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Mutilation   Listen
noun
Mutilation  n.  The act of mutilating, or the state of being mutilated; deprivation of a limb or of an essential part.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mutilation" Quotes from Famous Books



... are particularly requested to bear in mind the double advantage (so great a desideratum to all railroad travellers) of being at one and the same time connected with a "Fire, Life, and Partial Mutilation Assurance Company." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... wife, the Lady Alice de Neville, who was buried in 1374. This monument occupies the third sub-bay from the east, on the south side of the nave. It is an altar tomb, and though it has suffered severely from mutilation during the unsettled times of the Reformation, sufficient remains to enable us to see that it was once a well-designed and noble monument. Its mouldings are bold, and there are indications of the places where figures were once attached to the sides. The recumbent ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... was convicted of standing and wearing his hat while a religious procession was passing, singing blasphemous songs, speaking blasphemous words, and making blasphemous gestures. There was much popular excitement at the time on account of the mutilation of a crucifix standing on a bridge in the town, but La Barre was not shown to have been concerned in this outrage. The judges at Abbeville appear to have laid themselves open to the accusation of personal hostility ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... exception we speak of was no other than Mr, Hycy Burke, and the family was that of the Hogans. As for Teddy Phats, he was not the man to trouble himself by the loss of a moment's indifference upon any earthly or other subject, saving and excepting always that it involved the death, mutilation, or destruction in some shape, of his great and relentless foe, the Gauger, whom he looked upon as the impersonation of all that is hateful and villainous in life, and only sent into this world to war with human happiness at large. That great professional instinct, as the French say, and a strong ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... only seven of them. Chance, however, has so far favoured us, that in these seven pieces we find several which were held by the ancients as his greatest works, the Antigone, for example, the Electra, and the two on the subject of Oedipus; and these have also come down to us tolerably free from mutilation and corruption in their text. The Oedipus Tyrannus, and the Philoctetes, have been generally, but without good reason, preferred by modern critics to all the others: the first on account of the artifice of the plot, in which the dreadful catastrophe, which so powerfully ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... these two systems, both seductive from their apparent simplicity, and both simple only by mutilation, that the Philosophy of the Conditioned, of which Sir William Hamilton is the representative, endeavours to steer a middle course, at the risk of sharing the fate of most mediators in a quarrel,—being repudiated and denounced by both combatants, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... the most important rle in trials of all conceivable crimes, and the whole problem of evidence takes a different form according to the assumption that this loyalty does, or does not, exist. Whether it is the murder of a husband, doubtful suicide, physical mutilation, theft, perversion of trust, arson, the case takes a different form if feminine disloyalty can be proved. The rare reference to this important premise in the presentation of evidence is due to the fact ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... that Sindbad the Sailor was buried with his wife. In this case the two elder wives of this old man had each relinquished an eye, and no doubt the time was soon approaching when the youngest would also show her conjugal fidelity and love by similar mutilation, unless the old heathen should happen to die shortly and she become espoused to some other, rejoicing in the possession of a full complement of eyes—a consummation devoutly to ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... Their words occasionally utter what their looks invariably express. We read their thoughts by the light of their smiles. Not to see and hear these men is not to know them, and criticism without personal knowledge is in their case mutilation. Those who did know them listen in despair to the half-hearted praise and clumsy disparagement of critical strangers, and are apt to exclaim, as did the younger Pitt, when some extraneous person was expressing wonder at the enormous reputation of Fox, 'Ah! you have never been under the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... continued. Within the city and without the city, death held high carnival. There were famine and pestilence and misery in all imaginable forms within the walls. In the camp of the besiegers, there were mutilation, and death's agonies and despair. Army after army of Tartars came to the help of the besieged, but they were mown down mercilessly by Russian sabers, and trampled beneath ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 of which is only added to the devastation proper to its own business, as the military profession has been within recent memory in England, France, and the United States of America (to mention no other countries), ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... they did we could do; and we are actually apprised of better methods and results than they employed or could attain, and it is not unlikely that we shall hear of better methods still. But Egypt's method, or its modern counterpart, will hardly now be popular. It involves too much mutilation and too much transformation. When it has done its work little is left but bone and muscular tissue, and these are so transfused with foreign substances that a form moulded from plastic matter or sculptured from stone could almost as truly be considered that of the lamented dead as this. Moreover, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... used irreverent language. Nay, after his return from the Holy Land, he heard that the King ordered a man's nose and lower lip to be burnt for the same offense. The Pope himself had to interfere to prevent St. Louis from inflicting on blasphemers mutilation and death. "I would myself be branded with a hot iron," the King said, "if thus I could drive away all swearing from my kingdom." He himself, as Joinville assures us, never used an oath, nor did he pronounce the name of the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... and savage intolerance, as much flogging and hanging, as much impudent injustice on the bench and lustful rancor in the pulpit, as much naive resort to torture, persecution, and suppression of free speech and freedom of the press, as much war, as much of the vilest excess of mutilation, rapine, and delirious indiscriminate slaughter of helpless non-combatants, old and young, as much prostitution of professional talent, literary and political, in defence of manifest wrong, as much cowardly sycophancy giving fine names to all this villainy or pretending ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... have to live in. True religion is surely something far more sensible than this; true religion should not strain and strive after the impossible, should not seek to improve human nature by a process of mutilation. You have excellent aims in some respects and excellent methods in others, but in supreme demands you go beyond the mark altogether. We Pagans neither agree with your morality nor admire those whom you claim as your successes. If you were less holy ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... and three months of active preparations, the expedition[41] was almost ready to start, when an event happened which fatally poisoned the prevalent cheerfulness of the city. This was the mutilation of the Hermae, one of the most extraordinary ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... probability it took place at a moment when a violent religious reaction had set in at Athens owing to some grave offences against the public worship and sanctuaries of the State (violation of the Mysteries and mutilation of the Hermae). The work on the gods had presumably been in existence and known long before this without causing scandal to anybody. But, nevertheless, the trial, like those of Anaxagoras and Socrates, plainly bears witness ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... men and horses a much-needed rest; but on the way news came to us that, in spite of his brilliant achievements in the field, he had been deprived of the choicest regiments of his brigade—men whom he had trained and seasoned to war. After this mutilation of his command, he had been ordered to Murfreesborough to recruit and organize ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris

... certain sense in which the idea of heredity impresses one with a paralyzing feeling of inevitableness. When a child is born his sex is irrevocably fixed; the character of his eyes and of his hair, the form of his features and the ridges on his finger-tips are unalterable except through mutilation or disease. But up to a certain limit the child will grow just in proportion to the nurture that he receives. And what that limit is we may not know until we find out through years of patient effort, through endless ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... who, when wounded and ill, look up to their gracious mistress as if she were an angel of deliverance, and quite a different matter to mingle with the miserable rabble yonder. The bloody stripes which the executioner's lash cuts in the criminal's back do not render him more gentle; the mutilation which he curses, and the disgrace ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Armenia, and Solomon, who was acting as manager for the general Belisarius; (such a person the Romans call "domesticus." Now this Solomon was a eunuch, but it was not by the devising of man that he had suffered mutilation, but some accident which befell him while in swaddling clothes had imposed this lot upon him); and there were also Cyprian, Valerian, Martinus, Althias, John, Marcellus, and the Cyril whom I have mentioned ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... prince in fact grew rather too old himself, and too cunning, and getting about with disreputable companions—that gross old villain Kauc, the crow, for one—it is just possible that some inkling of the hereditary mutilation in store for him was insinuated (for his own purposes) by that ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... resemblance whatever to a man, but rather to some ghastly, drug-inspired dream or nightmare of an Oriental Dante. The fact that I have sacrificed my human appearance in the Great Cause cannot overcome the shrinking aversion that normal men would feel, if they could see me. I say only this, that my mutilation is indescribable. As the officer and gentleman I know you to be, you won't ask me to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... fills up the whole central place. Under this mound are said to be buried from 200 to 300 Insurgents who were unable to escape at the last moment, and thus fell the victims of the conflagration they had themselves originated. The mutilation of the ornamental work of this magnificent specimen of architecture is simply hideous; there is scarcely a square inch of the facade untouched by shot or shell. Anxious, if possible, to judge of the progress of the attack which was being made on the Insurgent position at Pere-Lachaise, I ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... is the binder knows better than I can tell him. When he has applied it, the book will come out of his hands at once solid and flexible; unmutilated, either on the outer edges where mutilation can be seen, or at the back where it cannot be seen, but where it nevertheless hurts the integrity of the book; covered with honest boards that will stand use, and clad with a material, cloth or leather, that is both strong to resist ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... needed the same things he used in ordinary life. By a fortunate chance we have even recovered bodies accidentally desiccated and preserved intact in the dry soil. These bodies do not show any trace of mutilation, mummification, or any other preparation for the grave except probably washing. The dead body was simply laid on a mat in the grave, covered with a cloth and a mat or a skin, and then with clean gravel. But with it was placed all those things which the man might need if his life ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... the fast perishing memorials of the founders of the Empire State. It is fortunate for the State that his industry and patient research are secured for the proper arrangement of the Archives—too long neglected and subject to loss and mutilation. The new volume has come to hand too late for any elaborate notice or review of its contents; but a glance at the list of papers and illustrations alone warrants the opinion we have expressed. We notice particularly the account of Champlain's explorations in Northern ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... Among savages absolute mutilation is considered beautiful; among partially civilized peoples, like ourselves, restriction and distortion in our bodies and those of domestic animals are still considered beautiful; and in matters of fashion, or of food, we ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... Athens for many years till B.C. 411, when he fled from a prosecution instituted against him for impiety, according to Diodorus, but probably for some offence of a political nature; perhaps connected with the mutilation of ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... of the office should be integral. That is, the words and syllables are to be repeated fully without mutilation or abbreviation. Hence, if mutilation of the words occur to such an extent that the sense or meaning of the words is notably changed, mortal sin may be committed. But if the mutilation be small in quantity there is only a venial sin committed, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... Committee, and therefore they refused to be unduly elated when the second reading was carried on April 14 with a majority of nine, in spite of the Duke of Wellington's blustering heroics. Three weeks later, Lord Lyndhurst carried, by a majority of thirty-five, a motion for the mutilation of the bill, in spite of Lord Grey's assurance that it dealt a fatal blow at the measure. The Premier immediately moved the adjournment of the debate, and the situation grew suddenly dramatic. The Cabinet had made its last concession; Ministers determined, in Lord Durham's words, that ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... necessity of taking some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to seize the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one of them out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the beginning and the end of the law. However, this mutilation of his volumes was never accomplished, for dear old Flora Campbell, to whom I confided my plan for the amelioration of the wrongs of my unhappy sex, warned my father of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that he had discovered my secret, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... spectacle is exhibited in the markets of Jaffna by the mode in which the flesh of the turtle is sold piece-meal, whilst the animal is still alive, by the families of the Tamil fishermen. The creatures are to be seen in the market-place undergoing this frightful mutilation; the plastron and its integuments having been previously removed, and the animal thrown on its back, so as to display all the motions of the heart, viscera, and lungs. A broad knife, from twelve to eighteen inches in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... to Lord Stanley's letter, it is identical practically with the English grant of '33-8, and I might have added with the Kildare Place grant. To exclude doctrine from exposition is in my judgment as truly a mutilation of scripture, as to omit bodily portions ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... ten paces was about the best distance, as it was sufficiently distant to "avoid the unpleasantness of letting a gentleman feel that he was within touching distance," and yet "near enough to avoid useless mutilation." ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... Extraordinary Insolence to a Representative of the Public Press. Little Eliza's Last Words: 'Mamma, Feed Me to the Pigs.' A Moonshiner Who Runs an Illicit Bone-Button Factory in One Corner of the Grounds. Buried Head Downward. Revolting Mausoleistic Orgies. Dancing on the Dead. Devilish Mutilation—a Pile of Late Lamented Noses and Sainted Ears. No Separation of the Sexes; Petitions for Chaperons Unheeded. 'Veal' as Supplied to the Superintendent's Employees. A Miscreant's Record from His Birth. Disgusting Subserviency of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... heard of thee in times gone by— The bloody mutilation of thine eyes— And therefore know thee, son of Laius. All that I lately gathered on the way Made my conjecture doubly sure; and now Thy garb and that marred visage prove to me That thou art he. So pitying thine estate, Most ill-starred Oedipus, I fain would know What is the suit ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... biography. Full sets of Irving, Cooper, Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Marryat, and other standard works were bought; and many a time I have seen a poor fellow absorbed in their pages while holding his stump lest the jar of a footstep should send a dart of agony to the point of mutilation. My wife gave much assistance in my hospital duties, often reaching and influencing those beyond me. I recall one poor fellow who was actually six months in dying from a very painful wound. Profanity appeared to be his vernacular, and in bitter protest at his fate, he would curse ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... were published with the Papal sanction. Seminaries were established for the education of ecclesiastics, and the Jesuits labored in their propaganda. The Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index redoubled their efforts to stamp out heresy by fire and iron, and by the suppression or mutilation of books. A rigid uniformity was impressed on Catholicism. The Pope, to whom such power had been committed by the Council, stood at the head of each section and department of the new organization. To his approval every measure in the Church was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... indeed!" he exclaims. "Ah, were we but out, and had our own along with us" (our inheritance from the past, he means). "But they that have come hitherto have come in a state of brutal nakedness, scandalous mutilation" (having cast their inheritance from the past away), "and impartial bystanders say sorrowfully, 'Return rather; it is better even to return!'" Houndsditch was a Jew's quarter, and old clothesmarket in London, and was to Carlyle the symbol of the alarming traffic at the time in spiritualities fallen ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Lora Rewbush caught a very bad cold, and it was hoped it might develop into pneumonia; but she recovered so quickly that not even a rehearsal of the Children's Pageant was postponed. Darkness closed in. Penrod had rather vaguely debated plans for a self-mutilation such as would make his appearance as the Child Sir Lancelot inexpedient on public grounds; it was a heroic and attractive thought, but the results of some extremely sketchy preliminary experiments caused him ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... modification than any one has ever done either before or since. He was too much occupied with proving the fact of evolution at all, to dwell as fully as might have been wished upon the details of the process whereby the amoeba had become man, but we have already seen that he regarded inherited mutilation as the cause of establishing a new breed of dogs, and this is at any rate not laying much stress on functionally produced modifications. Again, when writing of the dog, he speaks of variations arising "BY SOME CHANCE common enough with nature," {104a} and clearly does not contemplate ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... walked peaceably on to it, and, with a "thus far and no farther" expression in every line of their bodies, took up a firm stand, and had to be pushed into the hold with the combined weight of many men. Several of the transport section narrowly escaped death and mutilation at the hands, or rather hoofs, of the Officers' Chargers. Meanwhile a sentry, with fixed bayonet, was observed watching some Lascars, who were engaged in getting the transport on board. It appeared ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... rendered incapable of rule. It was desirable to them that she should die. Yet so delicately were the scales poised between them and the adherents of Irene, among whom were numbered all the great princes of the Church, that they themselves did not dare to inflict mutilation or death upon her. They feared lest it should be followed by a storm of wrath that would shake Nicephorus from his throne and ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... Fortress Monroe, well- housed and fed, living in luxury, without risk of death or wounds, while the other would go to the front, be starved and harassed by fatiguing marches under a broiling sun, amid pestilence, with men falling from its ranks killed or suffering mutilation, not a single man would volunteer for the first regiment, but the second would be quickly filled. Who is it that makes football a dangerous and painful sport? Is it the faculty ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... was a hero in love with me," said Laura, thinking of her own hero in regimentals. "I'd run away with him," she added, with animation, "if—if both his legs were shot off,"—not considering duly, I dare say, how greatly such a dreadful mutilation, however glorious in itself, would conflict with the rapid locomotion essential to her plan ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... people is that which connects male kinsmen. The Hajj, after speaking big, had the weakness to let the murderer depart alive: this measure, like peace-policy in general, is the best and surest way to encourage bloodshed and mutilation. But a few months before, an Eesa Bedouin enticed out of the gates a boy about fifteen, and slaughtered him for the sake of wearing the feather. His relations were directed to receive the Diyat or blood fine, and the wretch was allowed to depart unhurt—a ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... to it. One portion of the building was painted with the history of the saint; and very lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments which have recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and ruthless mutilation. What wonderful Lombard faces, half obliterated on the broken wall and mouldering plaster, smile upon us like drowned memories swimming up from the depths of oblivion! Wherever three or four are grouped together, we find an exquisite little picture—an old woman and two young women ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... custom prevails in these isles: We observed that the greater part of the people, both men and women, had lost one, or both their little fingers. We endeavoured, but in vain, to find out the reason of this mutilation; for no one would take any pains to inform us. It was neither peculiar to rank, age, or sex; nor is it done at any certain age, as I saw those of all ages on whom the amputation had been just made; and, except some young children, we found few ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... age of militarism. And what would all the Queens of Beauty think, from Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe's days to ours, if mighty warriors ceased to poke each other in the ribs, and send one another's souls untimely to the 'viewless shades,' for the sake of their 'doux yeux?' Ah! who knows how many a mutilation, how many a life, has been the price of that requital? Ye gentle creatures who swoon at the sight of blood, is it not the hero who lets most of it that finds most favour in your eyes? Possibly it may be to the heroes of moral courage that some distant age will award its choicest ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... being almost unnerved and the Negroes sickened by the pursuit. At last, however, he was found, and on Sunday, April 23, at Newnan, Ga., he was burned, his execution being accompanied by unspeakable mutilation; and on the same day Lige Strickland, a Negro preacher whom Hose had accused of complicity in his crime, was hanged near Palmetto. The nation stood aghast, for the recent events in Georgia had shaken the very foundations of American civilization. Said the Charleston News and Courier: "The ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... were forced to move on our knees and crawl. Even then men were hit. One man near me was shot through the head. Returning later to locate the body and identify him, I found that the buzzards had torn off his lips and his eyes. This mutilation by these hideous birds was, without doubt, what Admiral Sampson mistook for the work of the Spaniards, when the bodies of the marines at Guantanamo were found disfigured. K Troop meantime had deployed into the valley under the fire from the ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... sought afterward. But, singularly enough, the curved track was torn up only on the side toward the hill; the outer rail was still in place, and the cross-ties, deeply bedded in the hard gravel of the cutting, showed only the surface mutilation of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... thought that she would accept her release. What would he have done he asked himself, were it she instead of him? Could mutilation, or even death, change his love for her? He was equally sure that hers could ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... would fail to compel readers into their service." Not only he denounced the sonnets of Shakspeare, but the sonnet itself, with an absurd question, "What has truth or nature to do with sonnets?" The secret history of this unwarrantable mutilation of a great author by his editor was, as I was informed by the late Mr. Boswell, merely done to spite his rival commentator Malone, who had taken extraordinary pains in their elucidation. Steevens himself had formerly ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... of the Korybantes is distinguished from that of the Kouretes by its less restrained, and more orgiastic character; it was a wild and whirling dance resembling that of the modern Dervishes, accompanied by self-mutilation and an unrhythmic clashing of weapons, designed, some writers think, to overpower ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... ask her what he should blame us for—her, poor soul! for having been unable to keep me with her, free; me for having submitted to the mutilation of my own life. Would papa blame us ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... compels, the saying still heard in these shops: "It takes three fingers to make a stamper." Carelessness often; but where two must work together, as is necessary in tending many of these machines, the partner's inattention is often responsible, and mutilation comes through no fault of one's own. Add to all these the suffering of little children taught lace-making at four, sewing on buttons or picking threads far into the night, and driven through the long hours that they may add sixpence to ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... having suffered rather severe mutilation at the hands of the foreigners by whom it was transmitted, conveyed a very confusing idea of the facts that were intended, but the puzzling over it by the whole party, and the gradual, though not perfect, elucidation of its ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... used by his pupil, Bilfinger. The alterations which he made in the doctrines of Leibnitz are far from being improvements, and the parts which he rejected are just the most characteristic and thoughtful of all. Such at least is the opinion of thinkers to-day, though this mutilation and leveling down of the most daring of Leibnitz's hypotheses was perhaps entirely advantageous for Wolff's impression on his contemporaries; what appeared questionable to him would no doubt have repelled them also. Leibnitz's ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... having reference to two sets of phenomena—one the obvious surface events, the other the larger and wider, but less obvious, sociological condition. A better example could hardly be given than Grote's account of the mutilation of the Hermae. The fact of the mutilation is told in the briefest way in a few lines, but the social condition which overarched it, and made the disfiguring of a number of half-statues "one of the most extraordinary events in Greek history," demands five pages of reflections and ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... ruby, Scyllas with scales of pearl; infinitely worthless toil, infinitely witless wickedness; pleasure satiated into idiocy, passion provoked into madness, no object of thought, or sight, or fancy, but horror, mutilation, distortion, corruption, agony of war, insolence of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... lives, many having been killed during their hazardous journeys. Shells from "Long Tom" and the new gun on Bulwana continued to cause horror in the daytime and to pursue uninterruptedly their mission of mutilation. The porch of the English Church was destroyed, several rooms of houses wrecked, and splinters and flying fragments of brick and rock kept all who moved abroad in a state of suspense and mental anxiety. No! not all. There was one imperturbable Scot who ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... be assenting parties to the mutilation of the Irish nation; Ireland is a unit. It is true that within the bosom of a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland must remain.... The two-nation theory is ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... same that killed Major Murphy, who commanded the battalion. New colours have since been presented to the regiment, but the wounded pole is still preserved, and on it is engraved, on a plate of silver, the day and the manner of its mutilation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... one of those few ruins that leave no problem to solve. Here we have a grey antiquity without any mutilation of form, and merely spoliated of its benches. The patron saint of Naples was, they say, imprisoned here. A little chapel ascertains the spot, but he does no miracles on this arena. When we come to temples, we are always at a great loss for proprietors. The very large one here ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... proof to them of the affection of the living. It is funeral etiquette to prepare yourself with a weapon with which to shed this blood, but likewise etiquette for a friend to intervene and stop your self-mutilation. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... 97: Scott expressed great satisfaction on seeing the Lives of the Covenanters—Cameron, Peden, Semple, Wellwood, Cargill, Smith, Renwick, etc.—reprinted without mutilation in the Biographia Presbyteriana. Edin. 1827. The publisher of this collection was the late Mr. John Stevenson, long chief clerk to John Ballantyne, and usually styled by Scott "True Jock," in opposition to one of his old master's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... into the city, writes thus: "The account in Mercurius Rusticus, which has given vogue to the common story is wholly untrue." He further adds: "Some fanatic soldier may, indeed, according to the story, have broken off the head of Queen Elizabeth, mistaking her for our Lady. But no general mutilation or desecration took place at this time. And at Exeter, one form of mutilation, which specially affected the west front, was not the work of enemies but of devotees. For ages the country folk who came into the city loved to carry home a Peter stone for the healing of their ailments." It is only ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... the opened veins, seeing that he was reserved for a more miserable death. Not a cry escaped him, and when he saw that the first operation was over, he voluntarily laid his left hand upon the block and coldly watched the second mutilation, and saw his two amputated hands lying on the ground, which were then tied together by the thumbs and hung round his neck; an awful and piteous spectacle. This happened at Cosenza. On the same day he began his march to San ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... history, in which Milton had painted the superstition, the pride, and the cunning of the Saxon monks, which the sagacious licenser applied to Charles II. and the bishops; but Milton had before suffered as merciless a mutilation from his old friends the republicans; who suppressed a bold picture, taken from life, which he had introduced into his History of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines. Milton gave the unlicensed passages to the Earl of Anglesea, a literary nobleman, the editor ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... for thrones fierce measures are more intelligible; especially in days when stone walls did not a prison make—such a prison, at least, as the prisoner might not some day hope to break. Things had improved somewhat since the Middle Ages. We hear less of the varieties of mutilation, the blinding, loss of nose, hands, breasts, which were the portion of either sex indiscriminately, when the death-penalty had not been fully earned. But it was still fashionable to suspend your adversary ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... the subject of the following pages. It presents to us a picture of Divine Condescension guiding and inspiring and aiding human effort, so convincingly clear and transparent in its smallest details and in its general effect as to seem outside the pale of all possible mutilation and misinterpretation by malice or skeptical analysis. Natural reaction against sinful excess, thwarted ambitions, disappointed hopes, meek conformity with environment, ecclesiastical manipulation of ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... future Poussins could learn all they should know of the human form? Would there be any disjecta membra from which skilled anatomists could reconstruct the lost ensemble, or at any rate make a shrewd guess at it? Would anything survive mutilation with the serene confidence in its fragmentary but everywhere penetrating interest which seems to pervade the most fractured fraction of a Greek relief on the Athenian acropolis? Yes, there would be the debris ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... is opposed not to beauty, but to the complete common form. If one of the legs of a man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably longer ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to-day, that by the sacrifice of a single deer in the cause of science Hunter discovered a fact in physiology that has been the means of saving thousands of human lives and thousands of human bodies from needless mutilation. We refer to the discovery of the "collateral circulation" of the blood, which led, among other things, to Hunter's ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... soothe her, and when he catches her she falls sprawling on the earth, her body begins to swell, two streams of water spring from her breasts and her body falls in pieces. Fifteen gods spring from her disrupted body. [Motive of the mutilation of the maternal body. The dismembered lion also naturally contains this motive. From the mutilated body come male and female (red and white) children.] Rank supposes that the biblical account of the world parents serves as a mask for incest (and naturally at the same time the symbolic accomplishment ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... extensive estates, and the money she had saved by her economies went in the form of gifts to churches and convents and in donations to Saint Peter's treasury. Her old time motto, "For God and for the King!" had suffered mutilation. She no longer thought of the king. Nothing was left of her former enthusiasm for the exiled pretender except a great daguerreotype with a dedication adorning the darker ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... cases of self-mutilation—to quote the words of one of these reports written in 1850—the disappearance, without exception, of all able-bodied Jews has become so general that in some communities, outside of those unfit for military ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... of mutilation about them, as there would have been if the men had fallen into the hands of the Indians when alive. The Cheyennes had evidently been in a hurry, for all they had done was to see that the men were dead, after ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon

... and Opium-Eating,' and may be accepted as De Quincey's supplementary and final deliverance on Coleridge. The beautiful apostrophe to the name of Coleridge, which we have given as a kind of motto to the essay, was found attached to one of the sheets; and, in spite of much mutilation and mixing of the pages with those of other articles, as we originally found them, it was for the most part so clearly written and carefully punctuated, that there can be no doubt, when put together, we had it before us very much ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... looked now, it was a sad spectacle. Death and mutilation, sorrow and misery, were the traces yesterday's fight had left behind. How sad, I thought, that civilised nations should thus try to annihilate one another. The repeated brave charges made by General Paget's soldiers, notwithstanding our deadly fire, had won our ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they are in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves therewith; some do so—to later mortification. Early personal decoration consisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... marble lions. During the "modernization" of the seventeenth century, the coffin was turned into a water-trough, and cut half-way across so as to make it fit the place for which it was intended. Had it not happened that the inscription was copied by Bruzio before the mutilation of the coffin, we should have remained entirely ignorant of its connection with the illustrious friend of S. Bernard. But let us forget these sad experiences, and step into the beautiful garden of the convent, which, large as it is, with its dreamy avenues ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... been most shamefully mutilated by relic-hunters and curiosity-mongers; innumerable pieces having been chipped off the edges of the slabs, until even the inscriptions have been encroached upon. To prevent, if possible, further mutilation, the following unique and elaborate, but eloquent notice, enclosed in an iron frame, has been placed over the graves of these reverend fathers. It was written by Professor, now ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... her, but she would not halt, she would not listen, for 'twas thought she loved another. 'Twas thought she loved a poor unworthy suppliant who was upon the earth, facing danger, death, and possible mutilation in the bloody field, waging relentless war against a heartless foe to save her from an all too early grave, and her city from destruction. And when the sad pursuing constellations came to know and realize the bitter sorrow that was come ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... from arranging them over the Neapolitan Psyche which she had kept at Ted's suggestion. The gruesome weapons, on a background of barbaric gold, hung above that pathetic torso, like a Fate responsible for its mutilation. Audrey was pleased with the effect; she revelled in strong contrasts and grotesque combinations, and if Liberty's had sent her a stuffed monkey, she would have ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... attacks of energy depended somewhat on the temperature, somewhat on exhausted patience, somewhat on homesickness, but most on dread of revolt and attack; or of sickening news—not of battle, but of assassination and mutilation. Whether I worked or rested, I was careful to sit or stand close to a wall—to guard against a stab in the back. I smile now, not gaily, at the picture of myself over a washtub, a small dagger in my belt, a revolver on a stool within easy reach of my ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... severe classical pianists of the German school, writes as follows in 1861 in a letter to a friend: "In Gounod I hail a real composer. I have heard his 'Faust' both at Leipsic and Dresden, and am charmed with that refined, piquant music. Critics may rave if they like against the mutilation of Goethe's masterpiece; the opera is sure to attract, for it is a fresh, interesting work, with a copious flow of ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... pastern. In the worst cases, with the buttocks and hocks wedged deeply into the passages, it may prove difficult or impossible to push the buttocks back into the abdomen, and in such case the extension of the hind limb is practically impossible without mutilation. In some roomy cows a calf may be dragged through the passages by ropes attached to the bent hocks, but even when this is possible there is great risk of laceration of the floor of the vagina by the feet. The next resort is to cut the hamstring just above the point of the hock and the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... taken in steel traps may usually be quickly drowned. If set on land they should be tended often to prevent suffering and usually mutilation of the trapped game. Full information on this subject will be found in Science of Trapping and other books on ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... remain in different parts of the kingdom." Among all acts of wanton license, the destruction of a cross is to us the most unaccountable. We can readily refer the defacement of imperial insignia and the spoliation of royal houses to political turbulence engendered by acts of tyrannical misrule; but the mutilation of the cross—the universal Christian emblem—remains to be explained, unless we attribute it to the brutal ignorance of the spoilers. Its religious universality ought consistently to protect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... in their growths. In complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage tribes, as a mammal does a zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple creatures, have so little mutual dependence of parts, that mutilation or subdivision causes but little inconvenience; but from complex communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any considerable organ without producing great disturbance or death of the rest. And in societies of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of the aggregate, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... mutilation is not commenced immediately the child is born, but is deferred until the end of the first, or sometimes even third year, nor is the foot after the operation forced into an iron shoe, as many have affirmed, but merely firmly compressed ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... converts says: "they prefer boys and youths, whom they strive to convince of the necessity of 'killing the flesh.' They sometimes succeed so well, that cases are known of boys of fifteen or so resorting to self-mutilation, to save themselves from the temptations of early manhood. These apostles of purity do not always scruple to have recourse to violence or deceit. They ensnare their victims by equivocal forms of speech, and having thus ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... cannibals, preying on the bodies of their companions." Bare facts would have shown that the living had become too emaciated, too weak, to dig graves, or to lift or drag the dead up the narrow snow steps, even had open graves awaited their coming. Aye, more, would have shown conclusively that mutilation of the bodies of those who had perished was never from choice, never cannibalistic, but dire necessity's last resort to ease torturing hunger, to prevent loss of reason, to save life. Loss of reason was more dreaded than death by the starving ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down—down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor's body lay—down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. "Lower the lamp yonder!" cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!" The swinging sentinel was posted, and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... sinking vessel was the only child of Lord Fermain Clancharlie, deceased. At the age of two it had been sold, disfigured, and put out of the way by order of King James II. Its parents were dead, and a man named Hardquanonne, now in prison at Chatham, had performed the mutilation, and would recognise the child, who was called Gwynplaine. Being about to die, the signatories to the document confessed their guilt in abducting the child, and could not, in the face of death, refrain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... state generally, and that it was therefore necessary to follow up the prosecutions at the Assizes with more than ordinary vigour; and in the next place, it made Keegan determined to do all that he could to secure Thady's conviction, for he attributed his horrible mutilation to the influence ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... What can be more atrocious than the actual cone of tens or even hundreds of dead and wounded invariably left before an untouched machine-gun emplacement in an assault? What is more horrible than the captured first line trench after its treatment by the preparatory bombardment, or the mutilation of men peacefully sleeping in billets behind the battle front and thrown, broken and bloody, through their billet walls under the wheels of passing transport, as one has ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... Russian soldiers; but going into action against the Turks tried their nerves, not because they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because they knew too well that a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not alone death but unspeakable mutilation before ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... the Baptistery gates. He was a man of immense power, in some ways greater than Donatello; never failing to treat his work on broad and massive lines, and one of the few sculptors whose work can survive mutilation. The fragments of the Fonte Gaya need no reconstruction or repair to tell their meaning; their statuesque virtues, though sadly mangled, proclaim the unmistakable touch of genius. But Donatello's personality was not affected by ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... exclusively to it. The existence of this double standard seems to drive the poor girls half frantic. They bellow raucously for its abrogation, and demand that the frivolous male be visited with even more idiotic penalties than those which now visit the aberrant female; some even advocate gravely his mutilation by surgery, that he may be forced into rectitude by ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... entitled The Holy Table, Name and Thing must ever be associated with this decree; but it may be doubted whether it was not rather to general causes, such as the growing power of the press, the long-continued attack upon the Prelacy by pamphleteers, which no fear of mutilation or imprisonment could stop, than any one particular tract, which led to ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... suffered terrible mutilation at the hands of fanatics and bigots, but it is surprising to find how much of what was really fine pierced work, almost as delicate as lace, has survived the zeal of the destroyers. Close inspection will show that a considerable ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... to remove Skookum was saved from mutilation by the intervention first of Quonab and next of Van; and when they sat down, this uncompromising four-legged child of the forest ensconced himself under Quonab's chair and growled whenever the silk stockings of the footman seemed ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Phrenological Development. Moral condition. Proas, Canoes, and Rafts. Another squall. Anchor in Beagle Bay. Face of the Country. Palm Trees. Dew. Hauling the Seine. A meeting with Natives. Eastern Salutation. Miago's conduct towards, and opinion of, his countrymen. Mutilation of the Hand. Native smokes seen. Move further to the North-East. Point Emeriau. Cape Leveque. Point Swan. Tide-races. Search for water. Encountered by Natives. Return to the Ship. The attempt renewed. Conduct of the Natives. Effect of a Congreve Rocket after dark. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... purpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with that to which it was still applied. Unlike and superior to either of those two typical remnants of mediaevalism, the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... definite and unequivocal Lutheran attitude with respect to these questions. Nor was the charge, at least on the part of Missouri, with respect to the "educational method," as advocated and applied from 1867 to 1918 by the Council, directed against this method as such, but against the mutilation of this method by practically eliminating its eventual natural termination, expulsion according to Matt. 18, and against the apparent insincerity in the advocacy, and the lack of seriousness in ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... commenced, but on a less ambitious scale than formerly. Chiefly this transformation consisted of opening up windows, thus making practically a new facade. It was not wholly a happy thought, and the spirit of economy of Louis XVIII, no less, perhaps, than other motives, arrested this mutilation and the architect was ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... direction should have been curtailed. When we remember the extraordinary blunders made by many holders of the office in the last century, their lack of education, and strange pronunciation, we should hardly care to hear the mutilation of Holy Scripture which must have followed the continuance of the practice. Would it not be possible to find men qualified to hold the office of parish clerk by education and powers of elocution who could revive ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... supply the connecting links without which the chain of narrative is weakened or broken. These are liberties which must be allowed, unless the translator's object be to produce a mutilated version of a mutilation. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... is proposed to place the new monument in the centre of Victoria Park, opposite the Court House, in Brentford, where it will be under the surveillance of the local authorities, and where there will be no danger of mutilation. That Brant's memory deserves such a tribute is a matter as to which there can be no difference of opinion, and the undertaking is one that deserves the hearty support of the Canadian people. We owe a heavy debt to the Indians; heavier than ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... main object of the work, the condition of women in modern times; and the passage which introduces the subject is so luminous and eloquent, that we cannot resist the pleasure of laying it before our readers without mutilation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... some sudden whirl of a stiletto, perhaps, which had missed his heart and taken his ear. I did not ask then, and I do not know now. It was a badge of courage, whatever it was—a badge which thrilled and horrified me. As I looked at the terrible mutilation, I could but recall the hideous fascination that overcame Josiane, the heroine of Hugo's great novel, "The Man Who Laughs," when she first caught sight of Gwynplaine's mouth—slit from ear to ear by the Comprachicos. The outrage on the Warden was not so grotesque, but ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... hair, which awhile ago had been folded in great masses round her head, was there no longer. She had cut it off! It was short now, like the hair of a young man, and hung loose in wavy curls over her forehead. Yet so far from her appearance being marred or disfigured by such a mutilation, the result was actually more becoming to her as she stood there in her new costume. Few could have made such a sacrifice without serious injury to their appearance; but in this case there was merely a change from one character to another, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... true Christian asceticism. But asceticism, in so far as it is genuinely Christian, is never an end in itself. It is a discipline which promotes efficiency. It is to be compared to an athlete's training, not to the self- mutilation of a fakir. There is in Christianity no doctrine of the unlawfulness of bodily pleasures in themselves. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking." For Christianity every creature of GOD in itself is good, and a man's bodily impulses are God-given endowments of ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... heat with the caution of Nicias. This they chose the rather to do, because Lamachus, the third general, though he was of mature years, yet in several battles had appeared no less hot and rash than Alcibiades himself. When all things were fitted for the voyage, many unlucky omens appeared. The mutilation of the images of Mercury, most of which, in one night, had their faces all disfigured, terrified many persons who were wont to despise most things of that nature. Alike enraged and terrified at the thing, looking upon it to proceed ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... pure, whereas here was only the incomplete, unfinished, and therefore ugly. There was a strife and pain and desire to escape. I found myself shrinking from house and grounds as one shrinks from the touch of the mentally arrested, those in whom life has turned awry. There was almost mutilation in it. ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... sovereign, and violating the sacred person of a herald-at-arms, to have his right hand struck from his body, to be ignominiously deprived of the honour of nobility, of which he was unworthy, and to be expelled from the city. When he had been stripped of his arms, and sustained the mutilation imposed by this severe sentence, the unhappy victim of ambition was abandoned to the rabble, who followed him with threats and outcries levelled alternately against the necromancer and oppressor, which at length ended in violence. His brothers (for his retinue were fled ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... cried Arthur in a storm of passion. "Not for the wide world will I consent to any mutilation of her dead body. Dr. Van Helsing, you try me too far. What have I done to you that you should torture me so? What did that poor, sweet girl do that you should want to cast such dishonour on her grave? Are you mad, that you speak of such things, or am I mad to listen to them? Don't ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... the Indians became almost immediately a matter for correspondence between the opposing commanders. The Federals charged mutilation of dead bodies on the battle-field and the tomahawking and scalping of prisoners. The Confederates recriminated as against persons "alleged to be Germans." The case involving the Indians was reported to the joint committee of ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... therein expressed, that the torture should endure as long as it pleased the inquisitors; and a protest was added, that, if during the torture the culprit should die, or be maimed, or if effusion of blood or mutilation of limb should ensue, the fault should be chargeable to the culprit, and not to the inquisitors. The culprit was bound by an oath of secresy, strengthened by fearful penalties, not to divulge any thing that he had seen, known, or heard, in the dismal precincts of that unholy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... no mention of questions of the theory of heredity. He has made some experiments on the transmission of an acquired character in Protozoa; but it was a mutilation-character, which is, as has been often shown, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... also one may read of the shooting of Mrs. Larbey when she was nursing her husband, who had been beaten almost to death by orders of Boss McGinty. The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed by that of his brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the blowing up of the Staphouse family, and the murder of the Stendals all followed hard upon one another in the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... these a faith dies the death of an adder, and is more venomous in its death-throes than in the full pulse of life. The ghastly indiscretion of Professor Deeping, in rifling a Moslem Sacristy, had led to the mutilation of many who, unwittingly, had touched the looted relic, had brought about his own end, had established a league of fantastic assassins in the heart ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... standard which his present mood had set itself. She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony. This is what I mean by Newman's tenderness: Madame de Cintre pleased him so, exactly as she was, that his desire to interpose between her and the troubles of life had the quality of a young ...
— The American • Henry James



Words linked to "Mutilation" :   dismemberment, mutilate, injury, accidental injury



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