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Cruelty   Listen
noun
Cruelty  n.  (pl. cruelties)  
1.
The attribute or quality of being cruel; a disposition to give unnecessary pain or suffering to others; inhumanity; barbarity. "Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty."
2.
A cruel and barbarous deed; inhuman treatment; the act of willfully causing unnecessary pain. "Cruelties worthy of the dungeons of the Inquisition." "Macaulay."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cruelty" Quotes from Famous Books



... people who have dipped into Sir Richard Burton's Thousand and One Nights, one shall have been offended by the animal details; another to whom these were harmless, perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have been shocked in his turn by the rascality and cruelty of all the characters. Of two readers, again, one shall have been pained by the morality of a religious memoir, one by that of the VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE. And the point is that neither need be wrong. We shall always shock each other both in life and art; ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... after the tribe had been governed for upwards of thirty years by such a person as old Fraser, it were no wonder if the greater part had become either rogues or fools; he was a ruthless tyrant, Belle, over his own people, and by his cruelty and rapaciousness must either have stunned them into an apathy approaching to idiocy, or made them artful knaves in their own defence. The qualities of parents are generally transmitted to their descendants—the progeny of trained pointers are almost sure to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... continued to watch the tall scoundrel, who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in complexion, with black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft face showed upon its lips and around the mouth certain lines which reveal the peculiar cruelty that characterizes sluggards and voluptuaries. Catherine swung her petticoat, striped blue and white, with an ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... heaven, as the vesper hymn floats over the evening air! It is a scene that will never again be enacted in the history of the world—dreamers dreaming greatly, building a castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... till this night, seem to me that all the better feelings of my nature—whatever they were—had been blotted out of existence, for since I came to this part of the world the cruelty and injustice that I have witnessed and suffered have driven me to desperation, and I candidly confess to you that I have come to hate pretty nigh the whole human race. The grip of your hand and tone of your voice, however, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... intersect in parting; but all this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves, and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... better civilization has wrought a change in her behalf, permitted to eat people, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men; the dainty enjoyed by the men being considered too good to be wasted on women. Is anything wanting to this picture of the degradation of woman? By a refinement of cruelty she receives no benefit whatever from the missionaries who are sent out by—what to her must seem a new name ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Instantly, in the flood of grief and remorse and humiliation that had overwhelmed her, Lloyd caught at this straw of hope. Only Dr. Pitts and Bennett knew the real facts. Bennett, of course, would not speak, and Lloyd knew that the physician would understand the cruelty and injustice of her situation, and because of that would also keep silence. To make sure of this she could write him a letter, or, better still, see him personally. It would be hard to tell him the truth. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... prove so heavy; but after that? None knew better than he the trials of expensive prospecting underground, the long drives to end in nothing, the drifts that tapped no ore, the ledges that promised to come in strongly, and led the worker on with hope deferred until his purse was exhausted. The cruelty of nature itself flaunting the golden will-o'-the-wisp in the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... from his camp, (78) and with some difficulty made his escape to the wing of the army commanded by Antony. And now, intoxicated with success, he sent the head of Brutus [117] to be cast at the foot of Caesar's statue, and treated the most illustrious of the prisoners not only with cruelty, but with abusive language; insomuch that he is said to have answered one of them who humbly intreated that at least he might not remain unburied, "That will be in the power of the birds." Two others, father and son, who begged ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had depopulated some of the best peopled of the islands and renewed them with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty, driving them to self-starvation and suicide, as a way of mercy and release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel desperation and ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... invaders entrenched themselves, was forced to surrender, and its garrison put ruthlessly to the sword. The Earl of Desmond, who after long indecision rose to support them, was defeated and hunted over his own country, which the panic-born cruelty of his pursuers harried ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... he would have felt as natural; but the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the laughter of the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at least, defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded his world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their kindness showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he suddenly became conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him in silence. Its eyes were grey and awful, and its beard red. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... of Cairo the necessity of ensuring our own safety forced the commission of a terrible act of cruelty. A tribe of Arabs in the neighbourhood of Cairo had surprised and massacred a party of French. The General-in-Chief ordered his aide de camp Croisier to proceed to the spot, surround the tribe, destroy the huts, kill all ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... certain way, his kindness was cruelty. It threw too much upon her. She believed that if she were to assume that a marriage ceremony performed by a black man from the wilds of Africa, was as binding, at least, as a solemn engagement, he would accept her construction and all its consequences. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... Odalite, without looking up, and unconsciously pulling her dog's ears so hard that even Joshua's great patience gave way, first in a deprecating whine that produced no effect; and then in a despairing howl that quickly brought his mistress to a sense of her cruelty. She apologized to the victim so earnestly and caressed him so tenderly that Joshua grew ashamed of his want of doghood, and began to assure his mistress, in eloquent dumb show, that it was all a misapprehension on her part; that he wasn't hurt at all; that she never did hurt him ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in my eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; I have (though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... hand: And mak'st the base Earth to drinke thy Noble bloud, Bee not more sterne, and cruell 'gainst thy selfe, Then thy most hateful enemies would be, No Parthian, Gaule, Moore, no not Caesars selfe, VVould with such cruelty thy worth repay, O stay thy hand, giue me thy fatall blade: VVhich turnes his edge and waxeth blunt to wound, A brest so fraught with vertue excellent. 1100 Ca. Seni. Why dost thou let me of my firme resolue, Vnkinde boy hinderer of thy Fathers ioy, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous

... world was, he has gnawed; Of his wisdom, of his fraud What dost thou know? In the wretched little beast Is life and heart, Child and parent, Not without relation To fruitful field and sun and moon. What art thou? His wicked eye Is cruel to thy cruelty. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... sight of Momola and her child, followed so strangely on the spectacle of sordid misery he had witnessed at Pontesordo, that an inarticulate pity held Odo by the throat. Gamba's anger against the people at the farm seemed as senseless as their own cruelty to their animals. What were they all—Momola, her child, and her persecutors—but a sickly growth of the decaying social order? He felt an almost physical longing for fresh air, light, the rush ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... office to see Rushton; if Hunter comes here, you say I told you to tell him that if I find the boy in that shop again without a fire, I'll report it to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. And as for you, if the boy comes out here to get more wood, don't you attempt to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... cruelty against many, and unjustly slain no small number of noble and illustrious men at Rome, ... at length established himself as the successor of NERO, in his hatred and hostility to GOD. He was the second that raised a persecution against us. In this persecution, it is handed down by tradition, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... "Parents transmit deviltry to children and then punish them for it." Instance after instance of such cruelty could be cited. Why should parents expect their children to ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... consider how it was that they should now court the fellowship of one whom, less than fifteen days ago, all ranks of the College had declared to be a monster not to be tolerated. Alas for faith in heaven, for the barbarity of men, for the hatred of false friends, for that shamelessness and cruelty more fell than serpent's bite! What more is there to tell? The first time I entered the room of the Affidati I saw that a heavy beam had been poised above in such fashion that it might easily fall and kill whatsoever person ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... matter quite coolly, and did not seem to realize or to believe that the troublesome miss had actually jumped into the lake to escape from her cruelty. She told Kate to get out of the boat, and go into the house. The terrified girl obeyed in silence, ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... had commenced, by cutting the throats of the noble stags, as they helplessly lay in various attitudes on the sward, looking up at their conquerors with those large black eyes of theirs in a way which seemed to ask how human beings could be guilty of such cruelty. ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... of an enemy, there is no cruelty which can be exercised, no species of torture, which their ingenuity can devise, too severe to be inflicted. To those who have excited a spirit of resentment in the bosom of an Indian, the tomahawk and scalping knife are instruments ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... suggested that barbarism, as we mean it, is not mere ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and means militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of the vow or the contract which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urged that the Prussian is a spiritual barbarian, because he is not bound by his own past, any more than ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on the one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females. Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found. I then directed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... On other plantations however, some slaves were treated cruelly. When a slave resented this treatment he was quickly gotten rid of. Many were sent to Mississippi and Texas. White offenders were sent to chain gangs, but there were no gangs for slaves. "Patter rollers" were known more for their cruelty than many of the slave owners and would often beat slaves unmercifully". "I remember one," remarked Mr. Hammond, "The Patter rollers fot after a man on our place." Booker went to see his wife and took along an old out of date pass. The Patter-rollers asked to see the pass which he quickly ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... the negroes, instead of being indifferent to local attachments, are peculiarly alive to them. That nothing short of cruelty can drive them from their homes—that they will endure even that, as long as it can be borne, rather than leave; and that as soon as the instrument of cruelty is removed, they will hasten back to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... head to glance expectantly at her companion, and she saw the smile go out of his face and anger come in. Frona was helplessly aware that she had no grip over the situation, and, though a rebellion at the cruelty and injustice of it was smouldering somewhere deep down, she could only watch the swift culmination of the little tragedy. The woman met his gaze with a half-shrinking, as from an impending blow, and with a softness of expression which ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... valuations in relation to such important institutions as property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken. The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... incendio. Another early patron was William Walsh, a Worcestershire country gentleman of fortune and fashion, who condescended to dabble in poetry after the manner of Waller, and to write remonstrances upon Celia's cruelty, verses to his mistress against marriage, epigrams, and pastoral eclogues. He was better known, however, as a critic, and had been declared by Dryden to be, without flattery, the best in the nation. Pope received from ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... punishment for her unnatural cruelty in causing her child's death, it is commonly reported that the spirit of Lady Russell is doomed to haunt Bisham Abbey, Berkshire, the house where this act of violence was committed. Lady Russell had by her first husband ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile—the smile that indicates the absence alike of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that speaks aloud of the unquestioning and dogged resolve ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... thou canst not. But wherefore doth not God compass it? Can He not do what He will? Be wrong and cruelty and injustice what He would? Doth He hate me, that He leaveth me thus to live and die like a rat in a hole? And wherefore? What have I done? I am no worser sinner than thousands of other men and women. I never stole, nor murdered, nor sware falsely; I was true woman to God and to my lord, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... sheets, he did not doubt them for an instant when their assertions fed his eager restless passion. Where the enemy was concerned he adopted the principle, that the worst is sure to be true—and he was almost grateful to Germany when, by acts of cruelty and repeated violations of justice, she furnished him the solid confirmation of the sentence which, for greater security, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... 1873, most of the large plantations witnessed scenes of cruelty never surpassed in the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... of cruelty the most hideous is that which is perpetrated on defenceless little children, and we hear with regret that the Register of Births in Liverpool now includes the following names:—Kitchener Ernest Pickles, Jellicoe Jardine, French Donaldson, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various

... there are many kinds of cruelty. I do not suppose Richard would ever transgress the limits of the law. But Olivia was one of those girls who can suffer great torture—mental torture I mean. Even I could not live in the same house with him, and she was a dreamy, sensitive, romantic child, with ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... not know for certain. I shall try to assist him all I can. But he will not go back to Jim Goban's if I can help it. It is the height of cruelty for such a refined man to live at a place like that. I do not know what the people of this parish were thinking about to allow him to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... abound; and the "duck-liver pates" are there almost as popular as the pate de foie gras of Strasburg. In order to bring the livers of the wretched duck to the fashionable and unnatural size, the same diabolical cruelty is resorted to as in the case of the Strasburg goose. The poor birds are nailed by the feet to a board placed close to a fire, and, in that position, plentifully supplied with food and water. In a few days, the carcase is reduced to a mere shadow, while ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... legs planted stiffly forward, it was made to slide in the required direction by main force. The place of execution reached, Dick jammed its head against the barrier, Tom hauled its tail taut over the same and made fast. There was no intentional cruelty in their actions, but difficult work had to be quickly done, and they could not afford to be squeamish. Obstinate violence had to be overcome by resolute vigour. The mule was now helplessly fixed, with its tongue hanging out and its eyes ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... two Canibals appeared, naked, but for a breech-cloth of plaited straw, with Countenances bloody and furious, and foaming at the Mouth"; but on being given tobacco, retreated inland to alarm the tribe. The ship's company gathered together and sat down to wait their return, expecting cruelty, says Dickenson, and dreadful death. Christianity was now to be brought face to face with heathenness, which fact our author seems to have recognized under all his terror. "We began by putting our trust in the Lord, hoping for ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... mosques of New Delhi, I visited only two, the Mosque Roshun-ad-dawla, and the Jumna Mosque. The former stands in the principal street, and its pinnacles and domes are splendidly gilt. It is made famous through its connection with an act of cruelty on the part of Sheikh Nadir. This remarkable, but fearfully cruel monarch, on conquering Delhi in the year 1739, had 100,000 of the inhabitants cut to pieces, and is said to have sat upon a tower of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... of the brute, and not to be compared with the noble character of the dog. There is neither gratitude, pity, love, nor self-denial; no idea of duty; no religion; but covetousness, ingratitude, selfishness and cruelty. All are thieves, idle, envious, and ready to plunder and enslave ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... a cigarette, then with the refined cruelty that enjoyed torturing a victim who could not afford to resent his brutality, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... who are the loudest in their condemnation of divorce could not sanction marriage under certain conditions. I wonder if these people know that many of the divorces that are granted under the head of cruelty really are granted because one of the parties has contracted one of the loathsome black plagues. No humane person could condemn a woman for refusing to live with a man and take the almost certain risk of contracting a disease that would mean her death or ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... in life. Faith in man is essential to faith in God. In spite of all deceptions and disillusionments, in spite of all the sham fellowships, in spite of the flagrant cases of self-interest and callous cruelty, we must keep clear and bright our faith in the possibilities of our nature. The man who hardens his heart because he has been imposed on has no real belief in virtue, and with suitable circumstances could become the deceiver instead of the deceived. The great miracle of friendship with its infinite ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... faithful to Torfrida,—a virtue most rare in those days. Few were faithful then, save, it may be, Baldwin of Mons to his tyrant and idol, the sorceress Richilda; and William of Normandy,—whatever were his other sins,—to his wise and sweet and beautiful Matilda. The stories of his coldness and cruelty to her seem to rest on no foundation. One need believe them as little as one does the myth of one chronicler, that when she tried to stop him from some expedition, and clung to him as he sat upon his horse, he smote his spur so deep into her breast that she fell dead. The man had self-control, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... system of reform; or being restored to a rule which, although worn out and feeble, has the advantage of an old-established organization, and can prove, by its general policy at any rate, that it has the welfare of the governed seriously at heart. On the whole, setting aside the wholesale cruelty which has unhappily too often distinguished such governmental triumphs on the part of the Chinese, and to which, indeed, the unlucky people seem liable whichever party may happen to gain the ascendency, the preferable ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... said simply. "I felt as though I were offering stones for bread. The stones were better, perhaps, but the cruelty was ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... feeling he was superior to the common run of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit. I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... pleading for rain. As for my garden, it hurts me every time I go into it. I suppose I shouldn't complain about a garden when the farmers' crops are suffering so. Mr. Harrison says his pastures are so scorched up that his poor cows can hardly get a bite to eat and he feels guilty of cruelty to animals every time ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... up to do, and how did he do it? and what influence have his labours of old on the times in which we live?—We must remember that in the sixteenth century priestcraft had culminated to its rankest height of fraud, cruelty, vice, and superstition: the lay-folk everywhere were its serfs and victims, not to mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead both the remonstrant layman and the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the bitterness and the gall of it all. We may know that other men's hearts are as sinful as our own, but we do not feel their sinfulness. We cannot sensibly feel humiliation, bondage, sickness, and self-loathing on account of another man's envy, or ill-will, or resentment, or cruelty, or falsehood, or impurity. All these things must be our own before we can enter into the pain and the shame of them; but, when we do, then we taste what death and hell are indeed. As I write these feeble words about it, a devil's shaft of envy that was shot all against my will into my ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... untrained child, to be pitied rather than blamed. She knew that they would think her very unkind if she did not seem to approve of Floretta, and she could not laugh at cruelty. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks

... feeling I had never known her to display. "Do! We'll do something, I am sure! I will not for a moment submit to such an imposition. Who ever heard of such colossal nerve! That father and mother should be brought back and prosecuted. I shall report them to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. But we won't wait for such procedure. We'll express each and every Polydore to them ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... however, other companions more congenial to his age and temper, young noblemen as froward and as extravagant as himself; yet, as he surpassed them all in birth and rank, so he did in wickedness and cruelty of disposition. For age he had no reverence, for virtue no esteem, neither truth towards man, nor decency towards woman. On his arrival at Waterford, the new Archbishop of Dublin, John de Courcy, and the principal Norman nobles, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... scaffolds of Russia were bleeding, and the roads to Siberia crowded with the victims of the avarice of this female demon, who often promised what she was unable to perform, and, to silence complaint, added cruelty to fraud, and, after pocketing the bribe, resorted to the executioner to remove those whom she had duped. The shocking anecdote of the Sardinian secretary, whom she swindled out of nearly a hundred thousand roubles, and on whom she afterwards persuaded ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... to make up for it, I have given a goodly number and to everybody. There was so much wickedness in my eyes that, when I looked in the glass, I was frightened by it. Everything can be pardoned except scorn. I would forgive a cruelty, a fit of passion, insults uttered in a moment of anger, even an infidelity, when people return ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff

... had been offered, and would now be given by Isaacs the Jew. He would be happy with his Katerina; and he blessed her ingenuity for devising the means. For a minute or two he was transported; but the re-action soon took place. What was he about to attempt? sacrilege—cruelty. The bell had been blessed by the holy church; it had been purchased by holy and devout alms. It had been placed on the rock to save the lives of his brother seamen; and were he to remove it, would he not be responsible for all the lives lost? Would not the wail of the widow, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... inclined so slightly that, except as we look over its surface through the passing centuries, little change can be observed. The king was a god; the government possessed supernatural power; its authority was not to be questioned. The rule of the army was final. The cruelty of kings and the oppression of government were customary, and thus crushed and oppressed, the ordinary individual had no opportunity to arise and walk in the dignity of his manhood. The government, if traced to its source at all, was of divine origin, and though ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... however, displayed his usual cruelty towards the inhabitants, causing three hundred senators to be sacrificed at an altar erected to the memory of Julius Caesar, and delivering up the city to ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... eyebrows were like the sloe for blackness, and on her cheeks was the redness of poppies. Her eyes were like deep pools in a dark wood. And he thought that, though she was very beautiful, there was great arrogance in her look and cruelty ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... I quietly replied, "you would be guilty of sad cruelty and injustice. The lad can no more help what you call laziness, than you could help being born with gray eyes. It his natural bodily temperament. He has not the robust constitution we see in most boys; and this is ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... without exception, the soldiers of all grades in the Union army desired to treat the conquered South with all possible kindness and humanity, while the men who inflicted upon the Southern people the worst form of cruelty were men who had never fought a battle. There have been some cruel soldiers in the world, many more cruel men who were not soldiers except perhaps in name. Men of that character generally avoid danger. What mankind has most to dread is the placing of military power in the hands of men who are not ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... that cruelty played no part in the invention of burial alive as a punishment for a convicted Vestal. I know that no caitiff could be found so vile as to dare to lay hands on a Vestal, no ruffian so reckless as to venture to end her life by sword or axe, by strangling or drowning. The most ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... affect me was my very gradual discovery of the fact that this woman treated her own daughter with systematic cruelty—a thing happily unusual in her class, as it is also, I think, among the very poor of London. At the end of eight or nine months my increasing knowledge of Mrs. Pelly's harsh unkindness to Fanny had begun to ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... become persuasive, such as might have been used to a child, and the girl wondered what further cruelty it masked. She had not long ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... she must sit until its end, giving no sign of the tumult that raged within her. The eyes of the audience burned into the back of her head, and she seemed to read a knowledge of her secret in every careless glance thrown in her direction. This was a vengeance worth of Olga—the refinement of cruelty. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... filial respect for these remains by the Indians, that on the Mississippi, in Peru, and elsewhere, no tyranny, no cruelty, so embittered the indigenes against the white explorers as the sacrilegious search for treasures perpetrated among the sepulchres of past generations. Unable to understand the meaning of such deep feeling, so foreign to the European who, without a second thought, turns a cemetery into a public ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... transport said: May all the blood, which shall by woman's scorn be shed, Lie upon you and on your children's head! For you (ah! did I think I e'er should live to see The fatal time when that could be!) Have even increased their pride and cruelty. Woman seems now above all vanity grown, Still boasting of her great unknown Platonic champions, gain'd without one female wile, Or the vast charges of a smile; Which 'tis a shame to see how much of late You've taught the covetous wretches to o'errate, And which they've now the consciences ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... race, of power that might be exerted through ignorant Mexicans in a hundred subtle and vindictive ways, made the enterprise all the more alluring. The Indian strain in his blood—a strain which accounts for much that sets American and Mexican apart, unconsciously in his case gave a tinge of cruelty to his anticipation. Aspiring himself to pass as an American, it never failed to please him when he could slight or humiliate an American; and he lacked his father's restraint of impulses, as he came short of his sagacity and perseverance. Indeed, secretly the son believed ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... more quickly now because he was recognized, and was practically thrown out of each editorial sanctum. His serenity remained unruffled, and his confidence undisturbed. Of all the six editors, Burns, of The Intelligencer, treated him worst, adding ridicule to his gruffness, a refinement of cruelty which annoyed the young steamboat man. Anderson clenched his hard-knuckled hand and estimated the distance from editorial ear to point of literary chin, but realized in time that steamboat methods were out of place here in the politer realms ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... seemed to see the earth peopled with forms not human, scarcely divine, but more desirable than man or god. The calm face of Nature broke up for me into wrinkles of wild knowledge. I saw the things which brush against the soul in dreams, and found them lovely. There seemed no cruelty in the knife or the blood. It was a delicate mystery of worship, as wholesome as the morning song of birds. I do not know how the Semites found Ashtaroth's ritual; to them it may well have been more rapt and passionate than it seemed to me. For ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... that missionary,' said Suleyman, 'treats good and bad alike as enemies if they are not of his nation. He gives bare justice; which, in human life, is cruelty. He keeps a strict account with every man. We, when we love a man, keep no account. We never think of what is due to us or our position. And when we hate—may God forgive us!—it is just the same—save with the very best and coolest ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... at the same time, and the world began to be afraid that hydrophobia would be universal. All parties were delighted to let the rival yelpers fight it out on so distant a field as Syria; and in that country of heat and dryness, of poverty, anarchy, cruelty, and superstition, there was a skrimmage that kept all Christendom on the tenter-hooks for half-a-year; and this we believe to be the policy of the Syrian campaign. Better for all parties concerned, that a few thousand turbaned and malignant Turks or Egyptians ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... principal chapel, which was afterwards granted to the family of the Boscoli, and still retains these paintings of Buffalmacco. Here he did the Passion of Christ, with fine and original expressions, showing in Christ, when He washes the disciples' feet, the greatest humility and benignity, and cruelty and fierceness in the Jews who lead Him to Herod. But he displayed especial originality and facility in a Pilate whom he painted in prison and in Judas, hung to a tree, from which we may readily believe what is related of this pleasant ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... Wrath which yet burneth more and more; So hath it been acknowledged before GOD in our publick Humiliations, to be a maine cause of GODS Controversie with the Land, and an accession to the guiltinesse of the cruelty, villainy, and other mischiefs committed by them and their followers: And to lye still under the guilt after solemne Confession, were an high provocation of GOD, and an heavy aggravation of our sinne; And on the ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. Rich people's children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. I've seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones pushed forward, when it's real cruelty. Some are naughty through mismanagment or neglect, and some lose their mothers. Besides, the best have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that's the very time they need most patience and kindness. People laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... disappointed, in the utmost rage, ordered his torments to be redoubled. At length having glutted his barbarity, the confessors were dismissed, their clothes rent, their bodies inhumanly torn, and their beards and hair plucked off. The very Arians were ashamed of such cruelty, and their bishop offered to punish the priest, if Fulgentius would but undertake his prosecution. His answer was, that a Christian is never allowed to seek revenge; and for their parts it was incumbent on them not to lose the advantage of patience, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... and is also told by Hyginus, with some variations. He says that Polydorus was sent by Priam to Polymnestor, king of Thrace, while he was yet in his cradle; and that Ilione, the daughter of Priam, distrusting the cruelty and avarice of Polymnestor, who was her husband, educated the child as her own son, and made their own son Deiphylus pass for Polydorus, the two infants being of the same age. He also says that the Greeks, after the taking of Troy, offered Electra to Polymnestor in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... them. The marriage, as was natural, led to unhappy results. In 1720, after Osburn had been dead some years, a curious case was brought into court, in which the sons of Robert Prince testified that Osburn treated their mother and them with great cruelty and barbarity. They had become of age before their mother's death, and had signed their names to a deed conveying away land belonging to their patrimony. The object of the suit was to invalidate the conveyance by proving that they were compelled by Osburn to sign the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... spark of unusual brightness. The Captain stood erect, awaiting his opportunity; but, alas!—it was one that never came; for the ventriloquist, that caused the rupture between Mr. Potts and the "Spooney," made the "Lion" wince, by observing, "he hoped there would be no cruelty to animals"—a remark that made our "Lion" roar contemptuously, and call the company "bears and monkeys"—he growling, with blood-thirsty pugnacity, about "satisfaction" and "Chalk Farm,"—the declamatory mania causing the irascible ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... of waters, four millions of helpless slaves—the victims of the cruelty and lust of Southern men-stealers—raise their fettered hands and imploringly inquire what part you will take in the conflict which involves their fate and that of their posterity; whether you will give aid and comfort to their oppressors, or whether you will send them words ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... and an outlook that ever reverts to the past; unless, indeed, they be folk of spurious good nature, an addition to talkativeness, and an apparent bonhomie which veils a frigid, grey interior, and conveys an impression of cruelty and greed of all that ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... went. But Mag, alas! was never more to respond to her call. He was hanging by the leg from his perch, head downward, wings outstretched, and glossy feathers ruffled; and below him, on the ground, some stones were scattered which told the tale of cruelty ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... endangered, it will entitle the injured party to a divorce. Ungovernable outbursts of rage, the use of profane and obscene language, applying insulting epithets to the wife in the presence of others, acts of cruelty and neglect in sickness, coupled with failure to provide suitable food and clothing, have all been held to be such cruelty, which, if long continued, would result in danger to life. Condonation is always a valid defense in proceedings for divorce. If the wrong is once forgiven, ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... dribbles out in unregarded issues. No, the fight's the thing! War, if not dead, is banished from our shores; the duello has been laughed to death; cock-fighting and bull-baiting have ceased to charm: politics alone remains to gratify the pugnacity and cruelty that civilisation has robbed of their due objects. How we brighten up again at a bye-election, when duels which passed unregarded in the big battle, when towns scarcely noted at the fag-end of the great campaign, become the cynosure of every eye. Through Slocum or Eatonswill the hub of the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... many of their raids of later years was to obtain captives to sell to the Dutch. When slavery was abolished by the British, this incentive to cruelty no longer existed. The fierce Caribs were, however, very indignant at the new order of things. A Carib chief arriving with a slave, offered him for sale to the English governor. On the refusal of the latter to make the purchase, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... "'You call it cruelty,' he replied, 'but I say it is a terrible fact. I never cared for but but one woman on earth, and I broke her heart when I told her that I had forever placed a barrier between us by my own act. She died ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... that you have cause To fill your heart with torment and unrest. If in your daughter there is cruelty, It is not from her father that it came. If guilt you have, it can be only this: That you have given the world such peerless beauty As draws all men to her. I thank you, Sire, For your great goodness! I have but one thought, ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller

... be said that there was very little pain attending a fracture of any one of the lady's bones, and that she did not in the least mind the monotony of lying in bed while the broken bones knitted themselves together. There can, therefore, be no charge of cruelty brought against her husband. Indeed, she herself entered with a hearty goodwill into the scheme of making a living with her bones, and would go out to break a leg with as much cheerfulness as if she was going to a theatre. In March, 1872, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... unsportsmanlike, simply because they have not the remotest idea what they are talking about. Why it should be cruel to kill a thousand head in a day instead of two hundred on five separate days, one fails to understand. As a matter of fact, the bigger the "shoot" the less cruelty takes place, because bad shots are not likely to be present on these occasions, whilst in small "shoots" they are the rule rather than the exception. Instead of birds and ground game being wounded time after time, at big battues they are killed ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... sting; the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated; the field of politics supplies the alchemists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened to contend upon topics which concern only the interests of eternity; the men who hold in proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame their own passions, have made it a commonplace ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams

... impulse, as he clung to the ledge, was to tear the birds from his belt and throw them down; but his spirit revolted from the cruelty of the proceeding, and his vanity helped to keep the trophies of his daring where ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... woman, the Drinker of Life, but she had at least drunken without ostentation, and if she murdered with her own large hands, or staked men and women from a sheer lust of cruelty, there were none alive ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... got to Thursday to bring in his answer; so my Lord escapes to-day. Thence with Godage and G. Montagu to G. Carteret's, and there sat their dinner-time: and hear myself, by many Parliament-men, mightily commended. Thence to a play, "Love's Cruelty," and so to my Lord Crew's, who glad of this day's time got, and so home, and there office, and then home to supper and to bed, my eyes being the better upon leaving drinking at night. Water, 1s. Porter, 6d. Water, 6d. Dinner, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... taking of the Bastille, on the day of which only eighty-three persons were killed on the spot, though fifteen died afterwards of their wounds, these Poissardes were likewise foremost in bravery and in cruelty, so much, that the Parisians themselves ran away from them as soon as they saw them at a distance. They are armed, some with sabres and others ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss

... a chap, Bill," said another. "Talk about yer Syety for Cruelty to Hanimals! Why, yer orter be fined. It's all I can do to keep wind enough to climb up here, let alone having to blow a brass traction-engine, or ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... of blood had often followed these scrawls in Hillsborough, and Henry knew it: and, indeed, he who can not spell his own name correctly is the very man to take his neighbor's life without compunction; since mercy is a fruit of knowledge, and cruelty of ignorance. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... at dinner-time, fast asleep. She dragged me back to consciousness and the open air by the heels. Not in wanton cruelty, but she was a large woman, and could get at me in no other way. While she washed and made me decent in clean frock, apron, and pantalettes, she scolded me for my "low-lived, onladylike ways," and warned me ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... not a little pained to discover this unsuspected vein of cruelty in a woman I had long admired. And the woman merely became irrelevant with her apothegm ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... were keener and vested with greater mental vigor than the average of his kind. The lines of will had marked his face deeply, and this, coupled with a sternness and primitiveness, advertised a native indomitability, unswerving of purpose, and prone, when thwarted, to sullen cruelty. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... the door-stone, as the musk-rat had done; and when Grandma talked to her from the window, she was not obliged to hold a handkerchief to her nose, as she did when the musk-rat was there. She well knew how to make amends to the dear child for her cruelty in keeping her out of doors; and such tempting sweetmeats passed through the window, and such wonderful shapes of gingerbread, that Flora was very happy in her banishment. The little exile was not wholly deprived of society, for it happened, ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May

... workshop in humbled mood. To her spiritual benefit lord Herbert had succeeded in punishing her for her cruelty to Dorothy; and she was not the less willing to mind his injunction as to the mode of mentioning his intent, that it would serve to the quenching of any suspicion that she had come ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others; lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of creating in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected with them, and those events are most entitled ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... being the victims of God's wrath, they were wounded through our cruelty, they were bruised by our iniquitous treatment, we being suffered to do so, to chastise them for their sins, and to prove their obedience; and this chastisement is that by which our peace is to be effected; for their chastisement and probation being finished. ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... the ocean was that no one might oppose them as they approached or pursue them when repulsed; but when they engaged hand-to-hand, vain would be the help of winds and oars after a defeat. The Germans needed only remember their rapine, cruelty, and pride; was any other course left them than to maintain their liberty, and, if they could not do that, to die before they took ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... to the superficial observer is a cruelty which appears to be callously indifferent to suffering. This manifests itself not only in most barbarous punishments but in a thou- sand incidents of daily life. The day I entered China at Chefoo, I saw a dying ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... question whether he had fallen among the unrecognized; but no broken ornament or stained trapping betrayed his fate. It was suspected that the Turks, finding themselves possessed of so illustrious a captive, resolved to satisfy their cruelty rather than their avarice, and fearful of the interference of England, had come to the determination of concealing for ever the cold-blooded murder of the soldier they most hated and feared in the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... is to say," Mr. Shaw continues, "in so far as he is an ordinary gentleman he behaves sensibly and courageously; and in so far as he is a military man he gives way without shame to the grossest folly, cruelty, and poltroonery. If any other profession in the world had been stained by those vices and by false witness, forgery, swindling, torture, compulsion of men's families to attend their executions, digging up and mutilation of dead enemies, all ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... pity and felt no generosity. They had killed many of his friends and relations, among others his father; and he hunted them in peace or war like wolves. His admirers denied that he ever showed "unwonted cruelty" [Footnote: De Haas, 345.] to Indian women and children; that he sometimes killed them cannot be gainsaid. Some of his feats were cold-blooded murders, as when he killed an Indian who came in to treat with General Harmar, under pledge of safe conduct; one of his ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... or other casuists, the priest is a sort of general, sent, with his army, during the night, to storm a citadel or a strong position, having for order to operate cautiously and before daylight. His mission is one of darkness and cunning, violence and cruelty; for when the pope commands, the priest, as his loyal soldier, must be ready to obey. But many a time, after the place has been captured by dint of strategy and secrecy, the poor soldier is left, badly wounded and completely disabled, on the battle-field. He has paid dearly ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... baggage, a worthless baggage! In my room just now she struck me—beat my poor rheumatic knuckles! For five years I've sheltered her, given her the best of everything, even to the clothes she has on her back. This is the way she repays me—with insults and cruelty, and smuggles strange men secretly into my house at night, and pretends to be engaged ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... the ordinary incidents of military execution. These were not enough to satisfy the ferocity of the catholic soldiery, who revelled for many days in the infliction of all that brutal lust or savage cruelty can suggest to men. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... on thy sable hearse, Mine eyes the tears of sorrow shed; What though tears cannot fate reverse, Yet are they duties to the dead. O, Mistress, in thy sanctuary Why wouldst thou suffer cold disdain To use his frozen cruelty, And gentle pity to ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... ambassador he is receiving, the orchestra reveals the working of his mind by repeating the music of the preceding scene. From beginning to end the work is written in this way. But dissertations on such details have not been given the public; the themes of felony, cruelty, and duplicity, and of this and that, have not, as is the fashion of the day, been underlined, so that the critics are ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... that the whole group of islands were sunk in the depths of the sea," said Flora, vehemently, "than continue to present to the world a system of injustice and cruelty, which is a disgrace to a Christian community—a spectacle of infamy to the civilized world. And do not think that the wise and good men who are engaged heart and hand in this holy cause, will cease their exertions ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... individuals, and although he took no direct {156} part, yet he believed that no government could be established strong enough to save the Revolution, at such a crisis as it had reached, save by paying this toll of blood to the suspicion, the vengeance, the cruelty, the justice of the people. He dared to pay the price, and later he, and he alone, dared to shoulder ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... wealth and agreeable unto the Rishi themselves, and thou wilt submerge it at the end within the ocean! O slayer of Madhu, how can crookedness be in thee, devoid as thou art, O thou of the Dasarha race, of anger and envy and untruth and cruelty? O thou who knowest no deterioration, all the Rishis, coming unto thee seated in thy glory on the sacrificial ground, seek protection of thee! And, O slayer of Madhu, thou stayest at the end of the Yuga, contracting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... learn to talk, to write, to symbolize, to construct something, be it a medicine-lodge or a Parthenon. Their primitive sense of an invisible and spiritual agency assumes the forms of their ignorance and of their disposition: dread and cruelty, awe and size, fancy and proportion, gentleness and simplicity, will be found together in the rites and constructions of religion. They like to make the whole tribe or generation conform; and it is dangerous to oppose this tendency to preserve the shape of society from within and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... the cruelty of rough handling of the rabbit and of neglecting to provide it with a place for exercise and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... colloquy with varying emotions, and his anger and indignation were stirred by the cold-blooded cruelty of the savage. He stood motionless, seen by neither party, but he held his weapon leveled at the Indian, ready to shoot at an instant's warning. Brought up, as he had been, with a horror for scenes of violence, and a feeling that human life was sacred, he ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... since her marriage;—she stays there for almost ten months; not under the happiest auspices, poor child. Mamma's reception of her, just off the long winter journey, and extenuated with fatigues and sickly chagrins, was of the most cutting cruelty: "What do you want here? What is a mendicant like you come hither for?" And next night, when Papa himself came home, it was little better. "Ha, ha," said he, "here you are; I am glad to see you." Then holding up a light, to take view of me: "How ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... at Zanzibar, Tippo Tib and reformation were absolute strangers. He embodied that combination of cruelty and religious fanaticism so often found in the Arab. He served his God and the devil with the same relentless devotion. He incarnated a type that happily has vanished from the map ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... heaven, that pass and peep, Do not question, if she sleep! She has no abiding here, She is past the starry sphere; Kneeling with the children sweet At the palm-wreathed altar's feet; —Innocents who died like thee, Heaven-ward through man's cruelty, To the love-smiles of their Lord Borne through pain and fire ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... by dividing it into smaller vessels, and dropping in various chemicals, made rainbows and silvery flames and what not. But he declined to repeat the experiment: "No, no; once is philosophy; twice is cruelty. I've slain more than ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... one when he went after the buffalo or to war. Mary here explained, very carefully, that Dick never went to war on his own account—that he was really a man of peace, but that, when he saw oppression and cruelty, his blood boiled within him at such a rate that he almost went mad, and often, under the excitement of hot indignation, would he dash into the midst of a band of savages and scatter them right and ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... of Wordsworth's bold doctrine upon war. Thus far he will destroy a wisdom working from afar, but, as regards the immediate present, he will be apt to adopt the ordinary view, namely, that in the Old Testament severity prevails approaching to cruelty. Yet, on consideration, he will be disposed to qualify this opinion. He will have observed many indications of a relenting kindness and a tenderness of love in the Mosaical ordinances. And recently there has been suggested another argument tending ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey



Words linked to "Cruelty" :   heartlessness, abuse, savagery, cruelness, inhuman treatment, inhumanity, brutality, ill-usage, malevolence, hardheartedness, murderousness, coldheartedness



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