"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dare tell you. I could not dare come here if I did not know that I was never to see or speak to you again. It tears my heart from my bosom that I must say these things to you. I have risked all my honor in your hands. Is there no reward for that? Is my recompense to be only your assertion that I torment you, that I torture you? What! Is there no torture for me as well? The thought that I have done this covertly, secretly—what do ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... torment of thought that racked poor Robin's head for the few days following the dinner-party. She had arisen that next morning with the firm resolve to "be" a Forsyth, but she did not know just what she ought to do first and there was ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... to read or throw them into the fire, just as you choose. Your wife never sets foot in the streets, she only drives out with me; her only walk is on the island, and I am always with her; I see her suffer, but I never hear her complain. How could she complain to me, who suffer the same torment, and on her account? For from the time when that ghostly face appeared in the house my misery began; till then I was happy and beloved. Do not be afraid of my bursting into tears; I love no longer—now I only hate, and with my whole soul. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... take place, as we are not ill-matched either in the gifts of fortune or of nature; for to tell the truth, senor governor, my son is possessed of a devil, and there is not a day but the evil spirits torment him three or four times; and from having once fallen into the fire, he has his face puckered up like a piece of parchment, and his eyes watery and always running; but he has the disposition of an angel, and if ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in a nightmare except that you know they're real. At last daylight broke, very pale, threatening, and slate colored. Deolda got up and began padding up and down the floor, back and forth, like a soul in torment. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the happiest mood. He could not see what a torment Dicksie was in, and took the water without asking himself why it trembled in her hand. Her restrained manner did not worry him, for he felt that his fight at the river was won, and the prospect of fried chicken composed him. ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... and the wedding immediately, etc., was certainly somewhat adventurous when you look at it in cold blood, but I hope there will be no change from July. If I am to be tormented, as you say, with an "unendurable, dispirited, nervous being," it is all the same in the end whether this torment will be imposed upon me by my fiancee or—forgive the expression—by my wife. In either case I shall try to bear the misfortune with philosophical steadfastness; for it is to be hoped that it will not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... on the white edge of the bursting surge, Where they had sunk together, would the snake Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake The strength of his unconquerable wings As in despair, and with his sinewy neck Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings, Then soar—as swift as smoke from ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... her, in that pest-house! I would see her dead a thousand times first. I hope she is dead, for she is the torment of my life. What is ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... trophies of a conquest. True, he is understood and worshipped by all the other wailful souls in the first infernal circle, as one of the great men of their order—able to put into words full of sweet torment the dire hopelessness of their misery; but for such the singer, singing only for ears eternally deaf to his song, cares nothing; or if for a moment he receives consolation from their sympathy, it is but a passing weakness which the breath of an indignant self-condemnation—even contempt, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... cries of them that are newly gone before thee, saying, "Let him dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame!" Dost thou not hear them say, "Send one from the dead, to prevent my father, my brother, my father's house, from coming to this place of torment!" Shall not these mournful groans pierce thy flinty heart? Wilt thou stop thine ears and shut thine eyes? And wilt thou NOT regard? Take warning, and stop thy journey before it be too late. Wilt thou he like the silly fly, that ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... walks, I know no greater torment, among those minor ones which are the worst, than the intelligent conversation—full of suggestion and fine analysis, perhaps, and descriptions of other places—which reveals to us that the kindly speaker is indeed occupying the same geographical ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... quiet case, An' ne'er wish'd to marry, O! But when I saw my Peggy's face, I felt a sad quandary, O! Though wild as ony Athol deer, She has trepann'd me fairly, O! Her cherry cheeks an' een sae clear Torment me late an' early O! O, love, love, love! Love is like a dizziness; It winna let a poor body Gang about ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Who sendeth forth under the fertile plain My broad bosom, but bridles me in. He drives in the dark a dangerous power 5 To a narrow cave, where crushing my back Sits the weight of the world. No way of escape Can I find from the torment; so I tumble about The homes of heroes. The halls with their gables, The tribe-dwellings tremble; the trusty walls shake, 10 Steep over the head. Still seems the air Over all the country and calm the waters, Till I press in my fury from my prison below, Obeying His bidding who bound ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... and Fergus with him? LAVARCHAM — despairingly. — I'm late so with my warnings, for Fergus'd talk the moon over to take a new path in the sky. (With reproach.) You'll not stop him this day, and isn't it a strange story you were a plague and torment, since you were that height, to those did hang their lifetimes on your voice. (Overcome with trouble; gather- ing her cloak about her.) Don't think bad of my crying. I'm not the like of many and I'd see a score of naked corpses and not heed them at all, but I'm destroyed seeing yourself ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... this single fact be quietly meditated upon by our ordinary painters, and they will see the truth of what was above asserted,—that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done easily; and let them not torment themselves with twisting of compositions this way and that, and repeating, and experimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can compose at all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in spite of himself. And this is the reason of that silence which I have kept ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that case you know more than I do!" the latter ventured to respond, revealing a part of the torment of being able neither clearly to esteem nor distinctly ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... butterflies—ghostly stories; and I want to know them. But never shall I be able to read Chinese, nor even Japanese; and the little Japanese poetry that I manage, with exceeding difficulty, to translate, contains so many allusions to Chinese stories of butterflies that I am tormented with the torment of Tantalus... And, of course, no spirit-maidens will even deign to visit so skeptical ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... be so to them. Without meaning it they would torment her, and she would be miserable. Do you not know that it would be so?" He almost seemed to yield. "If you wish her to be happy, come here for a while. If you will stay here with us for a month, so that this stupid idea of a quarrel shall be wiped ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... reached a day in which biographers have grown impatient of the decorous delay which their lowly coadjutors demand. They can no longer wait for the lingering soul to yield up its title-deeds before they enter in and take possession; but, fired with an evil energy, they outstrip the worms and torment us before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... satisfied with invading and depriving her of her just rights, he was in the habit of following her into her private haunts, not with the view of offering her any endearments, but for the purpose of inflicting on her person every torment ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... by divine command, whilst yet almost a child, to walk, and to walk alone, through the fiery furnace,—wherefore then couldst not thou, like that Meshech and that Abednego, walk unsinged by the dreadful torment, and come forth unharmed? Why, if the sacrifice were to be total, was it necessary to reach it by so dire a struggle? and if the cup, the bitter cup, of final separation from those that were the light of thy eyes and the pulse of thy heart ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... her will She had shut herself up entirely for so long. It was a torment to see any one, above all her husband's family, who of course were constantly talking and inquiring about him. The stateliness of Kingcombe Holm chafed her beyond endurance; Mary's good-natured regrets, and Eulalie's malicious prying ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... was. Nine! Pelle had to run so as not to be too late in getting to the cart. In the cart sat Karl Johan and Fair Maria eating. "Get up and have something to eat!" they said, and as Pelle was ravenous, he forgot everything while he ate. But then Johan asked about Lasse, and his torment returned. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Eveena answered, taking me, as usual, to the letter, "that you will ever draw the zone too tight. We say that 'anarchy is the worst tyranny.' Laxity which leaves us to quarrel and torment each other, tenderness which encourages disorder and disobedience till they must be put down perforce, is ultimate unkindness. I will not tell you that such indulgence will give you endless trouble, win you neither love nor ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... the tall figure of Abdul through the narrow streets, which were as dark as railway tunnels, he felt horribly sick. He was well accustomed to the torment of Egyptian flies, but these particular flies belonged to the order of things whose deeds, being evil, loved darkness. They covered his face and hands the very moment after he had shaken them off. Do what he would, he could not keep them away from ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... children. The poor little souls! she could get on well enough with them for an hour or two at Avonside, but they had been a sore affliction to her at the Lodge. Any woman who can not wholly set aside self is sure to be tormented by, and be a still worse torment to, children. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Sumner's character, however, rests beyond dispute that he never aspired to the Presidency. That lingering Washington malady which victimized Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Seward, Chase, Sherman, and Blaine, and made them appear almost like sinners in torment, never attacked Sumner. He had accepted office as a patriotic duty, and, like Washington, he was ready to resign it whenever his work would ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... who could not give up his belief in the man's honesty, "why, for such fantastical scruples, peril not only your life, but your honor, and Mr. Oxenham's also? For if you be examined by question, you may be forced by torment to say that ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the torment of not seeing Desire Michell. Their betrothal was made public, and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the care of that girl of Ad'line's has been too much for her all along," she announced, "she's wild as a hawk, and a perfect torment. One day she'll come strollin' in and beseechin' me for a bunch o' flowers, and the next she'll be here after dark scarin' me out o' my seven senses. She rigged a tick-tack here the other night against the window, and my heart was in my mouth. I thought 'twas a warnin' much as ever I thought ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... me from these bonds, and deliver me from the torment that I suffer, for these thorns are sharper ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... promises to us as the reward of the failings that Nature and those who begat us have handed on to us as a birth doom. It was something unnatural, grey-headed, terrific—doubtless a devil come to torment me in the inquisition vaults of Hades. Yet I had known the like when I was alive. How had it been called? I remembered, "The-thing-that-never-should-have-been-born." Hark! It was speaking in that full deep voice which was ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... thy villanies. My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries, Heaven will pour out his judgments on you all. Hell gapes for you, for you each fiend doth call, And hourly waits your unrepenting fall. You with eternal horrors they'll torment, Except of all your crimes you suddenly ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of GOD'S mercy or love! All hope of pardon is past: A brother's blood cries for vengeance above; This brand on my brow will my foul crime prove— My torment for ever ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of death, resurrection, the judgment, paradise, and the place of torment, in a style calculated powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. When Al Sirat, or the Bridge of Judgment, which is as ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... torment of our queen, [That she can never 'scape the blame. Oh God!] Had but this lovely mischief died before She set her faithless foot on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... possession of Bladesover. If they were, their candidature was unsuccessful. But that great place, with all its faded splendour, its fine furniture, its large traditions, was entirely at the old lady's disposition; and I am inclined to think it is true that she used this fact to torment and dominate a number of eligible people. Lord Osprey was among the number of these, and she showed these hospitalities to his motherless child and step-child, partly, no doubt, because he was poor, but quite as much, I nowadays imagine, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... days were all of teasing and torment, either; for if his comrades did sometimes treat him so, why then there were other times when he and they were as great friends as could be, and used to go a-swimming together in the most amicable fashion where there was a bit of sandy strand below the little ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... in the morning, his last at night. He could never escape from it. Whenever he was in jubilant mood and in a flood of boyish happiness had forgotten it, it arose like a specter to torment him. What was he going to do with that money that he had kept so long? And what was he going to say to his classmates to earn it,—for earn it he must, since he had accepted it. It was a wretched position ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... Think that at worst beyond the mighty doom It cannot pass. "Instructor," I began, "What I see hither tending, bears no trace Of human semblance, nor of aught beside That my foil'd sight can guess." He answering thus: "So courb'd to earth, beneath their heavy teems Of torment stoop they, that mine eye at first Struggled as thine. But look intently thither, An disentangle with thy lab'ring view, What underneath those stones approacheth: now, E'en now, mayst thou ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... presumably Tommy, though, as he has his head thrust between Mr. Browne's legs, and his feet in mid air, kicking with all their might, there isn't much of him by which to prove identification. And—"Oh, Dicky," says, she again, "how could you torment him so, when you know how easy it is to excite him. See what a state he ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... fails to find its immediate fruition, if it is frustrated, consciousness of it may become exceedingly intense. There is the constant thought of the object, a vivid feeling of tension, of a striving to attain the object. Desire may become an obsession, a torment filling the horizon, and the volition in which it finds its fruition stands forth as a marked relief. This condition of things may be brought about by the inhibition occasioned by the physical impossibility of attaining the object; but it may also be brought about by the struggle of incompatible ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... punishment. Of fear it is unnecessary to speak, when by the prompt activity of that distinguished man our consul, such numerous forces are under arms; and as to the punishment, we may say, what is indeed the truth, that in trouble and distress, death is a relief from suffering, and not a torment;[244] that it puts an end to all human woes; and that, beyond it, there is no place ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... as to see some of these famous epistles. I think Darthea is pleased to torment me at times; it is her way, as you may happen to know. Also, and this is more serious, you have yourself ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... To torment myself with the detail of the noisome contents of the fardel will but make it stick the closer, first to my imagination and then to ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... pure seas roll, Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky: Then journeyed home, to carry in his soul The torment of the difference till ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the bits of lingerie from the consignment just arrived from Paris, and the other spoils of the day. When everything was buried she shut the door upon it, as in her heart she was shutting the door on her poor little fledgling hopes. Nothing remained to torment her vision, or distract her from what she had to do. The old gray rag and the battered black hat were all she had ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... of Mr. Falkland: but his disposition was extremely unequal. The distemper which afflicted him with incessant gloom had its paroxysms. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical; but this proceeded rather from the torment of his mind than an unfeeling disposition; and when reflection recurred, he appeared willing that the weight of his misfortune should fall wholly upon himself. Sometimes he entirely lost his self-possession, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... 24th. What went on all those three days no one knows. He himself was bound to secrecy. No outsider was present. The records of the Inquisition are jealously guarded. That he was technically tortured is certain; that he actually underwent the torment of the rack is doubtful. Much learning has been expended upon the question, especially in Germany. Several eminent scholars have held the fact of actual torture to be indisputable (geometrically certain, one says), and they confirm it by the hernia from which he afterwards suffered, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Dante was incomparably more learned than either: he followed Virgil in his descent to the infernal regions; and exhibits an intimate acquaintance with ancient history, as well as that of the modern Italian states, in the account of the characters he meets in that scene of torment. But in his own line he was entirely original. Homer and Virgil had, in episodes of their poems, introduced a picture of the infernal regions; but nothing on the plan of Dante's Inferno had before been thought of in the world. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... what if we had been killed! where would we all be now? where would I have been? I believe you would have gone straight to heaven, Elsie; but I—oh! I should have been with the rich man the minister read about this morning, lifting up my eyes in torment." ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... dared the sea in its wrath were able to go far up the rivers, and wherever these fierce and bloodthirsty rovers appeared wild panic spread far around. So fond were they of sword-thrust and battle that one viking crew would often challenge another for the pure delight of fighting. A torment and scourge they were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... later of his brute strength, his physical superiority, and will exert it. His torch will be at the threshold and his knife at the throat of the planter. Horrible and indiscriminate will be his vengeance. Where, then, will be the pride, the beauty, and the chivalry of the South? The smoke of her torment will rise upward like a thick cloud visible ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... dika : thick, stout. edzo : husband, mola : soft. nepo : grandson. luma : light (luminous). nevo : nephew. nobla : noble (character). bovo : ox. rekta : straight. vidvo : widower, kurba : curved. fiancxo : fiance. felicxa : happy. nenio : nothing. naskita : born. turment- : torment. fermita : shut. sent- : feel. ecx : even. ben- : bless. longe : for a long time. estim- : have esteem ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... perpetual conditions of youth. After man had sinned, with the knowledge of good and evil, he was master of his position, and now, lest he "put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat and live forever," subjected to shame, to torment, to anguish and tribulation, mental suffering, a lost being in the state of abandoned fallen angels, with a possibility of corrupting his conscience until it should be past feeling, seared as with a ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... letters of the imaginary nun, and the conspirators had the satisfaction of making merry at supper over the letters which the loyal and unsuspecting Marquis sent in reply. At length the Marquis's interest became so eager that they resolved that the best way of ending his torment was to make the nun die. When the Marquis de Croismare returned to Paris, the plot was confessed, the victim of the mystification laughed at the joke, and the friendship of the party seemed to be strengthened by their common sorrow for the woes of the dead sister. But Diderot had been taken in his ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Monsieur Goulden; "do not torment yourself thus. I think that of all who may be drawn there are probably not ten who can give as good reasons as you for staying at home. The surgeon must be blind to receive you. Besides, I will see Monsieur the Commandant. ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torment of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... sweet beam of sunset ever falls Athwart old Skidloe's cloudy crest—no soft And wistful glory of awakened dawn Lays on his haggard brows a touch of grace. Sometimes a lonely curlew skims across The seething torment of the dread abyss, And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond; But, solitary and unchanged for aye, He towers amid the rude revolt of waves, His stony face seamed by a thousand years, And wrinkled with a million ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... contraband trade is calculated to enable them to carry out their perfidious ends, whilst at the same time providing a profitable market for the produce of their manufacturers. Another manner in which they torment the Spaniards of Peru is by despatching a swarm of pirates to these seas. During the last war very rich prizes were captured by simple whaling vessels, and you can judge what attacks of this kind will be like when they are directed and sustained by ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... sharp little encounter, one bright September day in the garden, where, after his wont, old Tummus had been to what he called "torment them there weeds," to wit, chopping and tearing them up with his hoe, and leaving them ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... and rushed out of harm's way. It was not an exhibition of which a Fearless Firer might have been proud, nor did the screams of laughter greeting it serve to palliate his anger. But it was neither fun nor anger with Aunt Timmie. Her mind was a torment of fear lest he be maimed for life. Since early morning she had employed every art, every diplomatic ruse in which her race is so proficient, to avoid this dangerous pastime. Now suddenly, and without warning, she stopped ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... discordant, and out of all keeping with his inward emotions, broke from his parched lips,—"Thou doting fool!" he cried almost furiously,—"Why dost thou mock me then with this false image of a hope unrealized? ... Who gave thee leave to add more fuel to my flame of torment? ... What means this symbol to thine eyes? Speak.. speak! What admonition does it hold for thee? ... what promise? ... what menace? ... what warning? ... what love? ... Speak.. speak! O, shall I force confession ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... continually before her eyes, "Your brother, H.T.;" and the word which had been so sweet to her, which had always meant her dear old Noll, and which she had uttered so triumphantly to Percival in Langley Wood when she said "I have a brother," became her torment. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... while the deacon had been in a profound meditation concerning the ways and means of putting a stop to a quarrel that had been his torment from time immemorial, and just at this moment a plan had struck his mind which our story will proceed ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... differ in duration from those of hell. Still, there is this difference—oh! blessed be God, there is this difference, and it is all we could ask: in hell, the damned blaspheme their Master with the demons that torment them; in Purgatory, the holy souls love their God with the angelic choirs who await their entrance to the land of bliss. If the souls of the damned could love, hell would cease to be hell; if the souls of the blessed ones in prison could cease to love, Purgatory ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... he sat, tense, his body stiffened by the agony that rode it—unable to move a muscle. I watched the torment in his eyes build up to a crescendo of pain, until the suffering became so great that it filmed his eyes, and I knew that, though he still stared directly at me, he ...
— There is a Reaper ... • Charles V. De Vet
... "Duc de Choiseul, I do not pretend to impose chains on you; I have spoken to you as a friend rather than as a sovereign. Now I return to what was said at first, and accept with confidence the promise you make me not to torment a lady whom I love most sincerely." Thus ended a conversation from which the duke, with a less haughty disposition, might have extracted greater advantages and played a surer game. It was the last plank of safety offered in the shipwreck which menaced him. He disdained ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of suchlike vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero commanded ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was made that he read "The Greater Love." Now "The Greater Love" was the poem which, written in those rapturous days when he and Madeline first became aware of their mutual adoration, was refused by one editor as a "trifle too syrupy." To read that sticky effusion over and over again became a torment. There were occasions when if a man had referred to "The Greater Love," its author might have howled profanely and offered bodily violence. But no men ever did refer to "The ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Our Lord how much I loved him, and how much I wished that He was served and honoured everywhere, I thought sorrowfully that from the depths of hell there does not go up to Him one single act of love. Then, from my inmost heart, I cried out that I would gladly be cast into that place of torment and blasphemy so that He might be eternally loved even there. This could not be for His Glory, since He only wishes our happiness, but love feels the need of saying foolish things. If I spoke in this way, it was not that I did not long to go to Heaven, but for me Heaven was nothing else than ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... popular disease called the fidgets, now began, indeed, to torment Sir Francis Varney. He could not sit—he could not walk, and, somehow or another, he never once seemed to imagine that from the wine cup he should experience any relief, although, upon a side table, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... most passionate language of self-abhorrence, he accuses himself of all manner of sins, yet it is improbable that he appeared to others what in later life he appeared to himself. He judged his own conduct as he believed that it was regarded by his Maker, by whom he supposed eternal torment to have been assigned as the just retribution for the lightest offence. Yet he was never drunk. He who never forgot anything with which he could charge himself, would not have passed over drunkenness, if he could remember that he had been guilty of it; and he distinctly ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... plantation: so that, if he ran away, he could not eat, and would starve to death. The slave asked for drink in my presence; and the overseer made him lie down on his back, and turned water on his face two or three feet high, in order to torment him, as he could not swallow a drop.—The slave then asked permission to go to the river; which being granted, he thrust his face and head entirely under the water, that being the only way he could drink with his gag on. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... we are fighting in Korea are right and just. They are the foundations of collective security and of the future of free nations. Korea is not only a country undergoing the torment of aggression; it is also a symbol. It stands for right and justice in the world against oppression and slavery. The free world must always stand for these principles—and we will stand with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... assemble and follow him. If they hesitate or refuse, a tall man appears, armed with a whip of flexible iron wires, and compels them with blows of his scourge to come forth and proceed. He whips them so severely, that oft-times the stripes left by the iron thongs remain impressed on their bodies and torment them cruelly. As soon as they go out and follow in the train, they seem to lose their human form, and to put on the appearance of wolves. Several thousands thus assemble. The leader walks before with his iron scourge; the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... new diseases, Ere he 's well of old disorders: Since one young and beauteous maiden, Whom love wished to him to proffer, Free from every spot and blemish, Pure and perfect in her fondness, Is the one whose fatal charms Give to him such grief and torment, That each moment he may perish, That he may expire each moment; How then can you hope that I Now shall ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... full of the murmur of falling water and the melody of mocking birds. At the solemn noontides the great white sun glared down hot—so hot that t burned the skin, yet strangely was a pleasant burn. The waning afternoons were Carley's especial torment, when it seemed the sounds and winds of the day were tiring, and all things were seeking repose, and life must soften to an unthinking happiness. These hours troubled Carley because she wanted them to last, and because she knew for her this ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... and charming creatures, who from the age of nine even to the age of marriage too often are the torment of a mother even when she is not a coquette, is it by the privilege of your years or the instinct of your nature that your young ears catch the faint sound of a man's voice through walls and doors, that your eyes are awake to everything, and that your young spirit busies itself in divining all, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... animating; Spaniards and savage companions alike drinking water copiously without regard for the smallness of their store. The second night was very hot, and the savage companions finished the water, with the result that on the third day the thirst became a torment, and at mid-day the poor companions struck work. Artful Mendez, however, had concealed two small kegs of water in his canoe, the contents of which he now administered in small doses, so that the poor Indians were enabled to take to their oars ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... clerks to their creditors. "English day" means the day on which the government offices are thrown open to the public. Certain then of finding their delinquent debtors, the creditors swarm in and torment them, asking when they intend to pay, and threatening to attach their salaries. The implacable Baudoyer compelled the clerks to remain at their desks and endure this torture. "It was their place not to make ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... training and character. While, in a large-natured man, solitude will make the pure heart purer, in the small-natured man it will only serve to make the hard heart still harder; for though solitude may be the nurse of great spirits, it is the torment of ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... after this, to give St. Nicholas an opportunity to amend matters. Whereupon one representing the real celestial St. Nicholas suddenly appears, perhaps from behind a curtain at the rear of the image, and seeks out the thieves. He threatens them with exposure and torment unless they restore their plunder; they give in; and St. Nicholas goes back to his concealment. When the barbarian returns, his delight is naturally very great at perceiving so complete an atonement for the saint's initial oversight. Indeed his appreciation is so genuine that it only needs a ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... eloquent eyes (As I have seen them many hundred times), Fill'd all with clear pure fire, thro' mine down rain'd Their spirit-searching splendours. As a vision Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd In damp and dismal dungeons underground Confined on points of faith, when strength is shock'd With torment, and expectancy of worse Upon the morrow, thro' the ragged walls, All unawares before his half-shut eyes, Comes in upon him in the dead of night, And with th' excess of sweetness and of awe, Makes the heart tremble, and the eyes run ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Levitic law - 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,' is befitting only for savages. Unfortunately the Christian religion still promulgates and passionately clings to the belief in Hell as a place or state of everlasting torment - that is to say, of eternal torture inflicted for no ultimate end save that of implacable vengeance. Of all the miserable superstitions ever hatched by the brain of man this, as indicative of its barbarous origin, is the most degrading. As an ordinance ascribed ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her death-bed," said my guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... before March 304 led to the imprisonment of all persons of the ecclesiastical order, compelled the magistrates to exercise torture to subvert the religion of their Christian prisoners, and made it the duty, as well as the interest, of the imperial officers to discover, to pursue, and to torment the most ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... tottered rather than walked, and was almost unrecognisable from the effects of his sufferings during the night;—he was colourless, haggard, his face swollen and even bleeding, and his merciless persecutors continued to torment him each moment more and more. They had gathered together a large body of the dregs of the people, in order to make his present disgraceful entrance into the city a parody on his triumphal entrance on Palm Sunday. They mocked, and with derisive gestures called him king, and tossed in his path stones, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... wise, And such I held thee; but this question askt Puts me in doubt. Lives ther who loves his pain? Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell, Though thither doomd? Thou wouldst thy self, no doubt, 890 And boldly venture to whatever place Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change Torment with ease, & soonest recompence Dole with delight, which in this place I sought; To thee no reason; who knowst only good, But evil hast not tri'd: and wilt object His will who bound us? let him surer barr His Iron Gates, if he intends our stay In that dark durance: thus ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... air, we came into another that smelt of asphaltus, pitch, and sulphur burning together, with a most intolerable stench, as of burned carcases: the whole element above us was dark and dismal, distilling a kind of pitchy dew upon our heads; we heard the sound of stripes, and the yellings of men in torment. ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... go right into the scrub, to get rid of the little flies, which torment them. The weather is very fair; the regular westerly breeze, during the day, is setting in again: the dew is very abundant during clear nights: the morning very cold; the water of the lagoon 8 degrees to 10 degrees warmer than ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... adventure which is entirely romantic," said Henri, when Paul returned. "After having shared in a certain number I have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious accidents, by grave perils. The deuce! what courage danger gives a woman! To torment a woman, to try and contradict her—doesn't it give her the right and the courage to scale in one moment obstacles which it would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump then! To die? Poor child! Daggers? Oh, imagination of women! They cannot help trying ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... according to Moslem belief, growing in hell, and of the bitter fruit of which the damned are compelled to eat so as to intensify their torment. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 'What matter, you old torment? Suppose I have to wait a few minutes for him, I can walk up and down, and it will be exercise for me, which, you know, Dr Fanchet has desired me to take. Go along in, and don't let the dinner be spoiled.' And the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... Shem, but not yet were there schools everywhere; not yet, where schools did exist, were they for all classes; and, at best, where they did exist, of what sort were they? Places, for the most part, of nausea and torment for the poor creatures collected in them; narrow and imperfect in their aims, which were verbal rather than real; and not even succeeding in these aims! Latin, nothing but Latin! And how had they taught this precious and eternal Latin of theirs? "Good God! ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... was incredible that the morning of the day which was not yet dead had witnessed that scene between her and Dagworthy on the Castle Hill; long spaces of featureless misery seem to stretch between. Perforce she had overborne reflection; one torment coming upon another had occupied her with mere endurance; it was as though a ruthless hand tore from her shred after shred of the fair garment in which she had joyed to clothe herself, while a voice mockingly bade her be in congruence with the sordid shows of the world ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... noted him on the previous day talking earnestly to the high-priest Larico, who, with other priests, accompanied my army, perhaps to keep a watch on me. I took this captain apart and questioned him alone, threatening him with death by torment if he did not reveal his errand ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... way after she's paid somewhat over-handsomely for being a woman. I am trying to convey to you the impression that the man is in a terribly bad way, and through no possible fault of his own, which must make his torment harder to bear. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... asleep for this life, daughter: may so crush it with weights thereon laid that it is as though it had the sickness of palsy, and cannot move limb. But I count, when this life is over, it shall shake off the weight, and wake up, to a life and a torment that shall ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... said to be over a hundred. She was a seer of visions and dreamer of dreams. What we thought a bad feature of her trances was, that she would sometimes speak in meeting of having seen Tougaloo University marching in a procession down to torment with our devoted matron and president at the head, their open Bibles in their hands. That was years ago. Now, when she sees our matron in her visions, it is up among the angels; and I believe the conviction is spreading that book religion, taken into the head, sinking ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... intensest love and yearning; but the love was no longer a torment. She knew now that if she had been able to tell George everything, he would never have condemned her; he would only have opened ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... overcome with joyful relief. No longer could I feel the continuous torment that had kept me nearly sleepless for weeks; at Sri Yukteswar's words the agony vanished as though it had ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the eighteenth century do, a clear and explicit statement of the author's opinions in a readable and interesting form. That all have sinned in Adam the minister pronounces "a very shocking doctrine." "What! make them first to open their eyes in torment, and all this for a sin which certainly they had no hand in,—a sin which, if it comes upon them at all, certainly is without any fault or blame on their parts, for they had no hand in receiving it!" That Adam is our federal head, and that we sinned because he sinned, he ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... supposing that there is any deep-laid scheme or profound mystery, with which we mean to torment him during the course of our tale, we may as well say at once that the little plot, which Ruth had in view, and which began to grow quite into a romance the longer she pondered it, was neither more nor less than to bring Captain Bream and Mrs ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... why should I torment thee...or me? We will not tarry for this." And therewith she took her arm about his ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Hubert! drive these men away, And I will sit as quiet as a lamb; I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, Nor look upon the irons angrily. Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you, Whatever torment you do put me to. Hub. Go, stand within; let me alone with him. 1 Att. I am best pleased to be away from such a deed. [Exeunt Attendants.] Arth. Alas! I then have chid away my friend: He hath a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... meseemed that it was praiseworthy and wise that he should do all that in him lay to gain the prayers of the Blessed Virgin and the dear Saints; for the evil deed which had turned him from a dashing knight into a lonely penitent might well weigh in torment on his poor soul. I will here shortly rehearse all I myself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rest of the wounded. Each was carried in a rude basket made of green withes, on the back of a stout warrior. For days he traveled in this way, enduring, he says, greater torment than he had {139} ever before experienced, "for the pain of the wound was nothing to that of being bound and pinioned on the back of a savage." As soon as he could bear his weight, he was glad ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... motive of his life. He was patient with his enemies, and equally patient with equally unreasonable friends. No hasty act of his administration can be traced to his impatience. He had a tender, brotherly regard for every human being; and the thought of oppression was torment to him.... A statesman without a statesman's craftiness, a politician without a politician's meannesses, a great man without a great man's vices, a philanthropist without a philanthropist's impracticable dreams, a Christian ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... patience as we could command we waited near the entrance until the receding ebb made it possible for us to emerge once more into the blessed light of day. I was horrified at the haggard, careworn appearance of my crew, who had all, excepting the two Kanakas, aged perceptibly during that night of torment. But we lost no time in getting back to the ship, where I fully expected a severe wigging for the scrape my luckless curiosity had led me into. The captain, however, was very kind, expressing his pleasure at seeing us all safe back again, although he warned me ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Hastings!" said Sibyll, with great emotion. "Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence! I see thee surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to myself, 'Is it possible that he can remember me?' But thou lovest me still—still—still, and ever! Dost ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... let me forswear God Who has suffered me to be deceived with false spirits, and sink to depths where no light breaks, where no memories stir, where no hopes torment. Yes, then let me deny Him and die, who am of all women the most miserable. But it is not so, for to me a messenger has come; at my prayer once the Gates were opened, and now I know quite surely that it was permitted to me to see within them that I might find strength ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... become of him after his release from prison, nobody knew; some of the boarders said that he was living in the west, or in Australia; others, that he was not living anywhere, unless on the shores of perpetual torment. All agreed that the alleged second Mrs. Surface had long since died—all, that is, but Klinker, who said that she had only pretended to die in order to make a fade-away with the gate receipts. For many persons believed, it seemed, that Surface, by clever juggling of his books, had ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Some imagined, that for the haughtiness of her humour, and the malignity of her disposition, characters that were wholly unexampled in the pastoral life, she had been carried away before the period limited by nature to the place of torment by the goblins of the abyss. Others believed that she concealed herself in the top of the highest mountain that was near them, and by a commerce with invisible, malignant beings, still exercised the same gloomy temper in more potent, and ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... in the hall. Verena looked at this image as at a painted picture, perceived all it represented, every detail. If it didn't move her more, make her start to her feet, dart away from Basil Ransom and hurry back to her friend, this was because the very torment to which she was conscious of subjecting that friend made her say to herself that it must be the very last. This was the last time she could ever sit by Mr. Ransom and hear him express himself in a manner that interfered so with her life; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... She is seated in heavenly glory; the infant Christ, on her knee, bends benignly forward. Tutelary angels are represented as pleading for mercy, with eager outstretched arms; other angels, lower down, are liberating the souls of repentant sinners from torment. The expression in some of the heads, the contrast between the angelic pitying spirits and the anxious haggard features of the "Anime del Purgatorio" are very fine and animated. Here the Virgin is the "Refuge of ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... word; but the Princess finally carried the day. The day after he had addressed to the director of the Gymnase a warning letter, he was amazed to hear the Duchess of Berry say: "I hope, Monsieur, that you will not torment the Gymnase any longer, for, henceforth, it ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... he left the house he set his teeth, exclaiming low to himself, "Yes, tomorrow there shall be an end of this! We must risk everything and abide the consequences now. I'll have no more torment for ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... presence only at the price of submission to her tastes and to her desires. How different had it not been with Louise of Stolberg: united to this man twelve years before, a mere child of nineteen, given over to him as his wife, his chattel, his property, to torment and lock up as he might torment and lock up his dog or his horse; losing all influence over him with every day which made her less of a novelty and diminished the chance of an heir; and sickened and alarmed more and more by the obstinate jealousy and drunkenness and brutality ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. It was better to die by the quick ministry of the bullet, than to fall as captives into the hands of the savages, to perish by lingering torment. Fortunately, the ground was very stony, and every man instantly threw up a pile for a breastwork. The Indians were very cautious in presenting their bodies to the unerring aim of the white men, and did not venture upon a simultaneous rush, which would have secured the destruction ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... in schools, will ever come up to vex and torment the public, especially the Catholic portion of the community, until the right of separate schools is granted. It is especially the Catholics that do and must insist upon having separate schools, for it is the Catholics that have always done all in ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... think that you would suffer for them now, gladly; but you are not allowed to suffer; you are marvellously and mercilessly let off. In this sudden deliverance from yourself you have received the ultimate absolution, and their torment is your peace. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... the fiends who torment the lost with hooks in the lake of boiling pitch in Malebolge, the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... long pondered, too, over his relations with Aglaya, and had persuaded himself that with such a strange, childish, innocent character as hers, things might have ended very differently. Remorse then seized him; he threw up his post, and buried himself in self-torment ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... [102] penance of the ascetics, the torment and glory of their lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his companions a rash vow of abstaining from flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly declared, that he would suffer no monks in his religion. [103] Yet he instituted, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... stagger and rend to a broadside of the sloop, as though her bowels were being torn out. He rushed to a hatchway belching smoke. In the pit below he could see dim figures flitting about, and could hear the howls of those in torment. Deafened, blinded, dizzied, he slammed the hatch upon them, clamping it down. Swiftly he passed from hatchway to hatchway, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Harriet! You've come to torment us before the time; do cease this noise! My grandchildren may see the day of the emancipation of our people, but you and I ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... a frame unaccustomed to much exercise, and at intervals he wholly or partially lost consciousness. Thus unutterably distressed in body and broken in spirit, in one of these partial lapses it seemed to the judge—as it might be in some disordered nightmare—that there came a respite from the torment of ceaseless motion, and that by means of some unknown agency he lay in heavenly peace, stretched full length on a couch or bed. He thought—or did he dream?—that he had heard, as it were far off, the muffled trairip of feet and the murmur of ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... his wife, the wife to her husband, and the house kept in quiet. A man is laughed at, when seeing his wife weeping he licks up her tears. But how much happier is it to be thus deceived than by being troubled with jealousy not only to torment himself but set ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... plotted against the life or goods of another, nor ever against any man's honour, but, after all, there was nothing therein wherewith to glorify one's self before God." When he had wept a little, he continued, saying, "that the world was a ceaseless turmoil and torment, and shipwreck after shipwreck all the while, and a whirlpool of sins, and tears and pain, and that to all these misfortunes there was but one port, and this port was Death. But, as for him, he carried with him into that port no desire and no regret for ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... Sard slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... into the plain. So, also, Ix-i'on, "the Cain of Greece," as he is expressly called—the first shedder of kindred blood—was doomed to be fastened, with brazen bands, to an ever-revolving fiery wheel. But the very refinement of torment, similar to that inflicted upon Prometheus, was that suffered by the giant Tit'y-us, who was placed on his back, while vultures constantly fed upon his liver, which grew again as fast as ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... if they get that office, that they are not consuls; or, if they are consuls, that they are only proclaimed second and not first. What is all this but seeking out excuses for being unthankful to fortune, only to torment and punish oneself? But he that has a mind in sound condition, does not sit down in sorrow and dejection if he is less renowned or rich than some of the countless myriads of mankind that the sun looks upon, "who feed on the produce of the wide world,"[734] ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a letter. It was to say how anxious she had been at the length of time since she had last heard from Pete, and to ask if he had any news to relieve her fears. The poor little lie was written in a trembling hand which shook honestly enough, but from the torment of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... with coppiced trees, Where the young priestess, mistress of the flowers, Goes opening her gown to the cool breeze, To still the fire, the torment that devours. ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... tea, or rather, to be correct—a visitor. A lady to comfort me—or perhaps torment me—as only your sex can." His eyes suddenly rested on Margaret's photo, and he stopped with a frown. Mrs. Green's motherly face beamed with satisfaction. Here was a Romance with a capital R, which was as dear to her kindly heart as ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... noble trewe wyf And for admete hou she lost her lif And for her trout[h] yf I shal not lye How she was torned in to a daysye Ther was Grisildes Innocence And al her mekenes and pacience There was eke Isode & many other moo And al the torment and the cruel woo That she had for tristram al her lyue And how that Tisbe her hert dyde ryue Wit[h] thilk swerd of sir Piramus And al the maner hou that Theseus The mynotaure slow amyd the hous That was forwrynked by crafte of dedalus Whan he was in pryson shit in Crete And how that philles ...
— The Temple of Glass • John Lydgate
... taught her vaguely, even through the torture her soul was undergoing, that composite sentiment of passion and cruelty felt for her by this Tartar in evening dress who mixed sneer with compliment in all he said. Dorothy could have shrieked out in the mere torment of it, and only the sight of Mr. Harley, broken and hopeless and helpless and old, gave her strength and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... north-eastern Siberia during the month of July. They make the great moss tundras in some places utterly uninhabitable, and force even the reindeer to seek the shelter and the cooler atmosphere of the mountains. In the Russian settlements they torment dogs and cattle until the latter run furiously about in a perfect frenzy of pain, and fight desperately for a place to stand in the smoke of a fire. As far north as the settlement of Kolyma, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the natives are ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... terribly in jail; he had escaped, more than once; and he had been caught and sent back to toil in other and various jails. He had been triced up and lashed till he fainted had been revived and lashed again. He had been in the dungeon ninety days at a time. He had experienced the torment of the straightjacket. He knew what the humming bird was. He had been farmed out as a chattel by the state to the contractors. He had been trailed through swamps by bloodhounds. Twice he had been shot. For six years on end he had cut a cord and a half of wood each day in a convict ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... up, and their eyes met. Once meeting, they could not quit each other. Diana's gaze was sad enough, but eager with the eagerness of long hunger. His was sharp with pain at first, keen with unreasonable anger; one of the mind's resorts from unbearable torment. Then as he looked it changed and grew soft; and finally, springing up, he went over to where she sat, dropped on his knees before her, and seizing her hands kissed them one after the other till tears began to mingle with the kisses. She was passive; she could ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... death, rather than living torment? To die is to be banished from myself; And Silvia is myself: banished from her, Is self from self; a deadly banishment. What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... sent from God to redeem the Jews, and them only, from eternal damnation; next, said that he was the Saviour of all mankind,—Jews and Gentiles too; that he was a Sacrifice offered to appease the wrath of God, who had become so angry with his children that he intended to torment them all forever in hell. By and by his followers were called CHRISTIANS,—that is, men who took Jesus for the Christ of the Old Testament; and in their preaching they did not make much account of the noble ideas ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... priests be good, it is so surely; But when Jesus hung on the cross with great smart, There he gave, out of his blessed heart, The same sacrament, in great torment; He sold them not to us, that Lord omnipotent: Therefore Saint Peter the Apostle doth say, That Jesus' curse hath all they Which God their Saviour do buy or sell, Or they for any money do take or tell. Sinful priests giveth the sinners ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... most vividly to my mind's eye is that of Miss Molly ——, or Aunt Molly, as she was called by some of her little favorites, that is to say, about a dozen girls, and (not complimentary to the unfair sex, to be sure) one boy. There was one, who, even to Miss Molly, was not a torment and a plague; and I must confess he was a pleasant specimen of the genus. At the time of which I speak, the great awkward barn of a school-house on the Common, near the Appian Way, had not reared its imposing front. In its place, in the centre of a grass-plot that was one of the ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... will be infinitely worse. Golden opportunities will be gone; wasted years will be irrevocable. Bright lights will be burnt out; sin will be graven on the memory; remorse will be bitter; evil habits which cannot be gratified will torment; a wearied soul, a darkened understanding, a rebellious heart, will make the end awfully, infinitely, always worse than the beginning. From all these Jesus Christ can save us; and, full as He fills ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... presentiment that the boy who should have been the pride and delight of his life would be a drawback and a torment. ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... you may, you little torment," replied I; "are you coming to learn mathematics, or to teach me crochet? for I see you are armed with that vicious little hook with which you delight to torture the wool of innocent lambs into strange ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... indeed, of his nature, affectionateness seems to have been the most ardent and most deep. A disposition, on his own side, to form strong attachments, and a yearning desire after affection in return, were the feeling and the want that formed the dream and torment of his existence. We have seen with what passionate enthusiasm he threw himself into his boyish friendships. The all-absorbing and unsuccessful love that followed was, if I may so say, the agony, without being the death, of this unsated desire, which lived on through his life, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... sweet Suffolk; thou torment'st thyself; And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass, Or like an overcharged gun, recoil And turns the force of them ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... I, "that though I die and end, yet mankind yet liveth, therefore I end not, since I am a man; and even so thou deemest, good friend; or at the least even so thou doest, since now thou art ready to die in grief and torment rather than be unfaithful to the Fellowship, yea rather than fail to work thine utmost for it; whereas, as thou thyself saidst at the cross, with a few words spoken and a little huddling-up of the truth, with a few pennies paid, and a few masses sung, thou mightest ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... given a command in the South, and the rage of the population of that region was intensified into something like torment when they saw their lands occupied and their fields devastated no longer by a stranger from overseas who was but fulfilling his military duty, but by a cynical and triumphant traitor. Virginia was invaded and a bold stroke almost resulted in the capture of the author of the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... intolerable fit, That dares torment the body of my love, And scourge the scourge of the immortal God! Now are those spheres, where Cupid us'd to sit, Wounding the world with wonder and with love, Sadly supplied with pale and ghastly death, Whose darts do pierce the centre ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... gittin' away from it—but you're a torment, and you ain't no gratitude. Whur'd you been at if I hadn't heard you blattin' and went after you? A coyote would a ketched you before sundown. And ain't I been a mother to you, giving up all my air-tight milk to feed you? Warmin' it ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... And they said unto me: Doth this thing mean the torment of the body in the days of probation, or doth it mean the final state of the soul after the death of the temporal body, or doth it speak of the things ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... refused the sacraments, to be turned away from the door of his chapel, is to the Irish peasant a turning away from the gates of Paradise, a denial of the Kingdom of Heaven, a condemnation to everlasting torment, to say nothing of the accompanying odium in which he is held by his neighbours and associates, and the ever present dread of boycotting. Thomas Brogan dare not leave the polling-booth for his life, until Mr. Carew took him on his car. He had been threatened by the priest, who drew ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... likewise in parchment, were written all the names of the holy Trinity, as also a figure, on which was written this word, corpus; and on the parchment was fastened a little piece of the skin of a man. In some of these parchments were the devil's particular names, who were conjured to torment the Lord Somerset, and Sir Arthur Manwaring, if their loves should not continue, the one to the Countess, the other to Mrs Turner.' Along with these were some pictures, as they were termed, or, more properly speaking, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... He did not mention Tom Randolph's name, but he spent a good deal of time in thinking about him, and wondered how he would fare if Tom succeeded in winning the coveted commission. There were many ways in which a lieutenant could torment his subordinates, and Tom would be just mean enough to use all the power the law ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... grey or reddish-grey. It can leap six or eight feet easily, and is excellent eating. The native dog is of all colours; it has the head and brush of a fox, with the body a legs of a dog. It is a cowardly animal, and will run away from you like mad. It is a great enemy of the kangaroo rat, and a torment to the squatter, for a native dog has a great PENCHANT for mutton and will kill thirty or forty sheep in the ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... in death—worse than death of the last two days—but his own to take up again, to keep, to enjoy, best of all, to use worthily. No horrible constraint was upon him to lay it down, or to live in torment because he still held it. He was free, free to marry Rachel whom he loved, and who loved him. He saw his life with her. Hope smiled, and turned up her light. It was too bright. Hugh hid his ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Arthur, if I knew What in this world would most torment thy soul, That I would do; would all my evil usage Could make thee straight despair and hang thyself! Now, I remember:—where is Arthur's man, Pipkin? that slave! go, turn him out of doors; None that loves ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Sometimes he suspected the colonel, sometimes Captain Edney; then he surmised that it must somehow have come to him from home. But all his conjectures and inquiries on the subject were alike in vain; and he enjoyed the exquisite torment of feeling that he had a lover somewhere ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge |
