carmen was Diego's child, she must go with him. Jose could no longer endure this torturing thought. He rose from the bed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Clair in 1791, and he had been present at the burning of Colonel Crawford in 1782. By some he is said to have tried to beg and to buy their prisoner off from the Wyandots, and by others to have taken part in mocking his agonies, if not in torturing him. It seems certain that he lived to be a very old man, and it is probable that he died fighting the Americans in our second war with ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... nearly all the day, after his exhausting labors and torturing pains. But with the sunset bugle he fretted to be let out. Ailie had wept and pleaded, Mrs. Brown had reasoned with him, and Mr. Brown had scolded, all to the end of persuading him to sleep in "the hoose the nicht." But when no one was ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... heroic memory—but then to leave Melisselda! To leave her warm breast and the sunlight and the green earth, and all that beauty of the world and of human life to which his eyes had only been unsealed after a lifetime of self-torturing blindness? ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... westward, starting from New Granada and going down the rivers, is trying to settle on the Orinoco mouth; that he is hanging the poor natives, encouraging the Caribs to hunt them and sell them for slaves, imprisoning the caciques to extort their gold, torturing, ravishing, kidnapping, and conducting himself as was usual among ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... at this moment against which her soul rebelled—the most scrupulous order, the most rigid self-repression, the most determined sacrificing of 'this warm kind world,' with all its indefensible delights, to a cold other-world with its torturing inadmissible claims. Even in the midst of her stolen joys at Manchester or London, this mere name, the mere mental image of Catherine moving through life, wrapped in a religious peace and certainty as austere as they were beautiful, and asking of all about her the same absolute surrender ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... must love me, must you not? Very well, then you must answer me. Were I to lose you forever, were these walls to crumble over my head, I will not leave this spot until I have solved the mystery that has been torturing me for more than a month. Speak, or I will leave you. I may be a fool who destroys his own happiness, I may be demanding something that is not for me to possess, it may be that an explanation will separate us and raise before me an insurmountable ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... not finish, for the woman she was torturing suddenly laid a hot hand hard and close, for the space of a few seconds, over those malevolent lips. Mrs. Champney drew back, turned in her chair ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... a torturing, doubt-raising, perplexing thing this Love was! A few hours ago he had known nothing whatever of it ... had merely imagined cold, austere, wrong things about it ... and now it had hold of him and was hurting him. Every particle of his ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine |
