"Ferocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again, Saranoff," said Dr. Bird in even tones of cold ferocity which made even Saranoff shiver. "We will meet again, and when you whimper and beg for mercy, remember ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... Lake Indians belong, I am told, to the Chippewas; but the traits of cunning and warlike ferocity that formerly marked this singular people seem to have disappeared beneath the milder influence ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... myself, with regard to propaganda—I shall speak of the so-called conspiracies in Chapter V.—nothing has reached my ears of which these gentlemen need in any way be ashamed. Individual mistakes we have, of course, all made; in view of the ferocity and protraction of the struggle they were inevitable. But in general the German propaganda in America in no way deserves the abuse with which it has been covered, in part, too, at home. If it had really been so clumsy or ineffective ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other monstrously. The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became very quiet. They had never witnessed such intensity of ferocity, and they were awed by it. The two fighters were greater brutes than they. The first splendid velvet edge of youth and condition wore off, and they fought more cautiously and deliberately. There had been no advantage gained either way. "It's anybody's fight," Martin ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... and bravely the more fortunate came on. They tore through the barbed wire with a fiendish frenzy and leaped down on to parts of their enemy's lines. With that mad ferocity which only a Moslem fanatic can display, they plugged their bayonets into the first opposing man. Cold steel is hard to face. Few armies can face it. Only Russians, Britishers, and Japs are good at the game. And these sons of John Bull stood up to the test with a magnificent ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... of authors besieged the publisher's shop; and by entreaties, threats, nay, cries of treason, tried to hinder its appearance. What a scene it must have been—of teeth gnashing above ragged coats, and eyes glaring through old periwigs—of faces livid with famine and ferocity; while, to complete the confusion, hawkers, booksellers, and even lords, were mixed with the crowd, clamouring for its issue! And as, says Pope, "there is no stopping a torrent with a finger, out it came." The consequence he had foreseen. A universal howl of rage and pain burst from the aggrieved ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... of roughness, but with perfect good-humour. On the least encouragement he laid his paws upon our shoulders, rubbed his head upon us, and his teeth and claws having been filed, there was no danger of tearing our clothes. He was kept in the above court for a week or two, and evinced no ferocity, except when one of the servants tried to pull his food from him; he then caught the offender by the leg, and tore out a piece of flesh, but he never seemed to owe him any ill-will afterwards. He one morning broke his cord, and, the cry being given, the castle gates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... were fixed on the girl's face; his shoulders slouched forward; he was undoubtedly half drunk and he had the whisky decanter in one hand, a slanting candlestick in the other. He said, with a heavy ferocity, to Nancy: ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Arabs had died out, but they had been succeeded in their schemes of conquest as well as in their adherence to the false faith of Mahomet, by the savage Turks, whose ferocity and hatred of Christianity were especially displayed in the ill-treatment of those Christians whose piety led them to visit the scenes of our Blessed Lord's Life and Death. [Sidenote: Cause of the Crusades.] The indignation excited ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... rear of the Customs compounds without a sound being heard or a living thing seen. All along hundreds of yards of twisting alleyways the native houses stood empty and silent, abandoned by their owners just as they are. Even the Peking dog, a cur of great ferocity, who in peaceful times abounds everywhere and is the terror of our riding-parties, had fled, as if driven away by the fear of the coming storm. In the distance, as we stealthily moved, we could hear an occasional rattle of musketry, probably directed against the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... restless and agitated carriage afforded also not less striking contrast to the polished and aristocratic demeanour of their companions. They paced the chamber with hurried and unequal steps, and wild and uncouth gestures; waving, with a reckless ferocity, burning torches and whips of scorpions. It is hardly necessary to add that these were the Furies, and that the conversation which I am about to report was carried ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... shake him of without a considerable struggle, in the course of which Tressilian had opportunity to rise and possess himself once more of his weapon. Leicester again turned towards him with looks of unabated ferocity, and the combat would have recommenced with still more desperation on both sides, had not the boy clung to Lord Leicester's knees, and in a shrill tone implored him to listen one moment ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... semblances of God, hewn out of stone or wood by the primitive races, are mostly hideous inventions of the evil thoughts of evil minds. From the terrifying African God, "Mumbo-Jumbo," to the artistic bronze representations of the Deity of the nations of the East all are marked with awe-enforcing ferocity and ugliness, instead of by the soul-inspiring lineaments of love and beauty. Tremblingly the minds of men have groped their way along through the mazes of ignorance and enforced darkness to a degree of personal liberty; ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... gorgeous bed-quilts and pillow-cases—made of patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the awesome strength and ferocity of the Lembarene strain of mosquitoes, but of stout, fair-flowered and besprigged chintzes; and you will observe these things are often being ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... themselves from ferocity. They do not desire to crush or kill the tiger. Their minds are so filled with love and compassion that there is no point of connection between them and the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... battle. There was dust all around, kicked up by the scuffling feet of the huge warriors, and his breath came in gasps. Mind-voices shouted and screamed but he paid no attention; he swung his bludgeon over his head with a ferocity that made it whistle with a low sound in the wind. One of the defenders broke through the line around him, and he brought the bludgeon smashing down at him before he could thrust with his sword; the warrior fell to one side at the last moment and took the ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... sky, the signs with which we had grown familiar as indicative of results. There was a good augury in the comparatively slight German shell fire in response, though we were reminded that it might at any minute develop with sudden ferocity. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... come to see what had happened, hearing from a scared keeper that someone was shot. Peter looked up and saw them. It was a dreadful moment for the three to meet. His friend, Maitland, seeing the unnatural ferocity in his eyes, tried to draw him away. Even Richard Carew, the uncle, looked a little alarmed. But Peter in his madness took a step forward. "You cur, you libelled her," he hissed at his brother, and cursed him bitterly. And then Geoffrey lost his head too. An ugly sneer distorted ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Others were mown down by musketry trying to escape across the Tuileries gardens. A few got away and sought refuge in a near-by church, but were there overtaken by the popular fury, and butchered. The rage of the people was unbridled, and success turned it into ferocity, even bestiality. The bodies of the Swiss were mutilated ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... he must love you with all his heart!' cried Helena, with an earnestness that threatened to blaze into ferocity if he didn't. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... with almost unbelievable ferocity. The houses had not been completed when the first hurricanes came, and they were smashed into toothpicks. The winds came, vicious winds full of dust and sleet and ice, wild erratic twisting gales that ripped the village to shreds, tearing off the topsoil ...
— Image of the Gods • Alan Edward Nourse
... scattered in all parts of the prairie. Seven were at first found and buried in one grave. Ten or twelve others, in the course of a fortnight, were discovered in the long grass that bordered the marshes. The acts of the Indians were accompanied by their characteristic ferocity. Some of their victims were horribly mangled. With the exception of one individual, the whites who accompanied the Indians, did not take part in the butcheries that were committed. A young man by the name of Calve, was found dead, his skull split open, and a tomahawk, on the blade of which ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... already rendered savage by the exhibition of blood; they thirsted for more; their superstition was aided by their ferocity. Aroused, inflamed by the spectacle of their victims, they forgot the authority of their rulers. It was one of those dread popular convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant, half free and half servile, and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... and calling them murderers, assassins, with a violence that shook his frame from head to foot. But Lapoulle seemed not even to hear him. Squatted on the ground beside the corpse, he was devouring the bloodstained bread, an expression of stupid ferocity on his face, with a loud grinding of his great jaws, while Chouteau and Loubet, seeing him thus terrible in the gratification of his wild-beast appetite, did not even dare claim ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... ruler, but becomes either a despot or demagogue; and in the one case is feared, in the other despised by his subjects. Still the one is the result of kindliness of disposition, and the other that of selfishness and ferocity. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... suppose I'll have to satisfy you, that bein' the case," said Reddy, his assumed ferocity of demeanor melting down into a broad grin, "although 'tis not much of a tale ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... perfection in brutes. Women are more jealous than men, small-hearted men are more jealous than those of larger mind and wider sympathy, and animals are the most jealous of all. Now Hendrika was in some ways not far removed from animal, which may perhaps account for the ferocity of her ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... they were, what relation they bore to Homer, and why they were called 'Rhapsodoi,' we have seen debated in Germany through the last half century with as much rabid ferocity as was ever applied to the books of a fraudulent bankrupt. Such is the natural impertinence of man. If he suspects any secret, or any base attempt to hide and conceal things from himself, he is miserable until he finds out ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and a cry burst from his gaping throat—a cry of human agony. And Yseult saw in the werewolf's eyes the eyes of some one she had seen and known, but 't was for an instant only, and then the eyes were no longer human, but wolfish in their ferocity. A supernatural force seemed to speed the spear in its flight. With fearful precision the weapon smote home and buried itself by half its length in the werewolf's shaggy breast just above the heart, and then, with a monstrous sigh—as if he yielded up his life without ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... was merely an outbreak of his stupid ferocity, or if she had exasperated him by her threats and taunts, for she was of a haughty spirit, poor child! and perhaps rather elevated by the thought of the coming coronet, will never be known. The murderer was in no state to make a confession, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... reason, and (what is more) to the mild law of the holy gospel. Some Spaniards, accompanied by evangelical ministers, had penetrated those provinces at times from the year 1597, with great zeal; but they could not remain there because of the ferocity of the natives, and for other casualties, which make those provinces less habitable, notwithstanding that they abound in many things that are necessary to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... the bursting of the coming storm. At last it came. A wild, long, savage yell from hundreds of throats rose on the still night air, and, confident as they were in their position, there was not one of the garrison but felt his blood grow cold at the appalling ferocity of the cry. Simultaneously there was a tremendous rush at the doors and windows, which tried the strength of frame and bar. Then, as they stood firm, came a rain of blows with ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... port of Hamburg, and was finally called on to decide as arbitrator whether this was a Dutch or German town. Theological discussions were also by no means infrequent. One of my comrades insisted with a fervour almost amounting to ferocity upon the reality of "conversion," and was opposed by another whose tendencies were more Pelagian, and who went so far as to maintain that no one would employ the services of a "converted" man if he could secure one who was "unconverted". The amount of bad ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity—it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had made himself familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would very ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... she bit her lips so deeply that a speck of blood tinged her handkerchief. The next instant she was clutching her winnings with almost the ferocity of a hungry animal. Then she leaned back a moment later exhausted in her chair, her face thrown up, her eyes ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of Savage, and the mingled fire, rudeness, pride, meanness, and ferocity of his character[503], concur in making it credible that he was fit to plan and carry on an ambitious and daring scheme of imposture, similar instances of which have not been wanting in higher spheres, in the history of different countries, and have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... struggle between the two animals had been awful, this was Titanic. The air was torn by the roars of the reptile, the screams of the great cat, and the shrieks of the tree. The very ground rocked with the ferocity of the conflict. There could be but one result—soon the tree, having absorbed the two gladiators, resumed its upright position in all ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... and the man's life and character had stamped themselves on what had once been a goodly mould. There was something oppressive in his elaborate politeness. There was a glare, not far removed from ferocity, in the great grey eyes, so little shaded by their lids and light eyelashes that occasionally a portion of the white eyeball above the iris was revealed, and there was an intangible brooding melancholy about the autocrat whose will was ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... creatures seek their own happiness, and society is therefore natural to any, because it is naturally productive of this happiness. To render therefore any animal social is to render it inoffensive; an instance of which is to be seen in those the ferocity of whose nature can be tamed by man. And here the reader may observe a double distinction of man from the more savage animals by society, and from the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... London in particular, and most of the great cities, exhibited to the person and the cause of Edward IV. There was a feeling that his reign was an advance in civilization upon the monastic virtues of Henry VI., and the stern ferocity which accompanied the great qualities of "The Foreign Woman," as the people styled and regarded Henry's consort, Margaret of Anjou. While thus the gifts, the courtesy, and the policy of the young ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... captain. "The creatures are well named, too. The sea leopard is as formidable as his namesake on land. The sea elephant is his big brother in size and ferocity." ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the bend in the ravine came three men, the central figure a man of great stature. He walked proudly, with long, swaggering strides and swinging arms. His long black hair, bearded chin, and beady eyes set under heavy eyebrows, gave a ferocity to his appearance which Ellerey did not find attractive. He looked like a man in whom the barbarian was still active, whose laws of right and wrong and honor were likely to be of his own fashioning—one ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... be performed on the body of Amalatok— operations with which the Royal College of Surgeons is probably unacquainted. Leo, whose knowledge of the Eskimo tongue was rapidly extending, sought to counteract the patient's ferocity by preaching forgiveness and patience. Being unsuccessful, he had recourse to a soporific plant which he had recently discovered. To administer an overdose of this was not unnatural, perhaps, in a youthful doctor. Absolute prostration was not the precise result he had hoped for, but it was ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... The ferocity of this beast surpasses that of all others, for whilst the lion, the bear and even the tiger and panther have been known to show some feeling of respect, gratitude or fear, the sladan never exhibits one or the other. It would almost seem that in him is concentrated all the hatred of a race ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... alone the artistic truth with which the limbs and the features were gifted; but on the countenance of each little puppet the carver's art had wrought an expression of wickedness that was appalling. Every tiny face had its special stamp of ferocity. The lips were thin and brimful of malice; the small black bead-like eyes glittered with the fire of a universal hate. There was not one of the manikins, male or female, that did not hold in his or her hand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon; by S.W. BAKER, Esq., pp. 8, 9. "Next to a rogue," says Mr. BAKER, "in ferocity, and even more persevering in the pursuit of her victim, is a female elephant." But he appends the significant qualification, "when her young one has ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Alegretti, relates of Pope Sixtus IV: "The Colonna family, opponents of the Pope's nephew Riario, was persecuted by him with the most savage ferocity. He seized on their domain of Marino, and causing the prothonotary Colonna to be attacked in his own house, took him prisoner, and put him to death. The mother of Colonna came to St. Celso, in Banchi, where the corpse lay, and lifting the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... and he could no longer stand the sound of his own voice, he would think of bringing one of them down with him, into the drains. One at a time, they could be handled. Then he'd remember their sharp savage eyes, their animal ferocity, and he would realize that the idea was impossible. If one of their kind disappeared, suddenly and without trace, others would certainly become suspicious, begin to search for him—and ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan
... devoured, if not thus armed; the stings seem a protection against some kinds of insects, as well as the naked mouths of quadrupeds. Many plants lose their thorns by cultivation, as wild animals lose their ferocity; and some of them their horns. A curious circumstance attends the large hollies in Needwood-forest, they are armed with thorny leaves about eight feet high, and have smooth leaves above; as if they were conscious that horses and cattle could not reach their upper branches. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... so powerful as Nilo, Sergius was quite as tall; and while they stood looking at each other, their faces a little apart, the contrast between them was many sided. And one might have seen the ferocity of the black visage change first with pleased wonder; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... sliding downward like a huge rope and descending toward them with lightning rapidly. They gave a great gasp as they recognized the countenance of King Anko, the sea serpent, its gray hair and whiskers bristling like those of an angry cat, and the usually mild blue eyes glowing with a ferocity even more terrifying than ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... cool way of breaking in upon two sleeping females had the ferocity of a wild beast in it. Was he killing my cousin—smothering her with pillows so that she could not scream out? The thought drove me frantic. My arms were goose-pimpled like ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... view," said the Captain, who was deeply impressed by the ferocity of wind and wave, "but I was doing something besides admiring it. I was thinking that it won't do us much good to sit here any longer. The lake is getting rougher all the time and there is no hope of Uncle Teddy's being able to come for us tonight. I think the best thing to do would be to ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... aptitude in war. It was a profession was not born for, and for which he could not qualify himself by study. During the last fifteen or twenty years of his life, he was accused of something more than fierceness and ferocity. Wanderings were noticed in his conduct, which were not exhibited in his own house alone. Entering one morning into the apartment of the Marechale de Noailles (she herself has related this to me) as her bed was being made, and there being only the counterpane to put on, he stopped short ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... said, in a low tone, not altogether devoid of ferocity. "I mean it was Penrod who left the faucets running, and Penrod who tied the boys' shoes together, and filled some of them with soap and mucilage, and put Miss Lowe's hair in Roddy Bitts's overcoat. No; look me in the eye, Carlie! They were all shouting that silly ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... is certainly in need of new shafts," retorted Hien, and drawing his sword with an expression of ferocity he caused it to whistle around his head so loudly that a flock of migratory doves began to arrive, under the impression that others of their tribe were calling ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... generally merry-looking, but at times they and his mouth so suddenly changed, and gave her such an idea of latent passion, that it almost made her afraid. But this look was only for an instant; and had in it no doggedness, no vindictiveness; it was rather the instantaneous ferocity of expression that comes over the countenances of all natives of wild or southern countries—a ferocity which enhances the charm of the childlike softness into which such a look may melt away. Margaret might fear the violence of the impulsive nature thus occasionally ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sinking, floundering about. A mounted figure passed like a flash through the mist, another plunged after, a third wheeled and flew back around the bend. But the rest were doomed. Already the franc-tireurs were among them, whining with ferocity; the scene was sickening. One by one the battered bodies of the Uhlans were torn from their frantic horses until only one remained—Von Steyr—drenched with blood, his sabre flashing above his head. They pulled him ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... maintained their uproar, discharging their rifles into the air, shrieking defiance at their invisible foes, and voicing insulting invitations to combat. This ferocity, however, served only to terrify further the civil population and to close the shutters of San Antonio the tighter. Meanwhile, the loyal troops remained safely in their blockhouses, pouring a steady fire into the town. And despite this admirable display of courage ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Star Circle Ranch. They were given to loud laughter, but he noticed that most of this laughter was at the misfortunes of others. And they were always playing jokes on one another and cutting up tricks; but beneath this playfulness there seemed to be a sort of fierceness—something like the ferocity that lurks beneath the play of ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... employment of coercion in the maintenance of its opinions; to repudiate utterly the declaration that "the Inquisition is an urgent necessity in view of the unbelief of the present age," and in the name of human nature to protest loudly against the ferocity and terrorism of that institution? Has ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... visited his Colonists on Red River, when he made allocations for their separate homes for them, when he pledged his honor and estate that the settlers might in time be independent, and when he made religious provision for both his Protestant and Catholic settlers, yet think of the unexampled ferocity with which he was attacked upon his return to Upper Canada, in law suits, and illegal processes, so that his estates became heavily encumbered, so that he went to France to pine away and die. The world failed to see any glamour in him, and carelessly ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... 'This ebullition of violence in the potent Earl of Angus is not without its example in the real history of the house of Douglas, whose chieftains possessed the ferocity, with the heroic virtues, of a savage state. The most curious instance occurred in the case of Maclellan, Tutor of Bombay, who, having refused to acknowledge the pre-eminence claimed by Douglas over the gentlemen and Barons ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... ferocity which quite startled me. I did not answer him; for, in truth, I could not see that Agalma had been very much to blame, even as he told the story, and felt sure that could I have heard her version it would have worn a very different aspect. That she was cold, and disappointed him, might ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and had been totally crushed in a few weeks;[136] not without terrible loss of life on both sides, nor without the insurgent leaders—though many of them were gentlemen of good birth, fortune, and education, and still more were clergy—showing a ferocity and ingenuity in cruelty which the worst of the French Jacobins had scarcely exceeded; one of the saddest circumstances of the whole rebellion being, that the insurgents, who had burnt men, women, and children alive, who had deliberately hacked others to pieces against ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... years before his rule began. For in the year 1282 'that discreet man, Mr Walter de Lechelade,' the Precentor of Ottery, was waylaid coming from Exeter Cathedral in his canonical robes, and murdered by 'certain sons of perdition full of fiendish ferocity.' 'Mr Walter de Lechelade' was probably extremely unpopular locally, because he had obtained the lease for life of the Manor and Church of Ottery from the authorities at Rouen, and was allowed to make all the profit he could out of the revenues. It is interesting to note the ecclesiastical ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... accounts of horrible monsters, terrible in ferocity, whose mission was the destruction of the life of the individuals unfortunate enough to come into their domains. The ogres known as the Cyclops, and the fierce anthropophages, called Lestrygons, of Sicily, who were neighbors of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... argument as you have, even bringing in the bull-dog (203/3. "Variation of Animals and Plants," Edition I., Volume II., page 431: "Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport?"), with respect to variations not having been specially ordained. Your metaphor of the river (203/4. See Wallace, op. cit., pages 477-8. He imagines an observer examining a great river-system, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... accustomed to assemble at that place, for the purpose of making their destructive incursions into those colonies. Their route was marked by fire and the scalping knife; and neither age nor sex could afford exemption from their ferocity. The expulsion of the French gave the English entire possession of the country, and produced a complete revolution in the disposition of the Indians inhabiting it. Finding the current of success to be running against their ancient friends, they were willing to reconcile themselves ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... awful precipice and roaring torrent; tremendous mountains arose in every vista. The gigantic landscape, uncheered by a touch of changing light or a solitary ray of sun, was yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. The hearts of two lonely men might shrink a little, if they had to win their way for miles and hours among a legion of silent and motionless men—mere men like themselves—all looking at them ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... man. As soon as we got outside, the mob which the uproar had attracted hooted me and followed me, and no doubt I should have been torn to pieces if I had not escaped into a church, which I left by another door a quarter of an hour later. My fright saved me, for I knew the ferocity of the Provencals, and I took care not to reply a word to the storm of abuse which poured on me. I believe that I was never in greater ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645 Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne for toleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism, with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made more piquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of the duellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and 418-19; Wood's ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... look nearer home and they would find from the records of the Irish Legislature that during the "halcyon" days of "Grattan's Parliament"—the eighteen years between 1782 and the Union—no less than fifty-four Coercion Acts were passed, some of them of a thoroughness and ferocity quite unknown in later legislation. The close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth were, in reality, in spite of a certain amount of agrarian crime, organised and subsidised ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... pats them like a Graeco-Roman wrestler; but there is always the extraordinarily graceful, lithe movement and, with curious exceptions, a supreme unconsciousness of the audience; whilst the passionate volubility and the almost brutal ferocity thrill the house. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... treadmill. It is the mentality of mutual distrust and fear. The appalling scenes of inhumanity and injustice, which are growing familiar to us, are the outcome of a psychology that deals with terror. No cruelty can be uglier in its ferocity than the cruelty of the coward. The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... what was pure and good, and this ideal served to make him less a savage and more a good and true man. Although he was rendered no less brave and warlike by this influence, it inclined him to tenderness and mercy, acting as a curb to the ferocity that in his fathers had been almost entirely unrestrained. It made him recognize the sacredness of womanhood. The true value of the wife and the mother had never before been known. In none of the ancient communities did women attain the position of importance that they occupied in the ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... a black tongue and pale grey eyes that gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. The first thing that it saw in the park was Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was stealing towards her, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... for intending to recover himself in public estimation. Unfortunately, at the very moment when public opinion was condoning his past a foolish affair, envenomed by the gossip of the country-side, revived the latent and very general belief in the ferocity of his character. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... cut down into the pumpkin with a ferocity quite startling, and split the two halves apart with a jerk that made the horn-comb reel among her fiery tresses, and sent uncle Nat quite aghast ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... experience of San Diego serves as an example of their "free speech" campaigns. In 1910, I.W.W. agitators began to hold public meetings in the streets, in the course of which their language increased in ferocity until the indignation of the community was aroused. An ordinance was then passed by the city council prohibiting street speaking within the congested portions of the city, but allowing street meetings in other parts of the city if a permit from the police department were first obtained. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... the miracles how the high beatitude consequent upon that wonderful event of Dorothy's love put Richard in a vaguely belligerent mood. It was an amiable ferocity at that, and showed in nothing more dire than just an eye of overt challenge to all the world. Also, he dilated and swelled in sheer masculine pride of himself, and no longer walked the streets, but stalked. Naturalists will not be surprised by these revelations, having observed kindred ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... people is shown with no less clearness. The ferocity they preserved amid all the luxurious appliances of their civilization is commemorated. Atrocities of every kind find a place in the reliefs. Among the prisoners of war the most fortunate are those led by a cord passed through their lips. Others are mutilated, crucified, flayed alive. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... nature was undisciplined, his temper uncertain, and his great powers quite as much at the service of his passions as of his principles. He made himself respected, feared, and finally hated; his lack of restraint and balance, his ferocity of spirit when opposed, and the violence with which he assailed his enemies, neutralized his splendid gifts, marred his fortune, and sent him into lonely exile at Dublin, where he longed for the ampler world of London. Few figures in literary history are more pathetic than that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... them. Now, the ingenious juggler who packed himself into a bottle, might possibly have succeeded in infringing the aforesaid rule: no other human being could have got his cranium through the bars. I suspect, it was simply an outbreak of the plethoric sentry's irrational ferocity (he had been sweltering under a burning sun for two hours) on the first helpless object that came across him; for I could not make out that the women had answered or aggravated him. I addressed to my friend many compliments on his prowess—trusting ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... you?" said Thord, turning full upon him his glittering eyes that flashed ferocity from under ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... through the press before O'Brallaghan, who pursues him with horrible ferocity, breathing vengeance, and ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... years ago. It does appear, though, that in North America four quite distinct types can be made out. First of these is the circumpolar species, Ursus maritimus, the white or polar bear, which most of us grew up to regard as the very incarnation of tenacious ferocity, but which, as it appears from the recitals of late Arctic explorers, dies easily to a single shot, and does not seem to afford much better sport than so much rabbit shooting. The others are the great Kadiak bear (U. middendorfi); the grizzly (U. horribilis), and the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... disease, a disease which has become common, or perhaps occurred at all, only within the last quarter of a century, and which therefore—with the usual flying leap of popular logic—is a serious menace to our future, if it keeps on increasing in frequency and ferocity at anything like the same rate which it has apparently shown for the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... under-gardener. The man ran screaming for his life, with my patient cursing at his very heels, and me within a few paces of him. When I at last laid my hand on his collar, he threw down his weapon and burst into shrieks of laughter. It was only mischief and not ferocity; but when that under-gardener saw us coming after that he was off with a face like a cream cheese. At night the attendant slept in a camp-bed at the foot of the patient's, and my room was next door, so that I could be called if necessary. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... contest of muscles exciting much more interest and enthusiasm than any contest of wits. We persist in the savage habit of devouring the corpses of slain animals long after the necessity for it is past, and some even murder innocent wild creatures, giving to their ferocity the name of sport. Our women bedeck themselves with furs and feathers, the fruit of mercenary and systematic slaughter; we perform orgiastic dances to the music of horns and drums and cymbals—in short, we have the savage psychology ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... all rattling and jingling with swinging accoutrements, to the old woman beside Sabre, put his arms around her and cried in a most frightful voice, "Mother! Mother!" And a sergeant, also rattling and clanking, dashed up and bawled with astounding ferocity, "Get back into the bloody ranks!" And the boy ran on, rattling. And the old woman collapsed prone upon the pavement. And the sergeant, as though his amazing ferocity had been the buttress of some other emotions, bent over the old woman and patted ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Information. The direct object of all those societies was the same—to summon a national convention, which must, of course, supersede Parliament. As those societies grew more mature, instead of becoming more rational they exhibited more savage ferocity. Placards were distributed in the form of a playbill, announcing, "For the Benefit of John Bull, La Guillotine," or, "George's Head in a Basket." The airs of their meetings were Ca Ira and the Marseillaise. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... what he saw and heard on the way to the jail. The anger of the people was at a white heat. A white woman had been assaulted and murdered by a brutal negro. Neither advanced age, nor high social standing, had been able to protect her from the ferocity of a black savage. Her sex, which should have been her shield and buckler, had made her an easy mark for the villainy of a black brute. To take the time to try him would be a criminal waste of public money. To hang him would be too slight ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their frenzy ends in ferocity. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... character were chivalrous qualities, mixed with ferocity and pitiless cruelty. Pizarro and Cortes were attractive; we like to look at them a second time. Much we condemn, but much we admire. Their sagacity, their prowess, their heroic spirit, take us captive despite their baser ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the dim reflexion from this upon the unwashed hands and faces of the party, begrimed as they were with powder and perspiration, contributed to give an air of wildness to the whole scene, that found its origin in the peculiar circumstances of the moment. Nor was the picture at all lessened in ferocity of effect, by the figure of Sambo in the back ground, who, dividing his time between the performances of such offices as his young master demanded, in the coarse of the frugal meal of the party, and a most assiduous application of his own white ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... trail, and forced going. It was a volunteer infantry outfit, and apt to be a bit lawless in the sight of food. Some of the men began pulling at the packs. Healy and his iron-handed, vitriol-tongued crew beat them back with the ferocity of devils—and had the battalion cowed and whimpering, before the officers withdrew the men and arranged an ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... three-weeks' campaign of murder, violence and pillage, utterly devastated and conquered the above provinces, burning the chateaux, decapitating their defenders and soiling the reputation of the Swiss soldier by inexcusable acts of cupidity and ferocity. Never was so venal and brutal a war waged at the will of a foreign and detestably traitorous king, and the coming of the great Duke Charles was awaited by all the inhabitants of the Romand country as a welcome deliverance from the hated Bernois. Postponing his Italian ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all—sitting on the end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness, no sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead. All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... feet of the crawfish which were overlooked up to a short time ago. And Hesiod also insists upon the dragon's eyes. Yet it is significant that ophis, the snake, is derived, like drakon, from a root meaning nothing more than to perceive or regard. There is no connotation of ferocity in either of the words. Gesner long ago suspected that the dragon was so called simply from its ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... sat Cecil. The banter, the songs, the laughter, the chorus of tongues, went on unslackened by his presence. He had cordial sympathies with the soldiers—with those men who had been his followers in adversity and danger; and in whom he had found, despite all their occasional ferocity and habitual recklessness, traits and touches of the noblest instincts of humanity. His heart was with them always, as his purse, and his wine, and his bread were alike shared ever among them. He had learned to love them well—these ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... a beast who has grown iron and steel nails, and who has built his lair in the town? It is he who does the killing, and there's no end in sight to his ferocity." ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... profound and constitutional enthusiasm. He was bent, at that very moment, on a scheme worthy of the loftiest spirit living; the regeneration and union of the people of his race, with a view to recover the possessions they had yielded to the pale-faces; but it was a project blended with the ferocity and revenge of a ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the German princes who sided with Luther, to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, represents a century of almost continual religious warfare in the German States. The worst of the period was the last thirty years, when religious ferocity and hatred reached its climax in the period known as the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). Though fought on German soil, France, Spain, and Sweden were deeply involved in the struggle. It left Germany a ruin. From the most ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Graspum had divided the spoils of their degradation. He had set his dignity and position in society at a much higher value than they were willing to recognise,—especially when it was to share the spoils in proportion. Dan Bengal, so called from his ferocity of character, was a celebrated dog-trainer and negro-hunter, "was great in doing the savager portion of negro business." This, Romescos contended, did not require so much cunning as his branch of the business-which ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... mysterious touch that throws the smooth-running human mechanism into a chaos of jarring elements, that transforms, in the turn of an eyelash, the mild humanity of the gentlest of beings into the unreasoning ferocity of ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... "So am I." There began a general movement. Some of the little boys had already ventured a hundred feet away from the main body, and at this unanimous advance they spread out ahead in little groups. Some recounted terrible stories of rebel ferocity. Their eyes were large with excitement. The whole thing with its possible dangers had for them a delicious element. Johnnie Peterson, who could whip any boy present, explained what he would do in case the enemy should happen to ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the Puritan with deep scorn. "James Stuart knows it not. An archhypocrite, and perfidious as hypocritical, he holdeth as a maxim that Dissimulation is necessary to a Ruler. He has the cowardice and the ferocity of the hyaena. He will promise fairly, but his deeds will falsify his words. Recollect how his Judas kiss betrayed Somerset. Recollect his conduct towards the Gowries. But imagine not, because you have been evil intreated and oppressed, that the King will redress your wrongs, and reinstate ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... matter of fact, Julian was forced to pretend that he was a Christian in order to save his life. The Christians of that day were of such a loving nature that any man who differed with them was forced to either fall a victim to their ferocity or seek safety in subterfuge. The real crime that Julian committed, and the only one that has burned itself into the very heart and conscience of the Christian world, is, that he transferred the revenues of the Christian churches to heathen ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... it is realized by the people. This appointing of the committee is supposed to save time, and yet the speakership contest consumes weeks, sometimes months. It will grow in ferocity." ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... thunder, bade the knight be brought before him. Bayard, seeing that resistance was mere madness, surrendered to Lord Bernardino, and was led, disarmed, into the palace. Sforza was a soldier more given to the ferocity than to the courtesies of war. But when the young knight stood before him, when he heard his story, when he looked upon his bold yet modest bearing, the fierce and moody prince was moved to admiration. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... are," Mr. Goodenough answered. "The Amazons, as white men have christened the force, are the flower of the Dahomey army, and fight with extraordinary bravery and ferocity." ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... because of the number of teachers that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl, like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... arms around his neck, he repulsed her with his arm and hand, with a push—or blow—it might be termed either one or the other,—violent enough, in her weak state, to have again extended her on the ground, had not a chair received her as she fell. He looked at her with ferocity, grappled a moment in his pocket; then ran to the window, and throwing the sash violently up, thrust himself as far as he could without falling, into the open air. Terrified, and yet her feelings of his unkindness predominating even above her ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... were now exhausted. He had spent a long day of excessive fatigue and excitement, and having wound it up with a heavy supper, sleep began to assail him with a fell ferocity that nothing could resist. He yawned once or twice, and sat on the bed blinking unmeaningly at the fire, as if he had something to say to it which he could not recollect just then. He nodded violently, much to his own surprise, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... strongest essence forms an exhibition as exciting as the bull fights of Spain, and the gladiatorial combats of old Rome, and (it seemed to me) not one whit more moral than these poisoned stimulants to popular ferocity. It is scarcely human nature that she shows you; it is something wilder and worse; the feelings and fury of a fiend. The great gift of genius she undoubtedly has; but, I fear, she rather abuses it than ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... any country calling itself civilized. A want of honorable principle, and consummate duplicity and treachery, characterize all their dealings. Liars by nature, they are treacherous and faithless to their friends, cowardly and cringing to their enemies; cruel, as all cowards are, they unite savage ferocity with their want of animal courage; as an example of which, their recent massacre of Governor Bent, and other Americans, may be given, one of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of people at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a slight, sickly, worn-out looking man, who had something about his eye of his father's hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father's ferocity. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Anglesey, the new lord-lieutenant, in spite of his sacrifices for catholic emancipation, and his well-known sympathy with the cause of reform. In the southern counties of England, too, violent disturbances had broken out, and were marked by all the ferocity and terrorism characteristic of luddism in the manufacturing districts. They spread from Kent, Sussex, and Surrey into Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. In these four counties there was a wanton and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... decency, Jeremy Collier, a non-juring clergyman, attacked the stage. His charge against the authors was unquestionably right; but his attack upon the stage itself, exhibited a disposition splenetic almost to misanthropy, and an austerity of principle urged to unsocial ferocity. In his fury he renounced the idea of reforming the stage; he was for abolishing it entirely. He attacked the poets with "unconquerable pertinacity, with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic, and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence in his cause."[3] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter |
