"Merciless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... west, from whence the loudest complaints against the landowners proceed; where the peasant exists in rags, and the gentlemen in a state of semi-starvation; where the people are idle, and their ground untilled; where squalid misery offends the eye and merciless murders shock the feelings; where the terror of the assassin supersedes the power of the landlord, and protects the tenant against all law; there, in the counties so overwhelmed with poverty and debased by crime, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... through their father's sin, and bear them all three down to destruction. The younger son, fatally bitten, falls back in death agony. The father yields slowly, his desperation giving way before the merciless strength of the serpents. The elder son shrinks away in horror though bound ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented itself was never welcomed—far less welcomed with any ardour, and it was exposed at times to merciless criticism. In the long vague dialogues she held in her mind, often with imaginary, often with unrealised interlocutors, Archie, if he were referred to at all, came in for savage handling. He was described as "looking like a stirk," "staring like a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Amine tottered to her seat, and longed for the hour which was to sever her from a Christian world. She thought not of herself, nor of what she was to suffer; she thought but of Philip; of his being safe from these merciless creatures—of the happiness of dying first, and of meeting him again ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tear the flesh from his bones. Appalled by this poetic justice, the cruel prelate fled, and, taking to the river, reached this insulated tower. Suspending his bed in the upper part of the structure, he struggled to escape from the mice, as merciless as he had himself been. But the mice followed him, and he could not avoid the doom that was in store for him. Vainly he resisted. The rats attacked him, and he suffered a lingering and horrible death. It is but fair to add that history gives the archbishop a different character. ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... the settlers compared with the war-hoop of the savage, which often startled the inmates of the lonely cabins, and consigned them to that sleep from which there is no earthly waking. The Indians were generally hostile, and being untutored savages, they were as merciless as demons in their revenge. The mind recoils from the contemplation of the tortures to which they often exposed their captives. And one cannot but wonder that the Almighty Father could have allowed such agony to be inflicted upon any of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... among roses, which the gleam of thy glances clothe in white, gold, and scarlet. Each leaf of them reminded me of one hour, each blossom of one month passed at thy feet. The drops of dew are my tears, which are drunk by the merciless wind ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... I don't see why we need run away from a lot of silly noise," Valeria interposed, with merciless logic. "They'll ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... mucronatum as well as Asteroma Rosae. Still more disastrous is a species of Erysiphei, which at first appears like a dense white mould. This is named Sphaerotheca pannosa. Nor is this all, for Peronospora sparsa, when it attacks roses in conservatories, is merciless in its exactions.[l] Sometimes violets will be distorted and spoiled by Urocystis Violae. The garden anemone is freely attacked by AEcidium quadrifidum. Orchids are liable to spot from fungi on the leaves, and recently the whole of the choicest ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... of government, they passionately refused, declaring that they would obey God rather than the King. The cultivators of the soil were ground to the earth by a threefold extortion,—the seigniorial dues, the tithes of the Church, and the multiplied exactions of the Crown, enforced with merciless rigor by the farmers of the revenue, who enriched themselves by wringing the peasant on the one hand, and cheating the King on the other. A few great cities shone with all that is most brilliant in society, intellect, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the winter. But in March, 1811, reinforcements arrived from England: Wellington moved forward against his enemy, and the retreat of the French began in real earnest. Massena made his way northwards, hard pressed by the English, and devastating the country with merciless severity in order to retard pursuit. Fire and ruin marked the track of the retreating army; but such were the sufferings of the French themselves, both during the invasion and the retreat, that when Massena re-entered Spain, after a campaign in ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... measuring distances with his steps and with his sharp eyes. On the roof of the old house a crow perched and croaked, thrusting its head now backward, now forward. In the lowering gray clouds, which hid the sky, there was something hard and merciless, as if they had gathered together to wash all the dirt off the face of this unfortunate, suffering, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki; that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement, render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable difficulties to the establishment of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... never published, being retained beside him for some last touch—forever delayed,) perhaps the most important is one of the body of a drowned sailor, dashed against a vertical rock in the jaws of one merciless, immeasurable wave. He repeated the same idea, though more feebly expressed, later in life, in a small drawing of Grandville, on the coast of France. The sailor clinging to the boat in the marvelous drawing of Dunbar is another reminiscence of the same kind. He hardly ever painted a steep ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... Radicals from Finsbury and Islington waited on him at the Foreign Office and presented him with an address, in which the Emperors of Austria and Russia were stigmatised as "odious and detestable assassins" and "merciless tyrants and despots." The Foreign Secretary in his reply, while mildly deprecating these expressions, allowed his real sentiments to appear with a most undiplomatic insouciance There was an immediate scandal, and the Court flowed over with rage and vituperation. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... selfish, asking no quarter; no, nor giving any. Fouled with the clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies, he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the marchings of an army that surged forever forward and back; now in merciless assault, beating the fallen enemy under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless, trampling down the auxiliaries of the day before, in a panic dash for safety; always ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... more than in these oriental regions: witness the abominable acts of the Dutch at Amboyna, in Japan, and in Java, &c.; witness the bigoted oppressions, where and when soever they had power, of the colonising Portuguese and Spaniards. Tyranny and merciless severities for the ruin of commercial rivals have been no rarities for the last three and a half centuries in any region of the East. But first of all, from Great Britain in 1842 was heard the free, spontaneous proclamation—this was a rarity—unlimited ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... ruthless eyes. Now she was defending, not herself alone, but the memory of the man she loved, and who out of consideration for herself had only declared his love when he was going out to meet his death. That thought made her merciless, and as she saw him waver under the weight of the blow and his face grow white as the snow about them, she ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... not fend off that merciless look, which went through and through her. "If my debt is to myself, I need pay only if I ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... his time the rage of turning every thing into ridicule was most prevalent. We may boldly affirm that in our days a single verse of the same kind as hundreds in Corneille would inevitably ruin any play.] But the war which Lessing carried on against the French stage was much more merciless, perhaps, than we, in the present day, should be justified in waging. At the time when he published his Dramaturgie, we Germans had scarcely any but French tragedies upon our stages, and the extravagant predilection for them as classical models had not then been combated. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... that the Erbs are the most powerful and merciless of all the evil spirits, and the Phanfasms of Phantastico belong to ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... another's persons; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies (for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigor on the part of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their large physical endowments. Such being the case with the delicate ornaments of the drawing-room, it is the less to be wondered at that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... research. His every movement bespoke a man of great activity and devotion in his high office. His eyes were keen and searching, while his voice was sharp and piercing. "Sharp as a razor," said several of his careless clergy. Merciless and scathing in reference to all guile, sham and hypocrisy, he was also a man of intense feeling, sympathetic, warm-hearted, and a ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... distant trail hung a thin cloud of dust, and under the cloud of dust, and rolling heavily toward town, creaked a lumber rigging, piled high with wood and drawn by a pair of plodding horses—plodding despite the bite and snarl of a whip swung with merciless regularity. The whip was in the hands of a brawny Mexican, who, seated confidently on the high load, appeared utterly indifferent to the trembling endeavors of his scrawny team. He was inhaling the smoke of a cigarette, and ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... engaged in warfare; and many an instance occurs in Indian history where a tribe that had long been formidable to its neighbors has been broken up and driven away by the capture and massacre of its principal fighting-men. There was a strong temptation, therefore, to the victor to be merciless, not so much to gratify any cruel revenge, as to provide for future security. The Indians had also the superstitious belief, frequent among barbarous nations and prevalent also among the ancients, that the manes of their ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... boast was not an idle one, and he really had "the goods" on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his sleeve during the farce of playing out the "death hand at bridge," and during the merciless ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... officers prayed and preached: they "sanctified the camp," and exhorted the men to unity of mind and godliness of life. Among the Scots this duty was discharged by the ministers; and so fervent was their piety, so merciless their zeal, that, in addition to their prayers, they occasionally compelled the young king to listen to six long sermons on the same day, during which he assumed an air of gravity, and displayed feelings of devotion, which ill-accorded with his real disposition. But the English ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... a Penny, or Poor Robin's Character of an unconscionable Pawnbroker, and Ear-mark of an oppressing Tally-man; with a friendly Description of a Bum-bailey, and his merciless setting cur, or follower. With Allowance. London, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of skulkin' livin' up to your big name?" Chadron spoke in derision, playing on the vanity which he knew to be as much a part of that old murderer's life as the blood of his merciless heart. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... of as such. The failure of Gorsuch in his attempt; his death, and the terrible wounds of his son; the discomfiture and final rout of his crestfallen associates in crime; and their subsequent attempt at revenge by a merciless raid through Lancaster County, arresting every one unfortunate enough to have a dark skin,—is all to be found in the printed account of the trial of Castner Hanway and others for treason. It is true that some of the things which did occur are spoken of but slightly, there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... to those youthful transgressors. They were spending a most uncomfortable half hour with Miss Thompson. She was merciless in her denunciation of their conduct, and the terror of suspension arose in more than one mind, as they listened to her scathing remarks. It had all seemed a huge joke when they planned it, but there was nothing funny about it now. When, with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... it further than that a great trouble came upon him, which he bore nobly, after his kind. Few men have had his stern sense of duty, his tenderness of heart, his conscience, so easy toward others, so merciless toward himself. The trouble preyed upon his mind until he could think of nothing else. He became unable to attend to business, or to take any part in the life around him. Fearing for his reason as well as for his health ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... profiting by the first moment of liberty which I am enjoying under the fostering laws of the greatest and noblest of nations to send you back a gift, to the acceptance of which I was forced by the manifestations of your benevolence and the merciless proceedings of your ministers. If I agreed to accept it, let Your Majesty ascribe this only to the unconquerable strength of the attachment which I bear to my compatriots, the companions of my misfortunes, as well as to my ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... 'em how it was the lowest, most tyrannous, most ill-paid of all the branches of slop-making; how men took to it only when they were starved out of everything else. We entreated them to have mercy on us—entreated them to interfere between the merciless contractors and the poor wretches on whose flesh and blood contractors, sweaters, and colonels, were all fattening: and there's the answer we got. Look at it; read it! Again and again I've been minded to placard it on the walls, that all the world might see the might and the mercies ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a naif awkwardness which was very pathetic. The Italian public, just as wild in its enthusiasm as it is merciless in its disapproval, rose as one man with a bound and cheered vociferously. But when the Intermezzo was played there was a burst of thundering applause, clapping of hands, and shouts of enthusiasm. I never heard anything ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... like adults, ought to fear a reality which 352:18 can harm them and which they do not understand, for at any moment they may become its helpless victims; but instead of increasing children's fears by declaring 352:21 ghosts to be real, merciless, and powerful, thus water- ing the very roots of childish timidity, children should be assured that their fears are groundless, that ghosts 352:24 are not realities, but traditional beliefs, erroneous ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... of me to make you so uncomfortable. I don't know what's happened to me. I've suddenly got so silly. And I don't think I like charming people. Charm is a merciless sort of gift ... and I know he will take Pamela away, and she made things so interesting. Every day since he came I seem to have got lonelier and lonelier, and the sight of your familiar face and the sound of your kind voice finished me.... I'm quite sensible now, so don't go away. Tea will ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... mistress slowly and with emphasis, fastening upon the poor girl her merciless eyes. "You say you did not; all the servants say they did not. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the merciless beating that Pewee had in store for him. But it was quite impossible for him to submit under a threat. So ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... people is beyond description. One cannot fail to realize the stupefying horrors of such a deep and overwhelming national calamity. The strokes of fate have come down upon the people of Poland with a most merciless cruelty. Shall we gaze upon these horrors with indifference? Can the Russian people remain neutral witnesses of the sufferings and privations thrust upon the population of the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... completed my abhorrence. I have heard of barbarians, who, when tempests drive ships upon their coast, decoy them to the rocks that they may plunder their lading, and have always thought that wretches, thus merciless in their depredations, ought to be destroyed by a general insurrection of all social beings; yet how light is this guilt to the crime of him, who, in the agitations of remorse, cuts away the anchor ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... poet can transform any incident into an attractive vaudeville. The tender situation dramatique, the humorous coup de theatre, the jeu d'esprit sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless exposure of vice and folly, the purest and noblest morality, largely mixed with an ostentatious ridicule of every sacred truth, and an absolute disregard of every principle of decency and duty, give strange glimpses ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... born did I hear so much wit, And, madam, I laugh'd till I thought I should split. So then you look'd scornful, and snift at the Dean, As who should say, 'Now, am I skinny[11] and lean?' But he durst not so much as once open his lips, And the doctor was plaguily down in the hips." Thus merciless Hannah ran on in her talk, Till she heard the Dean call, "Will your ladyship walk?" Her ladyship answers, "I'm just coming down:" Then, turning to Hannah, and forcing a frown, Although it was plain in her heart she was glad, Cried, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a painful and perilous jaunt, you reach its level. Its roar now confuses and nearly stuns you. Each side is more or less precipitous, and you seem at the mercy of the furious tide, while jutting rocks above seem just ready to be loosened by some convulsion, and to crush you with their merciless weight: meantime, your horse stands unmoved by the peril before or above him, apparently deaf to the noise of the torrent, and quietly surveys the rapids, as if to select the safest point to cross. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... not to be dismayed even by the most stunning blow; had he not even now three powerful protectors—Barras, Tallien, and Freron? He turned his back, therefore, with ready adaptability on the unsympathetic officials of the army, the mere soldiers with cool heads and merciless judgment. The evident short cut to restoration was to carry through the project of employment at Constantinople; it had been formally recommended, and to secure its adoption he renewed his importunate solicitations. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... unpopular views; at that time, indeed, he was the centre and inspiration of a group of young progressive spirits who held frequent meetings to devise ways of starting the state on the road to a new existence. Page then, as always, exercised a great fascination over young men. The apparently merciless character of his ridicule might at first convey the idea of intolerance; the fact remains, however, that he was the most tolerant of men; he was almost deferential to the opinions of others, even the shallow ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... brain of a fool. The endeavour to traverse the forbidden garden of silence implies on the part of the agent an adventurous nature. Hence it would seem no great task to catalogue those human beings who set their backs to the gentler world and press forward into the naked embrace of this merciless land. Yet as many sorts and conditions come here each year as are to be ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... carousals marked the winter with the triumphant Nor'westers of Athabasca Lake. Often, when wild drinking songs were ringing in the Nor'westers' dining hall, the Hudson's Bay men would be brought in to furnish a butt for their merciless victors. One night, when the hall was full of Indians, one of the Northwest bullies began to brawl out a song in celebration of the Seven ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... not recognize principles, and would not observe them? Who could treat himself more sternly and mercilessly than he? How many of the most beautiful flowers of life had he east aside; how many sleepless nights had he passed, and borne even physical toil for the principle of untiring labor—merciless iron labor! ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... not content with a mere suppression of the rising; they had decided upon the practical extinction of the whole tribe. For this purpose Leutwein, who was apparently regarded as too lenient, was superseded by von Trotha, noted for his merciless severity. He had played a notorious part in the Chinese Boxer rebellion, and had just suppressed the Arab rising in German East Africa by the wholesale massacre of men, women, and children. As a preliminary von Trotha invited the Herero ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... hard work and merciless grinding That purchases glory and fame; It's repeatedly doing, nor minding The drudgery drear of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... upon the assembly, and the same twelve pairs of merciless eyes were bent upon my face. Again it was ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... over his miseries and sufferings and agonies, added the last touch to the torture of the buccaneer. He had no longer strength nor manhood, he no longer cried out after that one last appeal to the merciless sailor. He did not even look up in obedience to the old man's injunction. What was there above him, beneath him, around him, that could add to his fear? He prayed for death. They were the first and last prayers that had fallen from his lips for fifty years, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... we can but touch upon matters more attractive. The mutual epistles, for example, which were exchanged between Sir Everard and the Baron upon this occasion, though matchless specimens of eloquence in their way, must be consigned to merciless oblivion. Nor can I tell you at length how worthy Aunt Rachel, not without a delicate and affectionate allusion to the circumstances which had transferred Rose's maternal diamonds to the hands of Donald Bean Lean, stocked her casket with a set of jewels that a duchess might have envied. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... could hurry back to London the Norman host had crossed the sea and William, who had anchored on the twenty-eighth of September off Pevensey, was ravaging the coast to bring his rival to an engagement. His merciless ravages succeeded in drawing Harold from London to the south; but the King wisely refused to attack with the troops he had hastily summoned to his banner. If he was forced to give battle, he resolved ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... might capture in the Indian country or on the frontiers of the colonies. When all this had been done, it needed the forgetfulness and the blind hypocrisy of passion to denounce the King to the world for having 'endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages;' yet the American people have never had the self-respect to erase this charge from a document generally printed in the fore-front of their Constitution and Laws, and with which every schoolboy ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Protestant, and a very stanch one she proved for a time. But Madame d'Aubigne, who was a Romanist, would not allow her to remain long under the Calvinist lady's protection, and sent her to be converted by her godmother, the Madame de Neuillant above mentioned. This woman, who was as merciless as a woman can be, literally broke her into Romanism, treated her like a servant, made her groom the horses, and comb the maid's hair, and when all these efforts failed, sent her to a convent to be finished off. The ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... he had said that even the Turk was to be reverenced as an authority.[204] The demoralising servitude and lawless oppression which the peasants endured, gave them, in his eyes, no right to relief; and when they rushed to arms, invoking his name as their deliverer, he exhorted the nobles to take a merciless revenge.[205] Their crime was, that they were animated by the sectarian spirit, which it was the most important ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of the kingdom are all grades of restriction, from prohibition to liberal license. There are no pretensions about the Norwegians; there is no affectation about their morals and no leniency in the administration of their laws. The police and the magistrates are merciless and inexorable, and crime is punished more severely perhaps than in any other country. At the same time the people distinguish an important difference between temperance and total abstinence. They give their children beer in unlimited quantities, but absolutely prohibit ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... had seemed as gay and heart-whole as a child. Only a fortnight before she had convulsed Miss Carr with laughter by putting on Mr Rayner's top-coat, and paying an afternoon call, a la Arthur Newcome, when all that young gentleman's ponderous proprieties had been mimicked with merciless fidelity. And she had ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... torn thus from home and relatives, immured in filthy and crowded holds, ill fed, denied the two great gifts of God to man—air and water—subjected to the brutality of merciless men, and wholly ignorant of the fate in store for them, many of the slaves should kill themselves. As they had a salable value the captains employed every possible device to defeat this end—every device, that is, except kind treatment, which was beyond the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to receive a great influx from the Highlands of Scotland, due to the frightful oppression and persecution which immediately followed the battle of Culloden. Not satisfied with the merciless harrying of the Highlands, the English army on its return into England carried with it a large number of prisoners, and after a hasty military trial many were publicly executed. Twenty-two suffered death in Yorkshire; seventeen were put to death in Cumberland; and seventeen at Kennington ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the old Drew place before, Logan had told him of Jerry Wood's place, five miles to the north among the hills; and to this he now directed his horse, riding at a merciless speed, as if he strove to gain, from the swift succession of rocks and trees that whirled past him, new thoughts to supplant the ones which already ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... and district. Their numbers were much reduced during the suppression of the rebellion of 1857-1873, when they suffered the most awful cruelties. Again, thirteen years ago, there was an uprising which was suppressed by the Government with merciless severity. One street is exclusively occupied by Moslems, who have in their hands the skin trade of the city. Their houses are known by a conspicuous absence from door and window of the coloured paper door-gods that are seen grotesquely glaring from the doors of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... bestowing, employment with a lordly hand. Of course, speaking so of the fate that, as a master, might be his own in the fluctuations of commerce, he was not likely to have more sympathy with that of the workmen, who were passed by in the swift merciless improvement or alteration who would fain lie down and quietly die out of the world that needed them not, but felt as if they could never rest in their graves for the clinging cries of the beloved and helpless they ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... who went to Alaska and laid the foundations of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. Bringing his fortunes to the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. He then starts out as a merciless exploiter on his own account. Finally he takes to drinking and becomes a picture of degeneration. About this time he falls in love with his stenographer and wins her heart but not her hand and ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... first year he was in Springfield, however, he had one case which created a great sensation, and which, so far as we know, has been overlooked entirely by his biographers. It is an admirable example of the way Lincoln could combine business and politics as well as of his merciless persistency in pursuing a man ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... "You are a merciless young beggar," grinned his father. "I plainly see that like Shylock you are determined to have your pound of flesh. Well, sit down. We ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... down with burdens scarce to be borne, Waiting a blast on Hope's clarion horn, loud as the "Cock that crew in the morn." Bucolic, wheat-crowned, she—Micawber seems she, waiting for something to turn up—somehow. Poor Agriculture! Care's merciless vulture has harried her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... the death of Sigismond, thought the moment propitious for extending his conquests. He immediately, with his legions, overran Servia, a principality nearly the size of the State of Virginia, and containing a million of inhabitants. George, Prince of Servia, retreating before the merciless followers of the false prophet, threw himself with a strong garrison into the fortress of Semendria, and sent an imploring message to Albert for assistance. Servia was separated from Hungary only by the Danube, and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... vouchsaf'd No son to me, thyself shouldst be my son, Godlike Achilles! who shouldst screen perchance From a foul fate my else unshelter'd age. Achilles! bid thy mighty spirit down. 615 Thou shouldst not be thus merciless; the Gods, Although more honorable, and in power And virtue thy superiors, are themselves Yet placable; and if a mortal man Offend them by transgression of their laws, 620 Libation, incense, sacrifice, and prayer, In meekness offer'd turn their wrath away. Prayers are ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... plight of the wounded, lying on the slopes of Wellington Ridge and elsewhere, racked with pain, and tortured almost to madness by flies and thirst, exposed for hours to the merciless rays of the sun, until the stretcher-bearers, working though they were like men inspired, had the opportunity to carry them away ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... caste fare better at the hands of the popular epigrammatist. Where three Kayasths are gathered together a thunderbolt is sure to fall; when honest men fall out the Kayasth gets his chance. When a Kayasth takes to money-lending he is a merciless creditor. He is a man of figures; he lives by the point of his pen; in his house even the cat learns two letters and a half. He is a versatile creature, and where there are no tigers he will become a shikari; but he is no more to be trusted than a crow ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the dread of Niagara felt at this point of peace was only temporary. The dread returned when the party approached again the turmoil of the American Fall, and fell again under the influence of the merciless haste of the flood. And there every islet, every rock, every point, has its legend of terror; here a boat lodged with a man in it, and after a day and night of vain attempts to rescue him, thousands of people saw him ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he told me that, albeit the bishop had been persuaded by the cardinal to permit the release of the prisoners for the present, yet that, should any recover—and in particular, Master Clarke—he was like to demand his surrender later into his own merciless hands; and it is well known that he has said that, since Wolsey would not burn Garret or Ferrar when he had them in his clutches, be would burn Clarke so soon as he was able to stand his trial. Some even say ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... decry French memoirs of court-life, and, considering the quaint freedom of style which characterizes much of this voluminous literature, it is not strange. Many of these memoirs, original letters, etc. are exceedingly interesting, because of their merciless unmasking of some of the sublime figure-heads of history; notably the letters of Madame Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, widow of Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV. She always hated the French manners, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... upon the Manners of such a Wretch as obliges all whom he disappoints, though his Circumstances constrain them to be civil to him. But there are those that every one would be glad to see, who fall into the same detestable Habit. It is a merciless thing that any one can be at Ease, and suppose a Set of People who have a Kindness for him, at that Moment waiting out of Respect to him, and refusing to taste their Food or Conversation with the utmost Impatience. One of these Promisers sometimes shall make his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... years the New England colonies were not again molested, the merciless vigor with which they had fought making a lasting impression upon their blood-thirsty foes. The cruel slavery to which the surviving natives were subjected, the English justified by the example of the Jews in their treatment ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the whole district suffered, it was in the vale of the Nith, and in the hilly portion of the parish of Closeburn, that the fury of Grierson, Dalzell, and Johnstone—not to mention an occasional simoom, felt on the withering approach of Clavers with his lambs—was felt to the full amount of merciless persecution and relentless cruelty. The following anecdote I had from a sister of my grandmother, who lived till a great age, and who was lineally descended from one of the parties. I have never seen any notice whatever taken of the circumstances; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... whole business connected with which was so repugnant to him. Sigh after sigh escaped his thin lips, as he read the piteous appeals, and knew that he must refuse them; must deal out fresh misery against his will. It was hard to be the tool of such a merciless fiend; to be the servant of such a master of deceit, villainy and fraud; but so greatly did the father love his child that he would scarce have hesitated in committing a murder had Jasper Vermont set that crime as a price of his forbearance and silence. He would have purchased his ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... unnecessary vexations, requiring no other labor than the cleaning of their muskets and belts, the buttoning of their gaiters, and the artistic arrangement of their pigtails. Every neglect of these important duties was punished in the most merciless manner. The stick still reigned in the Prussian army, and while cudgelling discipline into the soldier, they cudgelled ambition and self-reliance out of him. Not military ardor and manly courage, but discipline and the everlasting stick accompanied ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... perhaps, a little merciless in that clear north light, but Mary's sigh as she looked away from it was certainly unwarranted. For, as a matter of fact, she had improved wonderfully since her coming to London. A certain angularity of figure had vanished—the fashionable ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... justice." But was it not a compact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of justice, backed by a Titan's will, wielding a mighty intellect, that enabled Napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot and the merciless devastator? Again, can it be said of Napoleon that he possessed good sense in a rare degree? Good sense is an instinctive insight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive discernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or purpose, a soundness of judgment, resulting ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... hunters could not repress a shudder of horror. Around it lay the repulsive-looking crocodiles, placidly sleeping on the water, and amongst them floated a man's straw hat. It was all that remained of the cruel, merciless band. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... she made me put on, and taken my own, which I had laid on the stairs the day before, when I came out of the bath; I made haste upstairs, distracted with sorrow and compassion, as I had been the cause of so great a misfortune. For by sacrificing the fairest princess on earth to the barbarity of a merciless genie, I was become the most criminal and ungrateful of mankind. 'It is true,' said I, 'she has been a prisoner these twenty-five years; but, liberty excepted, she wanted nothing that could make her happy. My folly has put an end to her happiness, and brought upon her the cruelty of an unmerciful ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... compare them with men. Furthermore, if thinking men and women desire to know the leading facts concerning the intelligence of wild animals, it will be well to consider them now, before the bravest and the best of the wild creatures of the earth go down and out under the merciless and inexorable steam ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... two-legged animals: Prussian recruiters. They glide about, under disguise if necessary; lynx-eyed, eager almost as the Jesuit hounds are; not hunting the souls of men, as the spiritual Jesuits do, but their bodies in a merciless carnivorous manner. Better not to be too tall, in any country, at present! Irish Kirkman could not be protected by the aegis of the British Constitution itself. In general, however, the Prussian recruiter, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Gambacorti to make raid upon Pisan territory, and allowed Giovanni di Sano, who had lately been in her service, to seize a fortress in the territory of Lucca. The peace was broken. On the brink of ruin, ravaged by plague, Pisa turned to confront her hard, merciless foe. For months Florence ravaged her territory, while she, too weak to strike a blow in her own honour, could but hold her gates. Then the plague left ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... be the day that my war-axe did not cleave his ugly skull; but beside Diego there is another. Hearken to the words of Sikaso, the elephant in his rage is not more merciless, the serpent not more cunning, the crocodile not more savage in onslaught than this other. He is Muley-Hassan, the Arab, and the deeds he has done, my brother, when recounted turn strong men's ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... soul? They that accompanied her e'er, Faithful in forest and field? Silent they circle my child, In tearful anguish embraced— Yet little actress she lies, Smiling, closed lashes beneath; See, she is laughing in truth— thou most merciless Death! ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... in the flesh, but standing aloof in the spirit. His frowning silence was a deadlier rebuke to the slayers and oppressors than secession. Unfortunately for this ingenious explanation of the embarrassing fact of a merciful man standing silent before merciless doings, there are at least two facts that show ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... latter character has few equals in its demand on the performer's tact and skill and imagination. This wordless opponent of Mrs. X. is another of those vampire characters which Strindberg was so fond of drawing, and it is on her the limelight is directed with merciless persistency. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... evermore, For she doth pity my complaints no more Than cruel pagan or the savage Moor; But still doth add unto my torments more, Which grievous are to me by so much more As she inflicts them and doth wish them more. O let thy mercy, merciless, be never more! So shall sweet death to me be welcome, more Than is to hungry beasts the grassy moor, As she that to affliction adds yet more, Becomes more cruel by still adding more! Weary am I to speak of this word "more;" Yet never ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... no doubt have carried their design into execution, but for the presence of the appalling danger impelling them to look to their own safety. The negro knew, therefore, that, were he to seek safety on the great raft, it would only be to throw himself into merciless hands, certain to spurn him back with vengeful indignation, or fling him into the jaws of the hideous monsters already swimming around the ship, and quartering the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... heard them express fear, and want of confidence in Mayor Monroe. Ever since the intimation of this last convention movement I must condemn the course of several of the city papers for supporting, by their articles, the bitter feeling of bad men. As to the merciless manner in which the convention was broken up, I feel ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and said: "Farewell, lord Adhelmar! O true knight, sturdy and bold! terrible and merciless toward your enemies, gentle and simple toward your ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... contain many references to the merciless treatment of their women by the Canadian Indians. "These poor women are real pack-mules, enduring all hardships." "In the winter, when they break camp, the women drag the heaviest loads over the snow; in short, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to the oven, swung the door wide enough to allow a moment's glance within, and shut with a merciless clang. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... on foot. Bishops Hooper and Rogers were the first victims; Saunders and Taylor, two eminent divines, succeeded; upon all of whom Gardiner pronounced sentence in person; after which he resigned to Bonner, his more brutal but not more merciless colleague, the inglorious task of dragging forth to punishment the heretics of inferior note and humbler station. In the midst however of his barbarous proceedings, of which London was the principal theatre, the bench of bishops thought proper in solemn assembly to declare that they had no part in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of sobbing, the merciless sobbing of a woman's breast. Distinct above the hollow breathing of the sea it assailed me, poignant and insistent. Wonderingly I looked around. Then, in a shadow of the upper deck, I made out a slight girl-figure, crouching ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... boy seemed to crush him into the snow, and each time it became harder and harder to regain his feet against the merciless rush of the blizzard. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... all Where pity is, for pity makes the world Soft to the weak and noble for the strong. Unto the dumb lips of the flock he lent Sad, pleading words, showing how man, who prays For mercy to the gods, is merciless, Being as god to those; albeit all life Is linked and kin, and what we slay have given Meek tribute of their milk and wool, and set Fast trust upon the ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... impulsive Hal, and the winsome, pretty Juanita, prisoners in the hands of the cruel and merciless Apaches, who were never known to surrender a captive alive. Then, as I thought of a worse fate than death, that was in store for the bright, beautiful girl, I thanked God that her old father was spared the anguish that such a knowledge would have ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... Funeral" the author impaled, with many a merciless slash of the pen, the hypocrisy and vulgar flummery that characterised the whole gruesome ceremony of conducting to its earthly resting-place the body of a well-to-do sinner. For the average Englishman loved a funeral and all its ghastly accompaniments as passionately as though he ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... government and deliver them from an unbearable despotism. Quite naturally, the Court took an opposite view in believing that it foreshadowed deportation, so they lost no time in proclaiming it to be conquest and merciless plunder. Nelson urged the vacillating King to advance against the French, to trust in God's blessing being bestowed upon him, his army, and his cause, and to die like a hero, sword in hand, or lose his throne. The King, always dauntless in the absence of danger, replied ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... married woman's infidelity, there would be fewer of the like scandals—the divorce might follow the scourging. A daintily brought-up feminine creature would think twice, nay, fifty times, before she would run the risk of allowing her delicate body to be lashed by whips wielded by the merciless hands of a couple of her own sex—such a prospect of degradation, pain, shame, and outraged vanity would be more effectual to kill the brute in her than all the imposing ceremonials of courts of law and special juries. Think of it, kings, lords, and commons! Whipping at the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... acres. It was a pretentious stone building, with a superb portico and massive walls, and protected by deep verandas of stone. Anticipating trouble, he had collected provisions and ammunition and was quite well prepared for a siege, although the little force around him was attacked by more than 30,000 merciless, bloodthirsty fanatics. The situation was very much as it was at Peking, only worse, and the terrific fire that was kept up by the sepoys may be judged by the battered stump of an old tree which still stands before the ruins of the residency. Although about ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... it to his brother, "now they are surrounding Rufus. That merciless scoundrel must have done something abominable, that even goes beyond what his fellows can put up with. There they have caught a slave with a bundle in his hand, perhaps stolen goods. They will punish him with death, and are themselves no better ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... played so distinguished a part. Turenne, Coligni, Mazarin, were called up from their graves to grace his narration; nor were the affairs of the Barricadoes, nor the chivalry of the Pertcocheres forgotten. My uncle began to wish himself a thousand leagues off from the Marquis and his merciless memory, when suddenly the little man's recollections took a more interesting turn. He was relating the imprisonment of the Duke de Longueville, with the Princes Conde and Conti, in the chateau of Vincennes, and the ineffectual efforts of the Duchess to rouse the sturdy Normans ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... followers were made captive by Oretes, the unfortunate physician was among the number. By this reverse, he found that he had suddenly fallen from affluence, ease, and honor, to the condition of a neglected and wretched captive in the hands of a malignant and merciless tyrant. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... from the cold, but it has caused his destruction! For these animals were killed by the hundred thousand. Worse than this, they were killed in the most cruel manner. Laws have now been made to help protect the poor fur Seal from its merciless hunters. It lives in cold seas where its deep rich coat is a splendid protection. No finer fur is there for keeping out cold and wet; and the skilful furrier can make it into soft garments of ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... PHARAOHS are done, and the laureates of tyranny mute, And the whistle of falchion and flail are not set to the chords of the lute. True, the Hebrew, who bowed to the lash of the Pyramid-builders, bows still, For a time, to the knout of the TSAR, to the Muscovite's merciless will; But four millions of Israel's children are not to be crushed in the path Of a TSAR, like the Hittites of old, when great RAMESES flamed in his wrath Alone through their numberless hosts. No, the days of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... flung the boiling contents of his cup full in that rage-wracked countenance. The burning liquid swished against the huge bull-head. Blinding, bubbling, scalding, it did its fell work well; nothing escaped that merciless torrent. With a cry of agony, half bellow, half howl, Red Wull checked in his charge. From without the door was banged to; and again the duel was postponed. While within the tap-room a huddle of men and dogs were left alone with a mad ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Mr. Taggett's trade to find somebody guilty," said Margaret, "and he has been very ingenious and very merciless. He was plainly at his wits' ends to sustain his reputation, and would not have hesitated to sacrifice any ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the screw, and I could hear the thumping of the steel blades below, and see the boiling pit under the stern by the vessel. If I hauled closer should I be dragged into that terrible maelstrom, and be drawn under the deadly and merciless machinery? I could see the open taffrail, through which the stars glimmered away above me. It seemed that safety was so near and yet so far. She rolled, and the lights of the port-holes flashed lanterns on the sea in that uprising. I raised my voice, helplessly, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... forests of Western New-York, Ohio, and a good part of Michigan, which I had long ago rejoiced in, but which I never before prized so highly. Some portions of these fast falling monuments of other days ought to be rescued by public forecast from the pioneer's, the woodman's merciless axe, and preserved for the admiration and enjoyment of future ages. Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, &c., should each purchase for preservation a tract of one to five hundred acres of the best forest land still accessible (say within ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... him on the platform as if an hour passed while he, who had played with a city father, stood, clothed with shame, before this commanding young woman. Had she ever looked upon a more abject wretch? and Carmichael photographed himself with merciless accuracy, from his hair that he had not thrown back to an impress of dust which one knee had taken from the platform, and he registered a resolution that he would never be again boastfully indifferent to the loss ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... mother, after lingering two years, died. Leaving the girl in the care of an honest fishwife (when I say honest, I mean, as honest as her profession allowed), I roamed the seas as a Pirate: sorrow made me merciless. Then, when I wished to return to my daughter, I found that ...
— The Pirate's Pocket Book • Dion Clayton Calthrop
... Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... which they may hope to prove that its attractions are delusive. They will test it with reason, as we test a metal by an acid. They will ask what it is based upon, and of what it is compounded. They will submit it to an analysis as merciless as that by which their advisers have ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... them on an equality; yet, though Rudolf was unarmed, I did nothing. The sight of his face stopped me. He was very pale and his lips were set, but it was his eyes that caught my gaze, for they were glad and merciless. I had never seen him look thus before. I turned from him to young Hentzau's face. Rupert's teeth were biting his under lip, the sweat dropped, and the veins swelled large and blue on his forehead; his eyes were set ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... of chiffon and gold cut in the style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to her shocking career ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... his listening ear e'er, senseless, Majnun fell as one by lightning struck. A short time, fainting, thus he lay; recovered, then he raised his head to heaven and thus exclaimed: "O merciless! what fate severe is this on one so helpless? Why such wrath? Why blast a blade of grass with lightning, and on the ant [i.e. himself] thy power exert? One ant and a thousand pains of hell, when one single spark ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... social regulations necessary to the propagation of sound and healthy offspring on the part of the human family. But when this comes about, then indeed will Professor Lankester's "rebel against Nature" find his independence acknowledged by the hitherto merciless despot that has decreed ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the O'Rourkes that summer morning, she sat down on the stairs, and, sinking the indignant goddess in the woman, burst into tears. She was still very wroth with Margaret Callaghan, as she persisted in calling her; very merciless and unforgiving, as the gentler sex are apt to be—to the gentler sex. Mr. Bilkins, however, after the first vexation, missed Margaret from the household; missed her singing, which was in itself as helpful as a second girl; missed her hand in the preparation ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... those who have studied the spoken tongue. The hierarchical organization of society was faithfully reflected in the conventional organization of language,—in the ordination of pronouns, nouns, and verbs,—in the grades conferred upon adjectives by prefixes or suffixes. With the same merciless exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life, all utterance was regulated both negatively and positively,—but positively much more than negatively. There was little insistence upon what was not ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, "She seems to have had a shock"—"It was you ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... Wilson's vainglorious ambition, there is hope that the common sense of the American people will assert itself and that they will not permit the appalling insanity to spread to the new world that holds the old world in a merciless grip." ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... to use the sweeps with considerable energy to row her in to a landing again. They were genuinely horrified when he came running down the bank, both arms out-stretched, crying out that his all, his all was floating away on that tumultutius, merciless tide. Before any skiff could be launched, before any effort could be made to reach the trading-boat, she suddenly disappeared. The Mississippi was at flood height, and it was thought that the boat struck some drifting obstruction, swamped, and went down in ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... themselves greatly on having killed members of rival tribes, and more still upon doing away with Brazilians. In the latter case it was pardonable, because until quite recently the Brazilians have slaughtered the poor Indians of the near interior regions in a merciless way. Now, on the contrary, the Brazilian Government goes perhaps too far the other way in its endeavour to protect the few Indians who still ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... score of electric burners glowed red for the fraction of a second, then rained merciless white beams into our blinded eyes. When we found our sight four revolvers covered us, and between two of them the colossal frame of Reuben Rosenthall shook with a wheezy laughter ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... soul, in sore discouragement; for she knows that tomorrow any man, however vile and brutal, however godless and merciless, if he only has money to pay for her, may become owner of her daughter, body and soul; and then, how is the child to be faithful? She thinks of all this, as she holds her daughter in her arms, and wishes that she were not handsome and attractive. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... all those that at this day, shall be found under the transgression of the least tittle of it. It will be with these souls at the day of judgment, as it is with those countries that are overrun with most merciless conquerors, who leave not anything behind them, but swallow up all with fire and sword. "For by fire, and by his sword, will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many" (Isa 66:16). There are two things at the day of judgment, will meet in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... did something else besides placing an austere and merciless system upon Sparta. He helped to re-establish the famous and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... were based and molested those who were suspected of French sympathies. The rising, begun in the Pays de Waes, spread to Brabant, and especially to the Campine. The repression, entrusted to General Jardon, was merciless. Most of the leaders were shot and their ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... would be no greater. And to tempt him there was this new mystery, this knowledge that he could not miss. It had been vaguely present in his mind when he faced the crowd at Martindale, he remembered now. And the same merciless coldness had been in his hand when he pressed his gun into the throat ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... fiercely. "What mercy would you have shown me against whom you set the Holy Office, but that you could sell my life at a price that was merciless? What mercy would you have shown to the daughter of Cavalcanti when she lay in your foul power? What mercy did you show her father who died by your hand? What mercy did you show the unfortunate Giuliana whom you strangled in her bed? What mercy did you ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... always ready to promenade. But this was not an outdoor party, the night was too cool to make it even partially such; and to walk the whole evening in the moonlight is one thing, and in the gaslight quite another. Then Kitty Fisher was in a merciless mood,—and Hazel could not head her off with flat denials; because, though not really under orders, she well knew how much Mr. Rollo had to do with what they termed 'her new kink about dancing.' And even worse than the open charge that she was afraid to disobey, were the covert insinuations ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... still alive! The thought came flashing back; and with a low, involuntary moan, mingling anguish of mind with a bitter, merciless fury, he turned restlessly upon the cot. If she were still alive! No sign, no word had come from her; he had found no clue, no trace of her as yet through the channels of the underworld; his surveillance of the Magpie, whose friendship ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... as they motored back to the school, "that your country schoolmaster is rather terrible. The way he crushed that Mr. Carmichael was positively merciless. Did he know ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... one. Near the seashore in the east of the island are some caves, in which mouldering bones of the unhappy aborigines are still found, who had taken refuge here, preferring to die of famine rather than to fall into the merciless hands ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... had somehow managed to penetrate the tight radar warning screen around the prison, had struck with merciless precision. Again and again, its atomic blasters had found the most important installations and had wiped them out. The first target, after the tower had been shattered, was the underground launching ramps for the asteroid's small fleet of rocket destroyers. But even after a direct hit, ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... seized his arm and urged him forward. For a second still he stood; he tossed his hair back, laughed, and turned away. Why should he stay? He had said all that the situation suggested to him, and said it with his own merciless lucidity. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... companion. Sand whirls crossed the distant levels, ceaselessly. Huge and menacing, they swirled out from the mesa's edge, crossed the desert triumphantly, then, at contact with rock or cholla thicket, collapsed and disappeared. Endless, merciless, hopeless the yellow desert quivered against the bronze blue sky. For the first time dazed hopelessness gave way in Rhoda to fear. The young Indian, watching the girl's face, beheld in it what even DeWitt never had ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... ANS. That merciless foe would not loosen one grip of his murderous teeth, however we may entreat him. Everybody must ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... radiance faint of the starlit sky The gleaming snow-drifts lay wide and high; O'er hill and dell stretched a mantle white, The branches glittered with crystal bright; But the winter wind's keen icy breath Was merciless, numbing and chill ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... which carried their own principles further than it was convenient to the original reformers, and always of the body from whom they parted: and this persecuting spirit arose, not only from the bitterness of retaliation, but from the merciless policy of fear. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and, therefore, what remained of slavery was right; and in proof of it the pulpit contributed its argument. Negro preachers with wives scattered throughout the community urged their fellow bondsmen to drop upon their knees and thank God for the privilege of following a mule in a Christian land. The merciless work of driving the negroes to their tasks was performed by men from the North. Many a son of New England, who, with emotion, had listened to Phillips and to Garrison, had afterward hired his harsh energies to the slave owner. And it was this hard driving ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... into the trench leading to the Keep. The rain was pelting with a merciless vigour, and loose earth was falling from the sides to the floor of the trench. A star-light flared up and threw a brilliant light on the entrance of the Keep as I came up. The place bristled with brilliant steel, half a dozen men stood there with fixed ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Pope's in four books, the "fiercest" as well as the best of his satires, in which, with merciless severity, he applies the lash to his critics, and in which Colley Cibber figures as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the wretched state of these men, and considered in their history, the bloody wars excited in Africa, to furnish America with slaves—the groans of despairing multitudes, toiling for the luxuries of merciless tyrants. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... in by the upper classes are hastening the advance of republicanism more than any other element of modern change. No agitators, no clubs, no epidemical errors, ever were, or will be, fatal to social order in any nation. Nothing but the guilt of the upper classes, wanton, accumulated, reckless, and merciless, ever overthrows them Of such guilt they have now much to answer for—let them look to it in time.] It should be one of the first objects of all manufacturers to produce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... speeches were being delivered. The crowd was estimated by him at 6000, by others at 10,000 and more, but practically unarmed, and all quite defenceless. The panic-stricken multitude broke at once, but for ten consecutive minutes he kept up a merciless fusillade—in all 1650 rounds—on that seething mass of humanity, caught like rats in a trap, vainly rushing for the few narrow exits or lying flat on the ground to escape the rain of bullets, which he personally ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of Glengyle were pledged, or, as it is called in Scotland, "under a contract of wadset." The creditor was a man of influence and fortune; but, like most other Scottish proprietors who were enabled to take advantage of the wadset rights, he was grasping and merciless. It was not uncommon, in those times, for men to whom estates had been pledged, to take the most unfair advantages of small and needy proprietors; and from the great superiority which a superior claimed over his vassals, it became almost impossible ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... he said very gently. Those who thought they knew "El Gavilan," the merciless, would not have recognized his voice at ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... made man's friend and servant, the human race increased and multiplied until the borders of communities met and hostile relations arose between them. A fight for place began, a struggle for dominion, a fierce and incessant contest for supremacy, and for ages men locked arms in a terrible and merciless strife, in which the weak and incompetent steadily went to the wall, the strong, daring, and aggressive rose to ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... face. She had taken off her hat and was holding it on her lap, and Jean saw that she was clutching at it nervously, and that she was pale. He understood that it was probably her first experience of the Italian stare, deliberate, merciless, and indefinitely prolonged. She flushed as he came forward, and her eyes were eloquent as they met his. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... within him. He had been deceived by the demeanor of the brigand, during his own description of his woes and wandering, and had mistaken for compassion what was only ordinary attention. The manner of the brigand, when he had began to gesticulate, changed hope to fear, and fear to despair. The merciless allusion to David's captive state; the rude appropriation of him as a prisoner by the grasp of his head; the ferocious threat with the gun; and, finally, the display of the purse, and the coarse reference to money and ransom, all convinced David that he had to do with one who was a stranger ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... his military cloak, on the ground, in the midst of the soldiers on guard; and in battle he was always foremost to press forward into the contest, and the last to leave the ground when the time came for repose. The Romans say that, in addition to these qualities, he was inhuman and merciless when in open warfare with his foes, and cunning and treacherous in every other mode of dealing with them. It is very probable that he was so. Such traits of character were considered by soldiers in those days, as ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... aggressions of the conquerors. His enemies affirmed he was assisted by a demon, whom he had propitiated by some fearful sacrifice made in the tower, and the notion seemed borne out by the success uniformly attending his conflicts. Ughtred's prowess was stained by cruelty and rapine. Merciless in the treatment of his captives, putting them to death by horrible tortures, or immuring them in the dark and noisome dungeon of his tower, he would hold his revels over their heads, and deride their groans. Heaps of treasure, obtained by pillage, were secured by him in the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth |
