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Torment   Listen
verb
Torment  v. t.  (past & past part. tormented; pres. part. tormenting)  
1.
To put to extreme pain or anguish; to inflict excruciating misery upon, either of body or mind; to torture. " Art thou come hither to torment us before our time? "
2.
To pain; to distress; to afflict. "Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented."
3.
To tease; to vex; to harass; as, to be tormented with importunities, or with petty annoyances. (Colloq.)
4.
To put into great agitation. (R.) "(They), soaring on main wing, tormented all the air."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books



... a dozen of the mature berries, being swallow'd, purge phlegm without danger. To which the learned Mr. Ray (in Append. Plant. Angl.) adds a zythogalum, or posset made of milk and beer, in which is boil'd some of the most pointed leaves, for asswaging the torment of the collic, when nothing else has prevailed. And now I might have here ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... scarce, from their excess of lustre, be supported, which have been celebrated as a miracle of tenderness and sprightliness, which have given rise, a thousand times, to the finest compliments of the day, and have been the torment of many a rash man, must excuse me, if I do not pause longer to praise them, in a letter; her mouth was the feature of her face which compelled the most critical to avow that they had seen none of equal perfection, and that, by its shape, its smallness, and its brilliance, it might furnish ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... it is he to be shut out from the society of his fellows? How shall he exercise benevolence or justice in his cell? Will his heart become softened or expand who breathes the atmosphere of a dungeon? Solitary confinement is the bitterest torment that human ingenuity can inflict. The least objectionable method of depriving a criminal of the power to harm society is banishment or transportation. Expose him to the stimulus of necessity in an unsettled country. New conditions make new minds. But the whole attempt ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... Italy. He imagined confidences, sudden sights of her face more exquisite than the Botticelli women in the echoing picture galleries, more enigmatic than the eyes of a Leonardo; and in these days of desire, he lived through the torment of impersonal love, drawn for the first time out of himself. All beautiful scenes of love from books, pictures, and life floated in his mind. He especially remembered a sight of lovers which he had once caught on ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... Dr Thorpe, who was not renowned for weighing his words carefully when he was indignant. "Is it because they cannot drive nor persuade us into the sin and unbelief of Hell, that they be determined we shall lose none of the torment of it, so far as lieth in their hand to give us? Shall God see all this, and not move? Have they banished Him out of the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... your opponent; you injure him, but at the same time, injure yourself more. Better to put up with the loss of one dollar than of two; to which is to be added, all the loss of time, all the trouble, and all the mortification and anxiety attending a lawsuit. To set an attorney at work to worry and torment another man, and alarm his family as well as himself, while you are sitting quietly at home, is baseness. If a man owe you money which he cannot pay, why add to his distress, without even the chance of benefiting yourself? ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... waiting for permission he opened the door. Mrs. Pendyce and the spaniel John came in. The Squire looked up and frowned. The spaniel John, panting with delight, rubbed against him. 'I have been through torment, master,' he seemed to say. 'A second separation at present is not possible ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... prevail, my wandering ghost, Which breathless here this love-scorched trunk shall leave, Shall unto thee with tragic tidings post, How thy disdain did life from soul bereave. Then all too late my death thou wilt repent, When murther's guilt thy conscience shall torment. ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... and a dreadful face, to whom he was to impart, with tears of disappointment and humiliation, the rudiments of national history. He was immediately responsible to the father of this infant phenomenon, to Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose "useless talents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and others," Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of our delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless plaything of this "unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... utterly absurd. When the federal people discovered he was not dead they would come after him again and again. All he had done was involve this lovely woman. Long since he had controlled fear for his own life, but now he knew the exquisite torment of fearing for ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks

... the years he had wasted on earth, and for the solitary heritage he had left the world. Those children of his brain! They were with him still. Would that he had left them below to sing his name down through the ages! They were a torment to him here, in their futility and inaction. They could not sing to these shapeless ghosts about him; their voices would be unheeded music; nor would any strain sweep downward to that world whose tears he might have drawn, whose mirth provoked, whose passions ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... mercy of God. That is the strongest way I know to tell it. She was unshakably sure of the mercy of God, but I wasn't. There were times when it seemed as if He couldn't hear the most powerful prayer you could pray, and when instead of mercy, you seemed to get the last torment that could be piled on. Take right now. Laddie was happy, and all of us were, in a way; and in another we ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... public and conspicuous, he was removed to Paris, there to undergo a repetition of all his former tortures, with such additional circumstances as the most fertile and cruel dispositions could devise for increasing his misery and torment. Being conducted to the Concergerie, an iron bed, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend, to see what degree of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... 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 ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... without; ancient evils are at large and wandering in torment. The rain shrieks across the window. For a moment, for just a moment, the sentinel candle is shaken, and burns blue with terror. The shadows leap out instantly. The little flame recovers, and merely looks at its foe the darkness, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... I torment myself without end in imagining what took place at your meeting with my brother. I rely upon your equanimity; yet to what an insupportable test will my brother's passions subject you! In how many ways have I been the cause of pain and humiliation ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... composed of little shapes; Thence heat and viewless force of wind take up The motions, and thence air, and thence all things Are put in motion; the blood is strook, and then The vitals all begin to feel, and last To bones and marrow the sensation comes— Pleasure or torment. Nor will pain for naught Enter so far, nor a sharp ill seep through, But all things be perturbed to that degree That room for life will fail, and parts of soul Will scatter through the body's every pore. ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... says, "I fell in with a woman, who I thought was all virtue, but she deceived me, and I am sorry to say that a heart that never felt abashed at scenes of carnage and blood, was made a child of for a time by her, and I gave way to dissipation to drown the torment. How often when the fumes of liquor have subsided, have I thought of my good and affectionate parents, and of their Godlike advice! But when the little monitor began to move within me, I immediately seized ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... was there, in the choice of total extinction, in the act of leaving all that he loved, as well as in the extermination of that self which held the power to love. But for one thought, life would still be sweet. All the torment of an existence made dreadful by the hopelessness of an unquenchable passion would be nothing, as compared with the hourly joy of seeing Hilda and of hearing her voice. That would compensate for all things, no matter how horrible, except one; but that one outweighed the rest. The certainty that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... fellow-traveller of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... 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

... though neither we, nor (as I hold) any man on earth, can tell exactly what the words sacrifice and propitiation mean. And so with all the texts which speak of Christ's death and passion, and that atonement for sin which he, in his boundless mercy, worked out this day. Let us not torment our minds with arguments in which there are a hundred words of man's invention to one word of Holy Scripture, while the one word of Scripture has more in it than the hundred words of man can explain. But let us have faith in Christ. I mean, let us trust him ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... obliged to keep in her pettish feelings towards what concerned sacred things, she let all out in the music lesson, and with her murmurs and her inattention, her yawns and her blunders, rendered herself infinitely more dull and unmusical than nature had made her, and was a grievous torment to poor Mrs. Lacy, and her patient, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of that drive was a nightmare to Scattergood. When the baby yelled he was in torment. When the baby slept he was in torment lest he wake it, so that it would commence again to cry. He sweat cold and he sweat hot, and he wished wishes in his secret heart and blamed himself for many things—chief of which was that he had not brought Mandy along to ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... distaste taken by the merchants against him. Neither would I, though her own mother, hinder her voyage, for she had been the author of all the misfortunes that happened to me; and if my speaking a word would have saved her from the greatest torment, I believe I should have been quite silent. And I had but one reason to allege for the girl's going so hazardous a voyage, which is, she knew that the match was proposed by my lord, and if he had not thought it would have been advantageous for her, he would never have given L2000 ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... painter, no poet, who can enshrine for future generations the memory of this historic scene? We have here a sudden glimpse of Britain at her best. Hot sun, torment of burning feet on the cruel, white, and endless roads, the odour and sight and sound of death and wounds, pressure of pressing men, and love of life and the horrid loneliness of fear—all that was Giant Circumstance; but he could not extinguish the souls of men made in the image ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan

... party who looked on Popery as antichrist, and the Church of England as little better than Popery in disguise, as the same scarlet lady in a somewhat more modest attire. He was one of a class occasionally met with in the most quiet walks of life, men who torment their spirit on some public question till it becomes a personal grievance, or rather a corroding passion. What were bishops personally to him? He might have prayed, and expounded, and walked meditative in his fields, and left a public question to be decided by the movements, necessarily slow, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundry and Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home, glad enough to get an opportunity to torment Canute ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... bad places and ran the rest of the rapids without damage of any kind. Only one camp was made in this beautiful gorge, and there we slept, or tried to sleep, for two nights. Myriads of ants swarmed over the spot and made every hour more or less of a torment. They extended their investigations into every article brought out of the boats. During the whole time their armies marched and countermarched over, around, and through ourselves and everything we possessed. We saw a number of mountain sheep in this canyon, but ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... had a romp with her. The smallest chaps she would take up in her arms while she pulled out the drawers to show them her paper knife and trinkets; and when there were flowers, she would often break off one apiece for even those least amiable little plagues that in an apartment house are the torment of their nurses and their mammas the livelong day. This not only gave pleasure to the infantry, but relieved an aching which the poor girl had for a once cheerful home, now broken up by the death of her parents and the scattering abroad of brothers ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... perceived her outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would have shown herself without hesitation to a satyr or a eunuch. She had the self-possession of a goddess. To have made her nudity a torment, ever eluding a pursuing Tantalus, would have been an amusement ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is't but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this, let us divided live, And our dear love lose name of single one, That by this separation I may give That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone. O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove, Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave, To entertain the time with thoughts of love, Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... excitement almost always beyond their power to control; society and the law seem to me to be accessories to the irregularities brought about in this way. Our legislation has shut its eyes, so to speak, to the passions that torment a young man between twenty and five-and-twenty years of age. In Paris he is assailed by temptations of every kind. Religion may preach and Law may demand that he should walk uprightly, but all his surroundings and the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... of Jenny Dennison. This true-bred serving-damsel was, in her own person, a complete country coquette, and when she had no opportunity of teasing her own lovers, used to take some occasional opportunity to torment her young lady's. This arose from no ill-will to Henry Morton, who, both on her mistress's account and his own handsome form and countenance, stood high in her esteem. But then Lord Evandale was also ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... tragedies of her middle age her curious natural diffidence, which the habit of the world had never been able to subdue, had increased. In ten years of retirement, in the hundreds of hours of solitude which those ten years had held for her, it had grown within her. And now it began to torment her. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... walked off the faster for Clement's protest, leaving Lance to roll on the floor and climb the balusters backwards to exhale his desire to follow. He was too much upset even to follow Clement to the organ, or to settle to the drawing which Cherry was teaching him, and was a great torment to himself and his sisters till dinner-time, when Clement had done his organ and his Greek, and was ready for a rush for the ice; and Robina went joyously with them. 'Between two young ladies one can't well run into harm's ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... battlement, to prevent the prisoners, when they took the air, from enjoying it. As this conqueror was cruel from policy alone, it is probable this was merely a precaution against signals; for it is quite apparent, if he desired, to torment his captives, France has places better adapted to the object than even the donjon of Vincennes. I am not his apologist, however; for, while I shall not go quite as far as the Englishman who maintained, in a laboured treatise, that Napoleon ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... compress' | Ex'tract extract' | Re'tail retail' Con'cert concert' | Fer'ment ferment' | Sub'ject subject' Con'crete concrete' | Fore'cast forecast' | Su'pine supine' Con'duct conduct' | Fore'taste foretaste'| Sur'vey survey' Con fine confine' | Fre'quent frequent' | Tor'ment torment' Con'flict conflict' | Im'part impart' | Tra'ject traject' Con'serve conserve' | Im'port import' | Trans'fer transfer' Con'sort consort' | Im'press impress' | Trans'port transport' Con'test contest' | Im'print imprint' | Un'dress undress' Con'text context' | In'cense incense' ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... 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 ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... butler down stairs, the last weak death rattle in the throat of the coffee pot in the dining room, and the wail of the damned souls who had formerly stopped at this hotel, but who had been rescued at last, and had hilariously gone to perdition, only to come back at night and torment the poor guest by bragging over the superiority of hell as a refuge from ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... character—from translucent lakes shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... 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 of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... old idea of the avenging and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ is that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say; there is no pit of burning torment. But they know there is something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak, but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back and declare pitilessly,—'There is Law. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... published 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Bray describes an expedition that she made to Sheeps Tor, and how, on asking her way to the cave, she was told to 'be careful to leave a pin, or something of equal value, as an offering to these invisible beings; otherwise they would not fail to torment us in our sleep.' Grass grows on the lower slopes, but near the summit there spreads a 'bold and shelving sweep of about two hundred feet, the granite ... totally bare, save where it was here and there covered by ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... have been till of late. He hovered about in sundry disguises, as you know, much to the torment of us all; but finally he seems to have taken some umbrage at the lady, thinking she flouted his services, or did not pay him high enough for them, and Gifford bought him over easily enough; but he goes with us by the name of Maude, and the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "nor can I tell how it will end, or if ever I shall see your sweet face again. Yet, dearest, we have been happy together for some few hours, and if I fall and you live on I am sure that you will always remember me till, as we are taught, we meet again where no enemy has the power to torment us, and cold and hunger and darkness are not. Cicely, if that should be so and any child should come to you, teach it to love the father ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... forward there was a little more to breathe, and as the tunnel dropped, he felt the air sweeter. And that put a pinch more hope into him again. It was up and down with him and his mind in a torment, but at last he tried not to think at all, and just let his instinct to fight for life hold him and concentrated all his mind and muscle upon it. Yet one thought persisted in his worst moments: and that was, that if he didn't come through, his nephew wouldn't be hanged, but enjoy the two farms ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... these early years, she said: "I was not a happy child, nor a happy woman, until in mature life, I outgrew my early religious faith, and felt free to think and act from my own convictions." Having joined the church in extreme youth, and being morbidly conscientious, she suffered constant torment about her own sins, and those of her neighbors. She was a religious enthusiast, and in time of revivals was one of the bright and shining lights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... this capricious tyrant, which usurps the place of reason, doth not most cruelly torment and delude those poor men, the usurers, stockjobbers, and projectors, of content to themselves from heaping up riches, that is, from gathering counters, from multiplying figures, from enlarging denominations, ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... at once she had dismissed the desire, realising that comfort such as this, could be comfort but to the heart of a woman, more likely torment to a man. Also that should his fancy incline him to seek companionship and consolation in the love of another, a yearly pilgrimage to Worcester for her sake, would stand in the way of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... world of yours with opened eyes! Ye are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods, Each day ye break an image in your shrine And plant a fairer image where it stood Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, Whose fires of torment burned for span-long babes? Fit object for a tender mother's love! Why not? It was a bargain duly made For these same infants through the surety's act Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well His ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... lowering himself, but he could not help thinking of it, and he asked himself with terror if this thought which had entered into his mind had not come to stop, if he did not carry in his heart the seed of fearful torment. He knew himself; he was a man to think over his doubts, as formerly he would ruminate over his commercial operations, for days and nights, endlessly weighing ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... the Crown; His Heart & his Tongue evidently gave each other the Lye. Our modern GREAT MAN, would fain have it thought that he has refusd a Government, which his Soul is every day panting after & without the Possesion of which his Ambition & Lust of Power will perpetually torment him. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... was a mile away, and he had several matters to attend to. It was one of his weaknesses that when he had a thing to say and meant to say it, delay was a torment. The librarian was a man whom he knew well. "Mr. Wells, I've got to write quite a letter and do it quick," said he, entering the office. "Can I impose upon your good ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... are you and your husband,—and your uncle, whom, in truth, I love. You asked me a downright question which I did not then choose to answer by a downright answer. The downright answer was not at that time due to you. It has since been given, and as I like you too well to wish you to be in torment, I send you a line to say that I shall never be in the way of ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... benefits outsiders. Not so old Vixen it would seem. Her pleasure in the cubs led to most refined cruelty. For she often brought home to them mice and birds alive, and with diabolic gentleness would avoid doing them serious hurt so that the cubs might have larger scope to torment them. ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... for every human ill; so, at least, each human wretch readily thinks.—Begone; return twice as wealthy as thou wert before yesterday, and torment me no more with questions, complaints, or thanks; they are alike odious ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... the height would wait till he would come up and join them, which I did, but before Mr. Ross could get up, he unfortunately was mortally wounded in the body, by a cannon ball from the hulks, in the mouth of the River St. Charles, of which he died in great torment, but with great resolution, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... who injures or torments those Christians whose conduct is not evil, merely on account of religion, shall never smell the fragrance of the Garden (paradise). Now when men begin to want to make others change their faith it is extremely hard for them not to injure or torment them and therefore I think it better to abstain altogether and to wish rather to see a Christian a good Christian and a Muslim a ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... said, and knew not what more to say. And she looked at him covertly and saw grief and torment in him, and she was sorry for him. But within herself she said, Woe's me! and how long it shall be belike ere I meet ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... semi-confessions and innuendoes exacerbated my feelings of distrust and repulsion. And yet, at the same tune, I could not—nor did I try to—repress an immense pity for the man; perhaps less for the man than for the soul in pain. At the back of his words some torment burned at red heat, remorselessly. He sought relief. Perhaps he sought it from me because I was as apart as a woman from his physical splendour, a kind of bodiless creature with just a brain and a human heart, the ghost ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... not have your ladyship think any evil of me. I have always endeavoured to be a dutiful servant both to you and my master."—"O thou villain!" answered my lady; "why didst thou mention the name of that dear man, unless to torment me, to bring his precious memory to my mind?" (and then she burst into a fit of tears.) "Get thee from my sight! I shall never endure thee more." At which words she turned away from him; and Joseph retreated from the room in a most disconsolate condition, and ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... threatened attack upon the power dam, the mere torment of continued inaction became intolerable, but as to material danger, nothing definite came. The keen-eyed young soldiers on their beat night after night, day after day, caught no sight or sound of any lurking enemy, and ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... her own breathless vivid picture of the orphanage children, as she had seen them, the doubt concerning the captain's future actions returned to torment ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... in the last days of October, 1701, Penn sailed for England, expecting soon to return. But he became absorbed in affairs in England and never saw his colony again. This was unfortunate because Pennsylvania soon became a torment to him instead of a great pleasure as it always seems to have been when he lived in it. He was a happy present proprietor, but not a ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... than the highest degree of ill-nature can permit a man to pamper his own vanity at the price of another's shame? Is the glutton, who, to raise the flavour of his dish, puts some birds or beasts to exquisite torment, more cruel to the animal than this our proud man to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... many changes, by which it will be gradually purified. All these notions are alien to the Greek mind, and are plainly a foreign importation. The true Greek was neither pantheist nor introspective. He did not torment himself about the origin of evil or the beginning of the universe, but took life ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... this yer camp. Beef bones an' soap!" he went on, as though the very combination of the words was an offense to his gastronomical senses. "You pumpkin-faced idjut, you mush-headed tank o' wisdom, you masterpiece of under-done mule brain, how in sizzlin' torment you're figgerin' to ladle soap into the vitals of inoffendin' babbies, an' push beef bones through their innercent stummicks, 'ud par'lize the brains of every science society in this yer country to know, an' drive the whole world o' physic ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... Gathas, over which Iran conceived that the individual had to pass after death. If he was righteous the bridge bore him safely over to the sacred mountain, where the good lived again; if he was wicked, he fell off the bridge and found himself in the place of torment. It is another inconsistency that Zarathustra expects, on the one hand, to convert the world by his preaching, while on the other hand his sense of the antagonism between the good and the evil spirits and their followers often hurries him into violent methods. One hymn concludes ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... such dangerous battles. But, alas! I now perceive that all my practice before was but mere speculation; for one day of troubles since my last arrival in Scotland, hath more pierced my heart than all the torments of the galleys did the space of nineteen months; for that torment, for the most part, did touch the body, but this pierces the soul and inward affections. Then I was assuredly persuaded that I should not die till I had preached Jesus Christ, even where I now am. And yet having now my hearty desire, I am nothing satisfied, neither yet rejoice. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... 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 all ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... in that varying month, had not unfrequently followed a day of doubt and restless despondency. As he turned into the Quai des Bergues he actually hummed a bar or two of opera. He had not done that before in six weeks. They had been weeks of inconceivable torment and pleasure ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Castlemaine do speak of going to lie in at Hampton Court Let me blood, about sixteen ounces, I being exceedingly full Lust and wicked lives of the nuns heretofore in England Only wind do now and then torment me . . . extremely See her look dejectedly and slighted by people already She also washed my feet in a bath of herbs, and so to bed Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember Slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... certain knowledge reached him of life and death. The conclusion slowly came to him that just blind killing was not enough. For all he knew death might bring instant forgetfulness—and thus not constitute in itself a satisfactory measure of vengeance. The fear of death was a reality and a torment: for all he knew, the thing itself might be a change for the better. It might be that, suddenly hurled out of this world of three dimensions, his enemies would have no knowledge nor carry no memories of the hand that struck them down. There ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... was judicious. What could be more trying than to lie at the mercy of rascals? Obliged to be continually supplying them with hush-money, and yet always afraid of being betrayed by them, he was in perpetual torment; but, his services once accepted by the police, all this was at an end. He must have felt himself like a man escaped from a wreck, and from the horrors of contending elements; like Ulysses, to whom we have before compared him, when, having ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... sin is greater than man's sin. But man is punished with sorrow on account of the pleasure taken in sin, according to Apoc. 18:7, "As much as she hath glorified herself, and lived in delicacies, so much torment and sorrow give ye to her." Consequently much more is the devil punished with the grief of sorrow, because he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... power was the measure of his anguish. His body was bowed down by the fearful storm that shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before the blast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to bear the burden of life; he was afraid to die while he bore the yoke of hell. The torment ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... fum de oberseah didn' 'pear ter do no good. Ev'y now en den 'is feet'd 'mence ter torment 'im, en 'is min' 'u'd git all mix' up, en his conduc' kep' gittin' wusser en wusser, 'tel fin'ly de w'ite folks couldn' stan' it no longer, en Mars' Dugal' tuk Hannibal back ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... and such as pretend an interest in me, and a power over me, do so persecute me with their good nature, and take it so ill that they are not accepted, as I would live in a hollow tree to avoid them. Here I have nobody but my brother to torment me, whom I can take the liberty to dispute with, and whom I have prevailed with hitherto to bring none of his pretenders to this place, because of the noise all such people make in a country, and the tittle-tattle it breeds among neighbours that have ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... must admit that the Egyptian had not progressed far in the hard way of abstract thinking. He worshipped everything about him because he feared the result of failing to do so. He embalmed the dead lest the spirit of the neglected one might come to torment him. Eye-minded as he was, he came to have an artistic sense, to love decorative effects. But he let these always take precedence over his sense of truth; as, for example, when he modified his lists of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... shore 'bout dat. I don't want yer to ride hope's hoss down to torment. Now be shore an' come to-morrer an' bring dat young lady, an' take supper wid me. I'se all on nettles ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... to guide him, and he grew up with a kind of knowledge hunger in his heart that gnawed without ceasing. But this also it did: It inspired him with the hope that some day he might be the means of saving others from this sort of torment—he would aim to furnish to them what had been denied ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... doubt, who never knew this master torment, that Field carried out his threat to appear at Crane's "first night" with that low-cut satin vest and that speckled tweed suit, which did indeed make him a gaudy spectacle. But his solemn face gave no sign that his mixed apparel was making him the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... rate, it showed my good wishes for him,—it showed that I was his friend, and what return do you think he made me for it? Why, to-day he spent his time between schools in filling the room with smoke, that he might torment his companions here, and give me trouble, and anxiety and suffering, when I should come. If I should tell you his name, the whole school would turn against ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... years of achievement. He had struck his first blow as a reformer, and, as is often the lot of reformers, his sword had broken in his hand, and there now rested upon him the sense of failure as a superadded torment. Yet now and again a gleam of consolation would disperse the gloom, and advise him that the world was beginning to recognize his existence, and in a way his merits. In this same year he received an offer from Pavia of the Professorship of Medicine, but this he refused because he did not see any ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... labours returned to him void. "And is it for this," said he, "that I have sacrificed ambition, and buried talents? Is humility to be rewarded only with mortification? Is obscurity and retirement the favourite scene of uneasiness, ingratitude, and impertinence? They shall be no longer my torment. In no scene can I meet ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... yet—though she has seen me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times—she has never once discovered the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct in one light—it is the conduct of a coward ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... so." What had 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 ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... that time of waiting was torment. He had faced danger and tragedy since he could toddle, and fear had never overridden the titillating sense of adventure. But then the danger had been for himself. Now terror conjured pictures whose horror set him trembling. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... pique of the Chevalier at the mention of Philibert, but in that spirit of petty torment with which her sex avenges small slights she continued to irritate the vanity of the Chevalier, whom in her heart ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... stood on a form and sung little hymns to a derisive audience; he had answered questions as to his mother, his sister, and other members of his family; he had endured buffeting and kicks, till he was fairly worn out, and till it ceased to be amusing to torment him. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... think of going abroad for the autumn. I have been rather a long time at Cumber, you know, and I'm afraid the roving mood is coming upon me again. I shall be sorry to go, too, for I had intended to torment you continually about your art studies. You have really a genius for landscape, you know, Miss Darrell; you only want to be goaded into industry now and then by some severe critic like myself. Is your cousin, Mr. Stormont, an artist, ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon

... before, that he had not been in Amboina since last November, till now that he was brought thither in custody. "Why, then," said the fiscal, "have you belied yourself?" To this he resolutely answered, that all he had confessed respecting a conspiracy was false, and merely feigned to avoid torment. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... whom she was smitten because he was in the May of his age, nobly dressed, a graceful mover, brave in mien, and was all that a lover should be to bestow a heart full of love upon an honest married woman too tightly squeezed by the bonds of matrimony, which torment her, and always excite her to unharness herself from the conjugal yoke. And you can imagine that the young gentleman grew to admire Madame, whose silent love spoke secretly to him, without either the devil or themselves ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... hated books. They saw one of Mother Nature's favorite daughters; designed to be the darling of her family, and the conqueror of hearts among men of all tastes and ages. But Sydney Westerfield had lived for six weary years in the place of earthly torment, kept by Miss Wigger under the name of a school. Every budding beauty, except the unassailable beauty of her eyes and her hair, had been nipped under the frosty superintendence of her maternal aunt. Her cheeks were hollow, her delicate lips were pale; her shabby dress lay flat over her bosom. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... thighs were cut off. The tyrant, pointing to his mangled limbs and scattered bones, said to the other three: "It concerns you to avoid this punishment; I do not compel you to suffer." The martyrs answered with one voice: "On the contrary, we rather pray that if you have any other more exquisite torment you would inflict it on us. We are determined never to violate the fidelity which we owe to God, or to deny Jesus Christ our Saviour, for he is our God, from whom we have our being, and to whom alone we aspire." The tyrant ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... wide and aching desolation! We never found out his name or learned how he fared—whether he lived or died, and if he died how long he lived before he died. It is a puzzle which will always lie unanswered at the back of my mind, and I know that in odd moments it will return to torment me. I will bet one thing, though—nobody else tried to cut that mule out ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... fame seized me. I drew my sword for Italy; triumphed, was a king, and learned to curse the hour when I first dreamed of fame. A passion for gold seized me. Wealth came to my wish, and to my torment. Days and nights of misery were the gift of avarice. In my passion I longed for regions where the hand of man had never rifled the mine. I found a bold Genoese, and led him to the discovering of a new world. With its metals I inundated the old; and to my misery ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... sacrosanctity of his office. I never for a moment doubted that men like Henry of Exeter were channels through which the Christian priesthood received those miraculous powers by their exercise of which alone it was possible for the ordinary sinner to be rescued from eternal torment. Of the structural doctrines of theology which were then the shibboleths of English Churchmanship generally, I never entertained a doubt. That the universe was created in the inside of a week four thousand ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... wife, he passed three years in the most prosperous peace. But idleness brought wantonness among his courtiers, and peace begot lewdness, which they displayed in the most abominable crimes. For they would draw some men up in the air on ropes, and torment them, pushing their bodies as they hung, like a ball that is tossed; or they would put a kid's hide under the feet of others as they walked, and, by stealthily pulling a rope, trip their unwary steps on the slippery skill in their path; others they would strip of their clothes, and lash ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... side of the hut, calling out, "For God's sake, open the door!" A latch rattled close to my ears, and a door flew open. 'Twas Old Suke. I had, many a time, when a boy, called out to her, "Black clouds arising!"—for we always would torment the colored folks, when they came down with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... coistrel he strives to fill himself with wind, and flies against it. Any man's advancement is the most capital offence that can be to his malice, yet this envy, like Phalaris' bull, makes that a torment first for himself he prepared for others. He is a day-bed for the devil to slumber on. His blood is of a yellowish colour, like those that have been bitten by vipers, and his gall flows as thick ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... obliged to hire three carpenters for ten days to repair damages done in late expedition. I had a fluke shot off a bower anchor at Tricheri, and ought to have another one. I must get a new main-sail made here. It is disagreeable to me to torment your lordship with all these statements, but you must be aware that a vessel like this cannot be sailed without great expense. There are here a number of seamen from the brig who want to enter with me. I have as yet refused to receive them; but, if you thought proper to give ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... The lady or the gentleman? Ah, neither, I see. Both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the doctor shy. It is spring without, but summer within," ran on Dr. Rob gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "Flannels seem to call up boating and picnic parties; and I see you have discarded the merino, Nurse Gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. More becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed up well. In this air people must eat plenty, and you have ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... the populace of Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking- stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'—pressed slowly to death under planks,—for refusing to plead to an indictment for witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State Reform School, to the humane regulations ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... 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 old man went on his way with an almost elastic step. Once more was he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... she said, "my Catherine, and a faithful; but Heaven pity him who shall have one day a creature so beautiful to delight him, and a thing so mischievous to torment him—thou art fit to drive ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... for 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 ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... she keeps in her chamber and waters with her tears. It was perhaps symptomatic of a certain morbid sensibility in Keats to select this subject from so cheerful a writer as Boccaccio. This intensity of love surviving in face of leprosy, torment, decay, and material horrors of all kinds; this passionate clinging of spirit to body, is a mediaeval note, and is repeated in the neo-romantic school which derives from Keats; in Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, O'Shaughnessy, Marzials, and Paine. Think of the unshrinking gaze which Dante fixes ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... be of interest to some, who desire to train children with the least pain, and the most enjoyment to the little ones themselves. First, we never used a spelling-book—that torment of the small child—nor an English grammar. But we wrote letters, telling of the things we had seen in our walks, or told again some story we had read; these childish compositions she would read over with us, correcting all faults of spelling, of grammar, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... Tobacco," hinted that the husband, by his indulgence in the habit, might "reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome, and cleane complexioned wife to that extremitie, that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or else resolve to live in a perpetuall stinking torment." His Majesty's style was forcible, if not elegant. There are also one or two references in the early dramatists. In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," for instance, which was first acted in 1598, six years before King James blew ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... matters of the art of architecture with the greatest possible zeal, and pursuing that art, he gave promise of those achievements that we see in such abundance throughout all Italy, in the vast number of works executed by him at a more mature age. Now it happened that Giuliano was forced by the torment that he suffered from the stone to return to Florence; and Antonio, having become known to the architect Bramante of Castel Durante, began to give assistance to that master, who, being old and crippled in the hands by palsy, was not able to work as before in the preparation ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... you, ye sons of pain that are this day in earth, Now cry for all your torment: now curse your hour of birth And the fathers who begat you to a portion nothing worth. And Thou, my own beloved, for as brave as ere thou art, Bow down thine head, Despoina, clasp thy pale arms over it, Lie low with fast-closed eyelids, clenched teeth, enduring heart, For sorrow ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

... Horace's office. As long as everyone thought the children his, he could hold to the point that they had to go back with him. He would make no compromise for money with the protectors of his children; for he had rather have their bodies to torment than be the richest man in the state. He had not yet avenged that woman dead and gone so many years back. At thought of her, he rose to his feet and smiled ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... Burton, no right-minded husband could willfully torment his wife upon her birthday, so she soon forgot the humiliation of the morning, and came home with superb spirits and matchless complexion for the little party. Her guests soon began to arrive, and after the company was assembled Mrs. Burton's chambermaid ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... smile had gladdened the hearts of mortal men. Then came the day of vengeance, for Zeus bade Hermes bring back Pelops again from the kingdom of Hades to the land of living men, and on Tantalos was passed a doom which should torment him for ever and ever. In the shadowy region where wander the ghosts of men, Tantalos, they said, lay prisoned in a beautiful garden, gazing on bright flowers and glistening fruits and laughing waters, but for all that his tongue was parched, and his limbs were faint with hunger. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the hall yester eve, the Mistress knew of thy counterfeit tryst with me, and meant nought but death for thee; yet first would she have thee in her arms again, therefore did she make much of thee at table (and that was partly for my torment also), and therefore did she make that tryst with thee, and deemed doubtless that thou wouldst not dare to forgo it, even if thou shouldst go to ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... said, 'are you not in great suffering?' 'Not at all,' she replied, and I paid homage to her heroism. 'I know not, dear miss, whether to admire more the greatness of your heroism or the generosity of your sympathy. While you are in torment yourself, your tender interest goes forth to my countrywomen in what you believe to be torture. Be comforted, dear miss; the anguish of a squeezed foot is not comparable to that of a waist so cruelly confined ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... taken from me, though that was bad; but it was this, how could I ever brush the flies off my sides and my hind legs any more? You who have tails just whisk the flies off without thinking about it, and you can't tell what a torment it is to have them settle upon you and sting and sting, and have nothing in the world to lash them off with. I tell you it is a lifelong wrong, and a lifelong loss; but thank heaven, they don't ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... he," said Louis, affecting unconcern, "since he gained the torment of being a martyr, without the merit ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... at the sight of the solace for which his soul burned. To-day for the first time his poisoned nerves had been denied their steadying dose; and their retort was a mounting torment. He grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth against the glass in his trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and then stood erect, holding it aloft for an instant. For one fleeting moment he held his head above the drowning waves of his abyss. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... torment for the day over, thankful for any distraction from the next day's lessons, and eager for any relief from the intolerable ennui of goodness, were thankful enough now for Pupasse. They naturally watched her in preference to Madame Joubert, holding ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... and very foolish; but to see a mincing, smirking person, fan in hand, gliding about the room, talking nothings and nonsense, and to know that La Place was her plaything and Newton her acquaintance, was too striking a contrast not to torment the brain. It was Newton's mantle trimmed and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... that you are going to torment and to death, for he who met you (I will requite your kindness by another) is a robber and a murderer of men. Whatsoever stranger he meets he entices him hither to death; and as for this bed of which he speaks, truly it ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed reflection ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Smiley was within three years of the latter figure. He had on a pearl Fedora very much over one ear, a new suit of store clothes with a mighty watch chain, and new boots, which seemed like little souls put to torment—they screeched horribly whenever ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... followed with unusual vigour her customary role of "advance agent," and had spread most ridiculously exaggerated reports of my supernatural prowess and magical attributes. I controlled the denizens of Spiritland, and could call them up in thousands to torment the blacks. I controlled the elements; ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... good old age, and she has hardly had a sick day in her life. After breakfast Jack might go over for Dr. Maverick. He is sensible, and will not torment her with experiments." ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... about her. Her father, however, took no notice. He sat absent and pondering, and soon he stretched out a peremptory hand and lowered the window which his daughter had raised against an east wind to protect a delicate ear and throat which had been the torment of her life. It was done with no conscious unkindness; far from it. He was merely absorbed in the planning of his campaign. The next all-important point was the selection of the Commission of Inquiry. No effort must be spared by the Church party ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other's path. But whenever they found a sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. Then they would howl and shriek senseless songs, and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over nothing among themselves, and leave ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... mist over them, with a fierce white blast shooting up here and there when the lid of an oven was raised, as though to add fresh temperature to some particular male-factor in some particular chamber of torment. Humanity about was joyous, however. Laughter and banter and song came from the cabins that lined the big ravine and the little ravines opening into it. A banjo tinkled at the entrance of "Possum Trot," sacred to the darkies. We moved toward it. On the stoop sat an ecstatic ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... little summer settlement on the Down East coast where I have been passing the last three months, and with each loath day the sense of its peculiar charm grows more poignant. A prescience of the homesickness I shall feel for it when I go already begins to torment me, and I find myself wishing to imagine some form of words which shall keep a likeness of it at least through the winter; some shadowy semblance which I may turn to hereafter if any chance or change should destroy or transform it, or, what is more likely, if I should never come back ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... "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 ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... could not do without also gnashing her teeth, like a child trying to look fearsome. How pretty was that gnashing of her teeth! All her tormentings of me turned suddenly into sweetnesses, and who could torment like this exquisite fury, wondering in sudden flame why she could give herself to anyone, while I wondered only why she could give herself to me. It may be that I wondered over-much. Perhaps that was why I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... presentiment, then, was true—I had found him after so long a time! But what if he should not see me? What torment to be so near and yet so far! And how was it likely he would take notice of a common private's watch, and if he did, how was it likely at this distance of time he would remember poor me? Jim, I know, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... much the same in nymphomania. Unless the sex-avid woman has a decent income, such as will provide her with those means whereby women preserve the effect of attractiveness, she must seek assuagement of her sex-torment with ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... enemy, deadly in evil deed, Cometh in dark of night, sateth his secret hate, Worketh through fearsome awe, slaughter and shame. I can give Hrothgar bold counsel to conquer him, How he with valiant mind Grendel may vanquish, If he would ever lose torment of burning care, If bliss shall bloom ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... companions rowing, Spaniards 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 again, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... teaches the new souls to choose for themselves the path they must tread? Who thinks that the desire for this path of their own can be so profound that a hard or even mild pressure towards uniformity can make the whole of childhood a torment. ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... message, which the weasel saw at once was intended to encourage him in his proposed treachery. He thanked the humble-bee for the care and speed with which his errand had been accomplished, and then curled himself up on his divan to go to sleep, so as to be ready to go down early in the morning and torment the rat. As he was very happy since his schemes were prospering, he went to sleep in a minute as ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... punishment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one another by this time, and lived to revile and torment ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... released in July. The Raising of Lazarus meanwhile had gone to pay his upholsterer L300, and his Christ's Entry into Jerusalem had been sold for L240, although it had brought him L3000 in receipts at exhibitions. Clearly heroic pictures did not pay, and Haydon here took up 'the torment of portrait-painting' ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... of Mrs Warren's life, and never had. She has never spoken to me about it; and of course I have never spoken to her about it. Your delicacy will tell you that a handsome woman needs some friends who are not—well, not on that footing with her. The effect of her own beauty would become a torment to her if she could not escape from it occasionally. You are probably on much more confidential terms with Kitty than I am. Surely you can ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... by no means keen on leaving this delightful spot; the very thought of those sand-ridges seemed to make one's heart sink to one's boots! Our camp consisted of a bough-shade, and mosquito-nets, of course. Barring the constant torment of flies and the extreme heat, we had a most enjoyable time. The lakes and creek abounded in wild-fowl of all kinds, and fish by the hundred could be caught below our camp. Seen from our camp the estuary had so much the appearance of a low-lying arm of the sea, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... effectiveness of reasoning things out: "I have a student's lamp, of which the flame vibrates most unpleasantly unless the collar which bears the chimney be raised about a sixteenth of an inch. I learned the remedy after much torment by accident, and now always keep the collar up with a small wedge. But my procedure is a mere association of two totals, diseased object and remedy. One learned in pneumatics could have named the cause of the disease, and thence inferred ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... hope and constancy. "The Lord looketh on us, and hath comfort in us," said one. "The King of the world shall raise us up who have died for His laws unto everlasting life," was spoken by another. "Think not our nation is forsaken of God, but abide awhile and behold His great power, how He will torment thee and thy seed," said another, (for they were as yet only faithful Jews, hope and forgiveness for their persecutors was for the Christian.) The mother stood firmly by while each son's limbs were cut ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... terrible brightness, like the lurid flashes from his own torment, burst from his eye. The very anger and malice he strove to quell made it burn still hotter. His visage gathered blackness, cloud hurrying on cloud, like the grim billows of the storm across a glowing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... immense bunch of herbs, as antidotes for all the aches and ills which human flesh is heir to, on a bright, glowing September morning, we set forward on my homeward journey. "Blessings brighten as they leave us;" and although I had been considered the torment of the whole household, all regretted my departure, and begged me ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... to those perturbed and passionate souls, among others, to whom these futilities have become a rankling, continuous torment and depression. When life on earth appears fragmentary and disordered, not only nonsense but terrifying nonsense, full of hideous injustices, sickening uncertainties, and cruel destructions, men have not infrequently found a refuge in the divine. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... do you know what it is to love without being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of words—misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment." ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... the free circulation of the blood. She is so pitiful and sad! How could Mrs. Mills speak so unkindly to her, pushing her with her foot to make her rise up? She treats them like wicked school-boys who have done something to torment her and merit punishment. I cannot but pity Mrs. Mills, for this is an uncomfortable position to fill, and if she has always obeyed her Superintendent, she has done her duty, and deserves a retired ...
— Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum • Mary Huestis Pengilly

... horror. Those were the times of large schools, rods steeped in brine (actual fact), intestine insurrections, the bumping of obnoxious ushers, and the "barring out" of tyrannical masters. A school of this description was a complete place of torment for the orphan, the unfriended, and the deserted. Lads then stayed at school till they were eighteen and even twenty, and fagging flourished ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... me to rush to his rescue; moreover, as I stood on the gangway witnessing his struggles for life, I felt that I was about to lose all the revenge I had so long laid up in store; in short, I could not spare him, and only saved him, as a cat does a mouse, to torment him. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... which we translate "Alas!" coming under consideration, he observed: "There is no corresponding word in the languages of these countries. This word belongs to the Koran and the next world." He means, that the word has only a relation to the torment of the damned. It is curious that this Arabic term agrees with, or is like, our word wail (Ar. weel), and is the term used by our translators of the New Testament in describing the torments of the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... letters, and especially the B before the Psalms, are at once elegant and elaborate. Among the subjects described, the Descent into Hell, or rather the Place of Torment, is singularly striking and extraordinary. The text of the MS. is written in a large bold gothic letter. This volume has been recently bound in red morocco, and cruelly cut in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... unavailing. If a man was taken sick at the fort they put him in a warm room, brought him a jug of water once a day, and left him to find out what his constitution was worth. Generally he recovered; for the surgeon's supplies had been exhausted early in the year. But the Indians, in their torment, rushed into the river through the ice, and returned to roll themselves in their blankets and ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie



Words linked to "Torment" :   hamstring, pain, harry, martyrise, martyrize, affliction, tease, crucify, tormentor, harassment, annoyance, worrying, hurting, tormenter, anguish, chivy, badgering, injure, excruciate, distress, badger, curse, plague, martyr, pester, molestation, vexation, wound, harass, molest, provoke, chivvy, rag, suffering, bedevilment, bedevil, beset, chevy, chevvy, hurt, hassle, self-torment, frustrate, rack, beleaguer, oppress, agony, madden, dun, persecute, chafe, torture, bug



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