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Persecute   Listen
verb
Persecute  v. t.  (past & past part. persecuted; pres. part. persecuting)  
1.
To pursue in a manner to injure, grieve, or afflict; to beset with cruelty or malignity; to harass; especially, to afflict, harass, punish, or put to death, for adherence to a particular religious creed or mode of worship. "Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."
2.
To harass with importunity; to pursue with persistent solicitations; to annoy.
Synonyms: To oppress; harass; distress; worry; annoy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Persecute" Quotes from Famous Books



... the other and opposite side I see also a little flock,—those who loudly proclaim by word and deed, "We will not have this man to reign over us:" but there is a multitude, whom no man can number, in the midst, who neither accept the king's message nor persecute the servants of the king. The character of the company on either extreme is distinctly marked, and easily seen. Those have manifestly closed with Christ's offer, and are accepted through faith; these, on the other ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... numbered among the children of God; they that suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness shall inherit the riches of the eternal kingdom. To the disciples the Lord spake directly, saying: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime,[134] and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night was the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio seeking embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached itself from his body to persecute her. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... was all that early church invisible, Mary? Impossible! Paul persecuted the church, it says. There was something visible to persecute, was there not? Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. Surely there was something to write to. What puzzles me, though, is where this church is today. It is plain enough that the early New Testament church was visible, and that it was organized, and had ministers and government. It had power and ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry

... I know of, fair one; and you do me too much honor to care about my mood. Understand me once for all. I am not a Dr. Grimshaw, in any phase of that gentleman's character. I am neither the tyrant who will persecute you to exact your attention, nor yet the slave who will follow and coax and whine and wheedle for your favor. In either character I should despise myself too much," ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of her frivolity." A slight, shrewish flavor crept into Eulalie's smooth voice. "The way she used to persecute me for having ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Brahman made haste to pour water on it and wash it. He might be more than fifty years old, and all the kingdom looked up to him. By means of this one man, the Law of Buddha was widely made-known, and the followers of other doctrines did not find it in their power to persecute the body of monks in ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... understand him perfectly, now; and I feel very miserable to think I disregarded the instructions of my mother. He will persecute me till I consent to his proposal," continued the poor girl, wiping away her tears. "I shall depend upon ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... to ask me why? Were not Christians themselves hunted by wild beasts, and burned at the stake, and boiled in the caldron for their belief? Knave, whatever is holiest men ever persecute. Read thy Bible!" ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... among the pious, by the priests, upon the Ash-Wednesday of the succeeding year, all which rites and ceremonies in our country, are observed, by order of the Christian Church; nor ought you, gentle archer, nor can you without a crime, persecute those as guilty of designs upon your garrison, who can ascribe their presence here to their desire to discharge the duties of the day; and look ye at yon numerous procession approaching with banner and cross, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... Lexington & Bunker Hill in my own dear native State, Great Britain will ever show her self feeble in her Efforts to conquer America. I beg you to write to me full as often as you may find Leisure, and for my own part I feel a Disposition almost to persecute you with my Letters but I must conclude with congratulating you on this first Anniversary of American Independence, and assuring you that I ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... the confusion of all definite arrangement. Southey is in the awkward position of a dogmatist defending a compromise. An Anglican claiming infallibility is necessarily inconsistent. His view of toleration, for example, is oddly obscure. He would apparently like to persecute infidels;[152] and yet he wishes to denounce the Catholic church for its persecuting principles. He seems to date the main social evils to the changes which began at the Reformation, and yet he looks back ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... clever gentleman was under no illusion regarding the origin of the voice that wrought his celebrated "flop"; he did not confound it with the vox populi The people of his time and place had no objection to the persecution that he was conducting, and could persecute a trifle themselves ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... claim respect for doing so. I should persecute anyone who would not show me respect. I should live at ease, I should die with dignity, why, it is charming, perfectly charming! And what a good round belly I should have grown, what a treble chin I should have established, what a ruby nose ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... your fathers; because they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres[11:48]. (49)Therefore also said the wisdom of God: I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will slay and persecute; (50)that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation, (51)from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the temple. Verily I say to you, it shall ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... threatening of loss. Amongst these traducers are his best friends, who now renounce his friendship; near kinsfolk, who threaten to disinherit him (he being without fortune); powerful persons, who can persecute and harass him in all places and circumstances; a prince, who threatens him with loss of freedom, yea, loss of life. Then to fill the measure of suffering, and that he may feel the pain that only the morally good heart can feel ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... patient and submissive to all suggestions; I leave my entire house at your disposal; I promise to lay no complaints before her Grace, so long as you will let me retire here till it is over—and now your men persecute me even here. Have you no mind of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... whom their fathers killed, and said; "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets." These holy men were sure that they were much better than their fathers who persecuted the prophets; they had no disposition to persecute; all the wealth in the world could not have tempted these godly saints to kill a prophet of God. However, St. Paul writing to the Thessalonians, says, "For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... tires that do not side-slip, the clergyman subscribing the thirty-nine articles, and the vivisector who pledges his knightly honor that no animal operated on in the physiological laboratory suffers the slightest pain. Hypocrisy is at its worst; for we not only persecute bigotedly but sincerely in the name of the cure-mongering witchcraft we do believe in, but callously and hypocritically in the name of the Evangelical creed that our rulers privately smile at as the Italian patricians of ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... "We will not persecute your chafer, Fred; but his place is not in your pocket, nor on the study-table, my boy; take him away," said his mother; and at the same time his aunt called to Rikli through ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri

... principles in which he had been educated, and with which he entered public life. Because George III hated the idea of reform, Pitt not only relinquished what he had before declared to be absolutely necessary, but did not hesitate to persecute to the death the party with whom he had once associated in order to obtain it. Because George III looked upon slavery as one of those good old customs which the wisdom of his ancestors had consecrated, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... he had acquired, and of the astonishing confidence in his own mission and powers which must have helped him to acquire it. "Say to the Queen's Grace Regent," he required them, "in my name, that we whom she in her blind rage doth persecute are God's servants, faithful and obedient subjects to the authority of this realm: that that religion which she pretendeth to maintain by fire and sword is not the religion of Christ Jesus, but is express contrarie to the same, ane superstition devised by the brain ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... morals enacted by any preceding pontiff or council. Her record in the past ought to be a sufficient warrant that she will tolerate no doctrinal variations in the future." So the doctrine of her inherent right to persecute and slay every one who disagrees with her, which has been enacted by popes and general councils and carried out in the past, is ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... the Jewish Question. The envoys expressed to the King their sorrow that, while Spain had been purged of infidelity, Flanders and England were infested by that scourge. Thereupon, according to a dispatch from the chief of the mission, Henry VII, laying both hands on his breast, swore that he would persecute without mercy any Jew or heretic that the King or Queen of Spain might point out in ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... the Irish peasantry. Thus again, all such eighteenth-century aristocrats (like aristocrats almost anywhere) stood apart from the popular mysticism and the shrines of the poor; they were theoretically Protestants, but practically pagans. But Tone was the type of pagan who refuses to persecute, like Gallio: Pitt was the type of pagan who consents to persecute; and his place is with Pilate. He was an intolerant indifferentist; ready to enfranchise the Papists, but more ready to massacre them. Thus, once more, the two pagans, Tone and Castlereagh, found a pagan end in suicide. But the ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy on the one hand and the disciples of Copernicus on the other. It has often been represented as a conflict between religion and science, whereas that which happened was that the representatives of the older school of science made use of the powers of the Church to persecute the newer school as represented by Galileo. That persecution was no doubt a flagrant abuse of authority, but it should be impossible at the present day for any one to claim a theological standing for either theory, whether Copernican ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... had read the book nearly through, and that he had found no harm in it, but, on the contrary, everything to praise. Adding, he believed that the clergy must be possessed with devils (endemoniados) to persecute it in the manner ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... darkness and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their true God and only Saviour, is not owned among them; but while the Lord is thus denied by them, he has not forgotten them. His providences are round about them in their preservation and multiplication, and in his judgment of the nations which persecute them. Their present condition nationally is temporary. Paul warns the Gentiles that the Jews have been cut off and set aside because of unbelief. The Gentiles have been brought in, and stand alone by faith. It is well for them not to be "high-minded," but ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... to let her live at Haggart, and occasionally to go and see her, that would be the only happiness to which she could now look forward, and she promises that she will follow your wishes in every respect, and will not hinder or persecute ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the other. "Why I want to come right out and live here myself. And I want to live while I AM here too. I feel with YOU—oh you've been grand, old man, and I've twigged—that it ain't right to worry Chad. I don't mean to persecute him; I couldn't in conscience. It's thanks to you at any rate that I'm here, and I'm sure I'm much obliged. You're ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... bigotry. They were as ready to persecute those who differed with them here as they had been at home. The last and greatest social truth, that the surest way of protecting our own liberties is by respecting those of others, was forced upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... throne, and the whole aspect of the unhappy nation, delivered over by Providence to the hands of that implacable enemy of humanity, was entirely changed. Philip's inclination was to hate and persecute; and religion, in name, afforded him the pretext for giving vent, with impunity, to those propensities, and covering with a sacred veil all the excesses of a bloodthirsty and revengeful heart to which he could abandon himself. Some writers have doubted the sincerity ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... ranch was deserted. Locally, there neither was nor had been any outward manifestation of hostility, nor even gossip. But the olden times when the hospitable ranch house of Colonel William Landor was the meeting point of ranchers within a radius of fifty miles were gone. They did not persecute the new master or his white wife; they did a subtler, crueller thing: they ignored them. To the Indian's face, when by infrequent chance they met, they were affable, obliging. His reputation had spread too far for them to appear otherwise; but, again, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... "Love your enemies, do good unto them that hate you, and serve them that despitefully use you and persecute you," has too often resulted, when practised at all, in a sentimental negation; a pathetically useless attitude of non-resistance. You might as well base a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the wood-mouse. "Both. He is awfully greedy and he always has the house full of children. Well, that doesn't concern us: it's his affair. But, when those silly men mix us up in it, lump us all together with Cousin Field-Mouse and persecute us and kill us for what he has done, I tell you, cousin, ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... the Kurus beholding the Pandavas gifted with physical strength, energy, and power of mind, popular also with the citizens, and blessed with good fortune, became very jealous. Then the crookedminded Duryodhana, and Karna, with (the former's uncle) the son of Suvala began to persecute them and devise means for their exile. Then the wicked Duryodhana, guided by the counsels of Sakuni (his maternal uncle), persecuted the Pandavas in various ways for the acquirement of undisputed sovereignty. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... man is as strong and piercing as the thorn of the jungle. With eyes of suspicion and venomous anger do they accuse and persecute them who ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... written by the Almighty upon the tables of the heart, who DO fear Him, and WORK righteousness, we are to acknowledge as brethren; and, though we take different roads, we are not to be angry with, or persecute each other on that account. We mean to travel to the same place; we know that the end of our journey is the same; and we affectionately hope to meet in the Lodge of perfect happiness. How lovely is an institution fraught with sentiments like these! How agreeable ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... discover the value of so many mysteries which I cannot understand, or of so many fanciful and cumbersome ceremonies prescribed by the church, am I, on that account, to be denounced as a more dangerous citizen than those who persecute, torment, and destroy every one of their fellow-creatures who does not think and act at their dictation? The evident result of all these considerations must be, that he who has a lively faith and a blind zeal for opinions contradictory ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... for this suspension or omission on the part of the government has been because we considered that the king our sovereign has a legitimate cause to make war on the Japanese on account of the faith which they so cruelly persecute; and because all who leave Japon in order to ship goods have to deny the faith before embarking, at least to outward appearance, and unite with the heathen in order to persecute the faith. Thus it is believed that these islands have an especial reason ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... humbled, Deprived of goods, through Judas again, Despised and friendless. Still can I find 925 Through evil deeds return hereafter[1] From the homes of the damned. 'Gainst thee will I rouse Another king[2] who will persecute thee, And he will reject thine own instruction, And sinful manners of mine will he follow, 930 And thee will he send then into the blackest And into the worst terrors of torments, That with sorrow beset thou'lt firmly renounce The hanged King whom ere thou obeyed'st." ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... she learned that Tryon lived in the neighborhood, Rena had already been subjected for several weeks to a trying ordeal. Wain had begun to persecute her with marked attentions. She had at first gone to board at his house,—or, by courtesy, with his mother. For a week or two she had considered his attentions in no other light than those of a member of the school committee sharing ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... finding them true to each other. Barbara refused several excellent proposals of marriage, nor did her father persecute her with expressed wishes for her acceptance of any of them; until, at length, he introduced to her one Mr. Bruce, a wealthy cloth-merchant from Glasgow. He was a man of about fifty years of age, of a well-favored and portly presence, and accounted a sure and somewhat sour follower ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... done this, went to Meaco. When the king of Japon asked him why he did not go, he told him what had happened; and recounted to him what the father visitador had done. Thereupon, the king began to persecute the Theatin fathers. The witness declares further that the said king gave the said Captain Solis a letter ordering that no Portuguese or any other person should dare or attempt ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... greasy skin, his thick, gesticulating hands, his bellowings and threatenings, loves to reap this harvest of fear the ignorant cunning of the nursery girl has sown for him! How he loves the importance of denunciation, and, himself a malignant cripple, to rally the company of these crippled souls to persecute and destroy the happy children of God! ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... enjoying as great a power as the Christian Pope. He cannot in any case permit what is forbidden by the Koran; but everyone is at liberty to work out his own damnation if he likes. The Turkish devotees pity the libertines, but they do not persecute them; there is no inquisition in Turkey. Those who do not know the precepts of religion, say the Turks, will suffer enough in the life to come; there is no need to make them suffer in this life. The only dispensation I have asked and obtained, has been respecting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... parched meal for the Rocky mountains, where we do not expect to find much game, our principal article of food is meat, and the consumption of the whole thirty-two persons belonging to the party, amounts to four deer, an elk and a deer, one buffaloe every twenty four hours. The musquitoes and gnats persecute us as violently as below, so that we can get no sleep unless defended by biers, with which we are all provided. We here found several plants hitherto unknown to us, and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... the caprices of the queen, remains to a large extent a matter of conjecture. His share in the settlement of 1559 was considerable, and it coincided fairly with his own somewhat indeterminate religious views. Like the mass of the nation, he grew more Protestant as time wore on; he was readier to persecute Papists than Puritans; he had no love for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and he warmly remonstrated with Whitgift over his persecuting Articles of 1583. The finest encomium was passed on him by the queen herself, when she said, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... and, considered as a point of conscience, he was so firmly convinced of her conformity, in doctrine and discipline, to apostolical institutions, ancient customs, and, above all, to Scripture, that, though he would be the last man in the kingdom to consent to persecute those who, through conscience, refused to conform, he would be the first to defend her pre-eminence. As to giving the Church a more primitive dress, by which he supposed was meant, depriving her of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... value to the vast majority? Do they show, here upon earth, any capacity to improve, any fitness for a state of existence in which they could not crouch to power, like hounds dreading the lash or tyrannize over defenceless weakness; in which they could not hate and persecute, and torture, and exterminate; in which they could not trade, and speculate, and over-reach, and entrap the unwary and cheat the confiding and gamble and thrive, and sniff with self-righteousness at the short-comings of others, and thank God that they were not like ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the Lord only knows. Charles made it an objection, your attachment to the King; that was beginning well. He has none, God knows. His countenance to Hare or Fitzpatrick are [is] no proof of it to me. People can like and protect those who are subservient to them, and persecute them when they are not. Had he been capable of a good sentiment, he would have had one for you. Instead of that, he puts your fortune into immediate danger, by a sacrifice of his honour and engagement, and when he has done that, you ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... to the bitter end. As they said to each other, it was all very well for Mrs. Harrowby to be so severe on the marriage, because she was angry and disappointed—and an angry and disappointed mother is ever unreasonable—but they who had no daughters to marry, really they did not see why they should persecute that poor madame who was such pleasant company, and had behaved herself with so much propriety since she came. And if Sebastian Dundas was going to make a second mistake, that was his lookout, and would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... of fire between her cousin and de Spain as she answered. "No. You know I shall never marry any man but you. This vile bully," she turned a little to look at her angry cousin, "has influenced Uncle Duke—who never before tried to persecute or betray me—into joining him in this thing. They never could have dragged me into it alive. And they've kept me locked for three days in a room up-stairs, hoping to ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... questionless did especially mean hereby to hinder the Christians at that time from reproaching the Jews and the pagans among whom they lived, men in their lives very wicked and corrupt, men in opinion extremely dissenting from them, men who greatly did hate, and cruelly did persecute them; of whom therefore they had mighty provocations and temptations to speak ill; their judgment of the persons, and their resentment of injuries, making it difficult to abstain from doing so. Whence by a manifest analogy may be inferred that ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... the church, Philip. iii. 6. See my zeal for the Lord, could I thus say, 2 Kings x. 16; and the Jews had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, Rom. x. 2; and Christ tells us, that such as should persecute the Apostles unto death, would think they did God good service, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... execution of the laws to which I have alluded; nor was any one ever condemned by the head of the church for putting Protestants to death. Until, therefore, Rome repeals her exterminating decrees, she must submit to the heavy charge of maintaining the right to persecute men for their ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury

... intense dislike of what is ugly and misshapen is the reason why they so much practise "the legerdemain of changelings," stealing away finished, handsome babies, and leaving blemished and defective ones in their stead. For the same cause they love to pester and persecute and play shrewd tricks upon decrepit old age, wise aunts, and toothless, chattering gossips, and especially such awkward "hempen home-spuns" as Bottom and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... judged about it. He was too conservative a man to be a persecutor, but was not much above or beyond his own time. And he wrote of the Christians as being a religio illicita—an illegal assembly of heretics—as regarded the state religion, which it was his duty to defend. It was wrong to persecute the Christians—wrong on general principles, wrong on particular axioms. But, alas! it has taken nearly seventeen more centuries of fiercer persecutors than Pliny proved to be to learn this little fact. All this is, as he would have said, obiter—by the way. It has, however, a good deal to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... detestable spirit of Detraction, which on Earth never fails to persecute superior Virtue, has not scrupled to assert that the affliction, to which I allude, was the mere consequence of paternal austerity. The Earth itself, though frequently accused of being eager to receive ideas that ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... a man," said Michael, "evil men will hate and persecute him: they may even take his life, if ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke

... it is monstrous!" he said, with some indignation. "Such a Town Council as that is a sort of many-headed tyrant, resolved to persecute the unhappy townspeople ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... winking at him): Ha! ha! Count de Guiche. Enamored of her. But wedded to the niece of Armand de Richelieu. Would fain marry Roxane to a certain sorry fellow, one Monsieur de Valvert, a viscount—and—accommodating! She will none of that bargain; but De Guiche is powerful, and can persecute the daughter of a plain untitled gentleman. More by token, I myself have exposed this cunning plan of his to the world, in a song which. . .Ho! he must rage at me! The ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... or you would never dream of the possibility of its being extinguished," said he, in a tone of indescribable wretchedness. "I may alienate you from me, by the indulgence of insane passions, by accusations repented as soon as uttered,—I may revile and persecute,—but I can never cease to ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... the words of Scripture," said Dunstan, "to support your proposal: 'When they persecute you in one ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... before, if the Directors had acted with prudence. But the Directors, from the day on which they had obtained their charter, had persecuted the interlopers without mercy, and had quite forgotten that it was one thing to persecute interlopers in the Eastern Seas, and another to persecute them in the port of London. Hitherto the war of the monopolists against the private trade had been generally carried on at the distance of fifteen thousand miles from England. If harsh things were done, the English did not see them done, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The Queen who was of a petulant disposition, and elated with her new dignity could not withhold her resentment against him, but animated all her relations, and the parties inclined to the protestant interest, to persecute him with rigour. Not long after the divorce, the Council gave authority for the publication of a book, in which the reasons why this divorce was granted were laid down; an answer was soon published, with which Sir Thomas More was charged as the author, of which report however he sufficiently ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... of the men. "This is the chap that thou set on Bolitho to persecute, and this is the chap that thou told ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... to abstain from even defensive warfare, to govern ourselves, to avoid vices, to pay obedience to superiors, to reverence age, to provide food and shelter for men and animals, to dig wells and plant trees, to despise no religion, show no intolerance, not to persecute, are the virtues of these people. Polygamy is tolerated, but not approved. Monogamy is general in Ceylon, Siam, Birinah; somewhat less so in Thibet and Mongolia. Woman is better treated by Buddhism than by any other ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... ministers. The response of the apostle of Methodism, though dark as those of the Oracle of Delphos, intimating that the blood of the slain would be laid to Colonel Pepperell's charge, in case of failure, and that the envy of the living would persecute him, if victorious, decided him to gird on his armor. That the French might be taken unawares, the legislature had been laid under an oath of secrecy while their deliberations should continue; this precaution, however, was nullified by the pious perjury of a country ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... accidentally stumbled upon when searching for material of a different kind, the facts are stated in the following plain language: "The people"—I seek to translate as literally as possible—"do not respect the clergy, but persecute them with derision and reproaches, and feel them to be a burden. In nearly all the popular comic stories the priest, his wife, or his labourer is held up to ridicule, and in all the proverbs and popular ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... will be thought, when attention is drawn to the fact that in a question whether a singular set of quotations from the early Fathers refer to a passage in St. Matthew or the parallel one in St. Luke, the peculiar characteristic of St. Matthew—'them that persecute you'—is put out of sight, and both passages (taking the lengthened reading of St. Matthew) are represented as having equally only four clauses? And again, when quotations going on to the succeeding verse in St. Matthew (v. 45) are stated dogmatically to have been wrongly referred ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... conservative Puritanism. The later and more grotesque out-crops of the movement in the old England found no toleration in the new. But these refugees for conscience' sake were compelled in turn to persecute Antinomians, Separatists, Familists, Libertines, Anti-pedobaptists, and later, Quakers, and still {339} later, Enthusiasts, who swarmed into their precincts and troubled the Churches with "prophesyings" and novel opinions. Some of these were ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... MR. FIELDS: You will think that I persecute you, but I find that Mr. Dillon, for whom Mr. Holloway is illustrating my Recollections so splendidly, means to send the volumes to the binder on the 1st of November. I write therefore to beg, in case of your not having yet sent off the American autographs and portraits, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... the evening; now a fine man, but a most disagreeable one; a kind of character that would be most dangerous in rebellious times—one that would suffer or persecute to the utmost. His face is expressive of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... It hated geologists, persecuted the chemists, and imprisoned the naturalists, and opposed every discovery of science calculated to improve the condition of mankind. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit, no cruelty that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. In one hand, it carried an alms dish, and in the other, a dagger. It argued with the sword, persecuted with poison, and convicted with faggot." R. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... of the words which our Saviour spoke on this point. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... to be able to support by the sufficient grace promised. It is difficult to know how to feel and act towards such a man, so unprincipled, so vengeful, so bent on injury, yet the command to bless those that curse, to pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us, to love our enemies, to forgive our enemies, is in full force, and I feel more anxious to comply with this injunction of our blessed Saviour than to have the thorn removed, however strongly this latter ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... got away sooner than I expected," Polani said as he entered. "The governor was good enough to beg me to come on at once to you. You have heard all the news, I suppose, and know that our enemy will persecute you no more." ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... and to the Mahometans in order to put down the Christian name. A savage end it is to pit themselves for the private ends of trade and in a religious war, on the side of the koran and of idolatry, which they themselves condemn, against the gospel, which they persecute with fury. The three fleets went out then, for their campaign, and not having anyone to oppose them, the enemy filled their boats with what they called spoils, took about two hundred captives, persecuted our religious as ever, with mortal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... slay him, they marched against him with an army. At the sight, Brunehild, compassionating the evil case of one of her lieges unjustly presented, assumed a manly courage, and threw herself among the hostile battalions, crying, 'Stay, warriors; refrain from this wicked deed; persecute not the innocent; engage not, for a single man's sake, in a battle which will desolate the country!' 'Back, woman!' said Ursion to her; 'let it suffice thee to have ruled under thy husband's sway. Now it is thy son that reigns, and his kingdom is under our protection, not thine. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... accused of a desire to persecute. It is calumny. No persecution. Fanaticism is greedy of it, real religion repulses it, philosophy holds it in horror. Let us beware of imprisoning the nonjurors; of exiling, even of displacing them. Let them think, say, write all they please against us. We will oppose ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... not a question, but the cry of a new and wider vision of his task. Her face was transfigured. And her voice, low and vibrating, expressed no doubts. "Oh, I am proud of you! And if they put you out and persecute you I shall always be proud, I shall never know why it was given me to have this, and to live. Do you remember saying to me once that faith comes to us in some human form we love? You are my faith. And faith in you is my faith in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... he continued, "Miss Anville will think I persecute her: yet so much as I have to say, and so much as I wish to hear, with so few opportunities for either, she cannot wonder-and I hope she will not be offended-that I seize with such avidity every moment in my ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... Lawn, and, as it was not their own party, could be conducted with a sort of quasi-contemptuous superiority to incongruous gatherings)—this being settled, the forehead of Mr. Pericles cleared and he ceased to persecute Emilia. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... part of the population of the province, though the constitution was drawn up possibly two years before the first slave was brought to the colony.[150] Locke insists upon entire religious freedom. "No person whatsoever shall disturb, molest, or persecute another for his speculative opinions in religion or his way of worship." But he stipulates that this spiritual freedom shall in no way affect the status of the slave. "Since charity obliges us to wish well to the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... neither coldness, distance, nor aversion were sufficient to repress Sir Robert Floyer, who continued to persecute her with as much confidence of success as could have arisen from the utmost encouragement. She again, though with much difficulty, contrived to speak with Mr Harrel upon the subject, and openly accused him of spreading a report abroad, as well ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... the two Elders," says Lord Kew. "Let my innocence alone, Smee. Mr. Gandish, don't persecute my modesty with your addresses. I won't be painted. I am not a fit subject for ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... matter and quite natural to do this. But to love our enemies is very contrary to the depraved nature; unless there has been the cleansing wrought within, there will be some inward consciousness of hatred toward those who despitefully use and persecute us. The high standard of righteousness which Jesus teaches here and throughout this chapter is the standard of sanctification. The love of God must be perfected in us, which destroys every element of the old nature, of which hatred is a ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Feeling, therefore, that the King, hopelessly estranged from her, and consenting to give liberty to Lauzun only from his passion for elevating and enriching his bastards, would not cease to persecute her until she had consented—despairing of better terms, she agreed to the gift, with the most bitter tears and complaints. But it was found that, in order to make valid the renunciation of Lauzun, he must be set at liberty, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... protected with tin ruffs; yet there are six kinds of reptilia upon the island, including the common black snake and cobras, from six to seven feet long: these animals, aided by the dogs, which also persecute the iguanas, have prevented rabbits breeding. In Barbot's time (1700) there were only thirty or forty inhabitants, who held the north- eastern point about a league from the wooding and watering places. "That handful of blacks has much ado to live healthy, the air being very ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Millo, which was placarded throughout the territory and which confirmed in their posts all the civil employees. However, the Italians were unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain these signatures, though they did not abandon their watchword: "Either Italy or starvation!" They never ceased to persecute the peasants of the surrounding country and islands. Commands, menaces, blows inflicted by carabinieri and officers, houses searched night after night, and so on.... In the second half of February it was intended to conduct ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... on that subject, Mabel, and the Sergeant has even lately said that you are kindly disposed; but I am not a man to persecute the thing ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... eunuchs into prison, without food and water, and loaded their limbs with fetters. This was their second imprisonment; and what followed these few severities your Lordships will remark,—still more severities. They continued to persecute, to oppress, to work upon these men by torture and by the fear of torture, till at last, having found that all their proceedings were totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house; though it is in evidence before ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... on or oppress, ruin, damage, upon, persecute, slander, defame, injure, pervert, victimize, defile, malign, prostitute, vilify, disparage, maltreat, rail at, violate, harm, misemploy, ravish, vituperate, ill-treat, misuse, reproach, wrong. ill-use, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... They persecute me: now art THOU my last refuge. NOT with their hatred, NOT with their bailiffs;—Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be proud ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Rabbis with sinister intention. At first the Romans paid little attention to the insurgents, who were able to strike coins in the name of Simeon, prince of Israel, and Eleazar the priest, and to persecute the Christians, who refused to join the revolt. But troops were collected and the various fortresses occupied by the Jews were successively reduced. The end came with the fall of Beth-thar (Bethar). Extraordinary stories were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... unimportant points of theology. How hateful such bigotry looks to those capable of getting outside their own educational prejudices. How pitiable, that even good people should thus allow themselves to ostracise and persecute those who hold different opinions from their own. Elizabeth Fry was not afraid to mingle in Newgate prison with the scum of the earth, but she was afraid to touch the hem of Lucretia Mott's garment. If Mrs. Fry felt that she had a higher ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... revenge upon an enemy who is otherwise out of reach—according to Chinese ideas a most effective mode of revenge, not only because the law throws the responsibility of the deed on him who occasioned it, but also because the disembodied soul is supposed to be better able than the living man to persecute the enemy." [304] Similarly, among the Hos or Mundas the suicide of young married women is or was extremely common, and the usual motive was that the girl, being unhappy in her husband's house, jumped down a well or otherwise made away with herself in the belief that she would take revenge on ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... his house, abandoned the faith of Rome, many of them having truly accepted the offers of salvation. At length, so widely had spread the doctrines of the Reformation, that the authorities at Hornberg no longer ventured to persecute those who professed it, and Moretz did not, therefore, require the count's protection. Meta and Karl had remained at the cottage, notwithstanding the threats of Herr Herder. Every day, however, they had been expecting to receive another ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston

... with which he had enforced the test, obtained him a testimonial from the bishops of his affection to their Protestant Church, a testimonial to which, upon the principle that they are the best friends to the Church who are most willing to persecute such as dissent from it, he was, notwithstanding his own nonconformity, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... itself with earthly splendor, grasping the sword of earthly power, and the farthest removed from the humble and gentle spirit of its Master. It would tolerate no opposition to its will, in high places or low. It hurled its thunders at the head of kings, and sent crusading armies to persecute and torture the peasants of the Piedmont valleys. Nothing could seem more full of the spirit of Antichrist than this spiritual despotism embodied in the Papacy. And yet, even through this evil there was developed a truth—that there was something in the world ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... of manhood to persecute a woman, Mr. Law?" she asked, her own uncertitude now showing ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... such a loathing of their ambition and tyranny, who, usurping the liberty of their native countries, become slaves to themselves, inasmuch as (be it never so contrary to their own nature or consciences) they have taken the earnest of sin, and are engaged to persecute all men that are good with the same or greater rigor than is ordained by laws for the wicked, for none ever administered that power by good which he purchased by ill arts—Phoebus, I say, having considered this, assembled all the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington



Words linked to "Persecute" :   purge, crucify, oppress, bedevil, dun, persecutor, persecution, rag, frustrate, torment



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