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Slay   Listen
verb
Slay  v. t.  (past slew; past part. slain; pres. part. slaying)  To put to death with a weapon, or by violence; hence, to kill; to put an end to; to destroy. "With this sword then will I slay you both." "I will slay the last of them with the sword." "I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk."
Synonyms: To kill; murder; slaughter; butcher.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slay" Quotes from Famous Books



... the brave, Achilles— They say so. Bryant says the contrary. And farther downward tall and towering still is The tumulus, of whom Heaven knows it may be, Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus,— All heroes, who, if living still, would slay us. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Their hands did not falter any the more because those that they loved implored them to slay them. It is men's duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial! And oh, my dear, if it is to be that I must meet death at any hand, let it be at the hand of him that loves me best. Dr. Van Helsing, I have not forgotten your mercy in poor Lucy's case to him who loved." She stopped ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... "Why should you slay me?" protested the Slander. "Whatever my intentions were, I have been innocuous, for you have dogged my strides and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... these people are Socialists. They make sharp the sword of justice with which to slay the hydra of capitalism and to hew off ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... while they who would kill us are so near. My name is Paul. To be short, Sir, my crew have thrust me out of my ship, which you see out there, and have left me here to die. It was as much as I could do to make them sheath their swords, which you saw were drawn to slay me. They have set me down in this isle with these two men, my friend here, ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... restrain the excited king. Ah Kurroo, calm and far-seeing in the very moment of victory, restrained the legions, held them in, and not without immense exertion succeeded in checking the pursuit, and retaining the phalanx in good order. To follow a host so completely routed was merely to slay the slain, and to waste the strength that might profitably be employed elsewhere. He conjectured that so soon as ever the news reached Choo Hoo, the emperor, burning with indignation, would arouse his camp, call his army together, and without waiting to rally ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... dying man giue such a blow, As much may hinder his proud Conquerours might; It is enough our puissant power to showe To the weake English, now vpon their flight, When want, and winter, strongly spurre them on, You else but slay them, ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton

... enterprise or not. Then he sacrifices to the ghost, and having placed some ginger and leaves on his shield, and stuffed some more in his belt and right armlet, he sallies forth. He curses his enemy by his fighting ghost, saying, "Siria (if that should be the name of the ghost) eats thee, and I shall slay thee"; and if he kills him, he cries to the ghost, "Thine is this man, Siria, and do thou give me supernatural power!" No prudent Melanesian would attempt to commit manslaughter without a ghost as an accomplice; to do so would be to court disaster, for the slain man's ghost ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... said, And blew; another answered to the call, And rushing in disorderly, though led, And armed from boot to turban, one and all, Some twenty of his train came, rank on rank; He gave the word,—"Arrest or slay the Frank." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... repose. And cannot thrice ten hundred years unpraise The boist'rous boy, and blast his guilty bays? Why want we then encomiums on the storm, Or famine, or volcano? They perform Their mighty deeds: they, hero-like, can slay, And spread their ample desarts in a day. O great alliance! O divine renown! With dearth, and pestilence, to share the crown. When men extol a wild destroyer's name, Earth's builder and preserver they blaspheme. One ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... terrible in its force—that wish to slay. The emotion had grown, held back by the very force of a mental thread of reason, until, at the very moment when the thread was about to fray and snap, and he would be flung into sudden action, the booming voice of Joe Pollard had cleared his mind as an acid clears a cloudy ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... to interest me," Lanyard said coolly.... Surely he could contrive some way to slay this beast with his naked hands! He must play ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... Alone (he thinks) indignant at the wrongs Wrought by the despot. In so great a host Dread found no place. Where thousands share the guilt Crime goes unpunished. Thus from dauntless throats They hurled their menace: "Caesar, give us leave To quit thy crimes; thou seek'st by land and sea The sword to slay us; let the fields of Gaul And far Iberia, and the world proclaim How for thy victories our comrades fell. What boots it us that by an army's blood The Rhine and Rhone and all the northern lands Thou hast subdued? Thou giv'st us civil war For all these battles; such the prize. When ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... down before your eyes, you would have come out very differently to what you have.) Peter studies them, and soon the Divine vision has absorbed Peter's attention. When the Lord has fairly got his attention, then comes the voice, "Now, Peter, rise, slay and eat." Then, when the Lord had taught him his lesson effectually, and when Peter saw that he had not yet explored all the ideas of the Divine mind about the extension of His kingdom, and that his business was to follow his Lord's directions, and not to have ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... Each tribe had its own sacred truths given by its own gods, and he was learning of many. In the great canyon of Tze-ye—the abiding place of the Navahu Divine Ones, he had heard with awe of the warrior boy gods who were born of the Sun and of the Goddess Estsan-atlehi and set out to slay the terrific giants of evil in the world. But the medicine-men of Ah-ko were quite sure that the Ancient Ones of their own race had proof that the Supreme Power is a master mind in a woman's form. It is the thing which thinks and creates, and her twin sister ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... pitied for having to pour the Midnight Sorrows of his religious poetry; Mrs. Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the poet's wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, "ere thrice the moon had fill'd ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... that life is beneficent, the obligation of duty imperative, the meaning of existence spiritual. Puzzlingly protean in his expressional moods (his conversations in especial), he was constant in this intellectual, or temperamental, attitude: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," represents his feeling, and the strongest poem he ever wrote, "If This Were Faith," voices his deepest conviction. Meanwhile, the superficies of life offered a hundred consolations, a hundred pleasures, and Stevenson would have his fellowmen ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... had revolted against his brother, king Sancho IV., and having Guzman's son in his power threatened to kill him unless Tarifa was given up to him. Guzman replied, "Sooner than be guilty of such treason I will lend Juan a dagger to slay my son;" and so saying tossed his dagger over the wall. Sad to say, Juan took the dagger, and assassinated the young man there ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... anything go out to my friend Bjorn in Haganes in Fljot. He has a good boat; ask him from me to lend it to you, and then you will be able to sail on to Drangey. It seems to me that if you find Grettir well and hearty your journey will have been in vain. One thing know for certain: do not slay him in open fight, for there are enough men to avenge him. Do not slay Illugi if you can help it. I fear that my counsel may ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... do not need thy sword, Comrade mine," said Ury's lord; "Put it up, I pray thee: Passive to His holy will, Trust I in my Master still, Even though He slay me. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... truest wisdom. Creatures that ye count Inferior to yourselves, who in thin air Spread the light wing, or thro' the waters glide, Or roam the earth, might teach if ye would hear And be instructed by them. Hold your peace! Even tho' He slay me I will trust in Him For He is my salvation, He alone; At whose dread throne no hypocrite shall dare To stand, or answer. Man, of woman born Is of few days, and full of misery. Forth like a flower he comes, and is cut down, He fleeth like a shadow. What is man That God regardeth him? The forest ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... betook themselves to flight. Macduff pursued him, and was hard at his heels, when the tyrant turned his horse, and exclaimed, "Why dost thou follow me? Know, that it is ordained that no creature born of a woman can ever overcome me." Macduff instantly retorted, "I am the man appointed to slay thee. I was not born of a woman, but was untimely ripped from my mother's womb." And, saying this, he killed him on the spot. Macbeth reigned in the whole seventeen ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... to him! If this reason were not unreasonable, then should our Saviour not have said, as he did, "Fear not them that may kill the body, and after that have nothing that they can do further." For he should, by this reason, have said, "Dread and fear them that may slay the body, for they may, by the torment of painful death (unless thou forsake me betimes in the beginning and so save thy life, and get of me thy pardon and forgiveness afterward) make thee peradventure forsake me too late, and so be ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... with life, Roaming like wild cattle, With the stinging air a-reel As a warrior might feel The swift orgasm of the knife Slay him in mid-battle. ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... thunder, and set fire to a portion of the palace and senate-house: and much about the same time an owl settled on the top of the royal baths at Sabaria, and pouring forth a funeral strain, withstood all the attempts to slay it with arrows or stones, however truly aimed, and though numbers of people shot at it ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... evidently not the slightest idea that anything stood between her and freedom. How could he break the dreadful news to her? He felt like an executioner compelled by some awful fate to slay the one ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... never-failing tact: "Oh, sir, I know this cursed country well. Entrust yourself and all your host to me; I'll lead you safely by a secret path Into the heart of COLONEL JOOLES' array, And you can then attack them unprepared, And slay my fellow-countrymen unarmed." ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... Vedic Sruti declares that in sacrifices the offerings should consist of (vegetable) seeds. Seeds are called Ajas. It behoveth you not to slay goats. Ye deities, that cannot be the religion of good and righteous people in which slaughter of animals is laid down. This, again, is the Krita age. How can animals be slaughtered in this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... dropped one eyelid when before The throne he ventured, thinking 'Twould please the king. That monarch swore He'd slay them all for winking. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... Sir Ingoldsby Bray, Why really—I hardly know what to say:— Foul sin, I trow, a fair Ladye to slay, Because she's perhaps been a little too gay.— —Monk must chaunt and Nun must pray; For each mass they sing, and each pray'r they say, For a year and a day, Sir Ingoldsby Bray A fair rose-noble must duly pay! ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... not catch everything that was said, he gathered clearly that when Claverhouse left his lodging to attend the Convention on the morning of the fifteenth of March, they would be waiting in the narrow way, as if talking with friends, and would slay the persecutor before he could summon help. When it was agreed who should be present, and what each one should do, they closed their meeting, as they had opened it, with prayer. One of them glanced suspiciously round the kitchen as he passed through, but saw no man, for Grimond ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... country, and after dinner when they had gathered in the lantern-hung summer-house for coffee, Mme. Fontaine, urged by the girls, recounted an incident in the life of Yamato, or O'Osu, as he was then known. He was the son of the Emperor Keiko, and when a mere slip of a boy was sent by his father to slay two fierce robbers who had been spreading terror through the country. O'Osu gladly undertook the affair and since the outlaws were giants and he just a boy, he devised a cunning scheme to outwit the terrible brigands. He was slender and small and his hair still long, so that in the ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... men. Of my own free will I give you wit, (O man so sorely in need of it!) And happiness; and the flame that hath dwindled On this dull hearth shall be rekindled. But this you must swear: To will, and to dare, To seek the spirit and slay the sense; And for this hour To give me power To lead you in silent obedience, Though I bade you fall ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley

... me the shield from thy hands, and let me carry it, and give heed to what I say. Make thou the gestures, and I will do the work." And Gunther was glad when he knew him. "Guard well the secret of my magic, for all our sakes, lest the queen slay thee. See how boldly she ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown

... pestilence; burning coals went forth at His feet. Hell is naked before Him and destruction hath no covering. He hangeth the earth upon nothing and the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His reproof. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and at the last day He ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... secret discontent about them, or may like to plan for myself in ways different from God's plans. Yet in the midst of so much care and fatigue I hardly know how I do feel; I am like a feather blown here and there by an unexpected whirlwind and I suppose I ought not to expect much of myself. "Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him," I keep saying over and over to myself, and if you are going to write a new sermon this week, suppose you take that for your text. I have not had one regret that you went to Paris, and as to your coming on, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... But instead of that it fills me with dismay, blank suspicion, fretful resistance. I do not feel that there is anything which God could send me or reveal to me, which would enable me to acquit Him of hardness or injustice. I will not, though He slay me, say that I trust Him and love Him when I do not. He may crush me with repeated blows of His hand, but He has given me the divine power of judging, of testing, of balancing; and I must use it even in His despite. He does not require, I think, a dull and broken submissiveness, the submissiveness ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... book gets himself a job on board of a vessel, which has a number of misfortunes. She loses several officers, then her captain dies, leaving a totally unsuitable officer, Kydd, in charge. Finally she runs aground near the shore, where the natives slay some of the crew. They leave the ship on a raft, Kydd being on one, and our hero and many other passengers on a second. The latter is picked up by a fine-looking vessel, that proves to be a Portuguese slaver. They are attacked by a British man-of-war on slaver-patrol, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Verily to Allah we belong and to Him we shall return! What is this mighty host? Doubtless, these are enemies, and except we agree with this Queen Marjanah to fight them, they will take the town from us and slay us. There is no resource for us but to go out to them and see who they are." So Amjad arose and took horse and passed through the city gate to Queen Marjanah's camp; but when he reached the approaching army he found it to be that of his grand sire, King Ghayur, father of his mother Queen ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... off for the service, named Vargunteius and Cornelius. These, after the Roman fashion, were to make their way early on the following morning into the Consul's bedroom for the ostensible purpose of paying him their morning compliments, but, when there, they were to slay him. All this, however, was told to Cicero, and the two knights, when they came, were refused admittance. If Cicero had been a man given to fear, as has been said of him, he must have passed a wretched life at this period. As far as I can judge of his words and doings throughout his life, he was ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... a rough and partially intoxicated man in the East End of London, as he struck down a woman; the flash darted out at her the moment before he raised his hand to strike, and caused a shuddering feeling of horror, as though it might slay. The keen-pointed stiletto-like dart (Fig. 23) was a thought of steady anger, intense and desiring vengeance, of the quality of murder, sustained through years, and directed against a person who had inflicted a deep ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... at your feet, as you but now were at mine. Let us slay each other if you like, but let us not murder him! Let his life be spared, though it be ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac

... the average Englishman is moderate in success and in defeat not cast down, I do not know. But this I have seen: all London mad, howling, exultant, savage drunk, because of the report that the Redcoats had subjugated this colony or that. To subdue, crush, slay and defeat, has caused shrieking shouts of joy in London since London began—unless ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... words. You have a good position here at Court, and a good master ready to give you anything in reason; and believe me, I want to enjoy a quiet prosperous reign. Mine is a very pleasant life. There are plenty of boars to kill, and I would rather slay them than Englishmen. War is very attractive and very grand. The clash of arms, the trumpets' bray, and the thunder of chargers' hoofs, all thrill me to the core; but I prefer it in the tourney, ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... made of olifant. A book thereon Marsilies bade them plant, In it their laws, Mahum's and Tervagant's. He's sworn thereby, the Spanish Sarazand, In the rereward if he shall find Rollant, Battle to himself and all his band, And verily he'll slay him if he can. And answered Guenes: "So be it, as you ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... him to the dust tomorrow financially, a master of the world's affairs, a prospector of life's fields, who would march fearlessly beyond the farthest frontiers into the unknown. Jean Jacques' admiration of the lion who could, and would, slay him was the best tribute to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... are two very different persons. The hunter pursues animals because he loves them and sympathizes with them, and kills them as the champions of chivalry used to slay one another—courteously, fairly, and with admiration and respect. To stalk and shoot the elk and the grizzly bear is to him what wooing and winning a beloved maiden would be to another man. Far from ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... blazed like fiery stars. And she exclaimed: Never! never! Never shall she possess thee, nor any other than I myself. And then, like a flash of lightning, her rage vanished as quickly as it came. And she looked at him with imploring eyes, and said: Slay me now, with thy long bright sword, and send me back to that nonentity out of which thou hast just recalled me: but speak not of another woman in front of me. Alas! and am I all forgotten? And tears rolled ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain

... it bring praise or blame. That one loyalty to Truth I must keep stainless, whatever friendships fail me or human ties be broken. She may lead me into the wilderness, yet I must follow her; she may strip me of all love, yet I must pursue her; though she slay me, yet will I trust in her; and I ask no other epitaph on my ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... me. Grandfather forsaken! Never. And, Davie, the loss of Ythan even wouldna mean that to grandfather. Do you no' mind: 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' What is Ythan, and what are any of us to grandfather, in comparison to having the Lord Himself?" said Katie, with rising colour and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... make your way here. I have a snug hiding-place, and I shall take refuge there with my family if the Spaniards capture the town. I have heard of their doings in Holland, and that when they capture a town they spare neither age nor sex, and slay Catholics as well as Protestants; therefore I shall take refuge till matters have quieted down and order is restored. I shall set to work at once to carry my valuables there, and a goodly store of provisions. My warehouseman will remain in ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... all and every person & persons (both principalls and accessories) who since the first day of October 1641 have or shall kill, slay or otherwise destroy any person or persons in Ireland w'ch at ye time of their being soe killed, slaine or destroyed were not publiquely enterteined, and mainteyned in armes as officers or private souldiers for and on behalfe of the English against ye ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... instantly to execute their own judgment. Yet who would, on that account, interdict all selfdefence? The right which a people has to resist a bad government bears a close analogy to the right which an individual, in the absence of legal protection, has to slay an assailant. In both cases the evil must be grave. In both cases all regular and peaceable modes of defence must be exhausted before the aggrieved party resorts to extremities. In both cases an awful responsibility is ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... foolish bear and the mad panther fight alone, but the wolf, who is too small to face either, bands with his brothers into a league, even as the Hodenosaunee, and together they pull down the deer and the moose, and in the lands of the Ohio they dare to attack and slay the mighty ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... judges are corrupt. We know That crimes are lively and that laws are slow. We know that lawyers lie and doctors slay; That priests and preachers are but birds of pray; That merchants cheat and journalists for gold Flatter the vicious while at vice they scold. 'Tis all familiar as the simple lore That two policemen and two thieves ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... of Almighty God to sit in judgment upon your fellow man, condemn him without trial and slay ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... my ears hear?" he cried. "Are ye mad, O ye Dwellers in the Mist? Or does the Mother speak with a charmed voice? Shall the ancient worship be changed in an hour? Nay, not the gods themselves can alter their own worship. Slay on, ye priests, slay on, or ye yourselves ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... fine, more or less—such an amount as the judge should order him to give. If the husband were a chief, and caught his wife in the act of committing adultery, he had the right to punish her with death, and the adulterer also, and could slay them with impunity. If he killed one and the other escaped, there would be open war between the two families until the other adulterer died. If both escaped, they must pay for their lives with a certain weight of gold. If they were chiefs, the penalty was one hundred taes, fifty for the woman ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... himself became king in his own land, and for fifty years he ruled well, and kept his folk in peace. Then it fell that a fearful Fire-Dragon wasted all the land, and Beowulf, mindful of his deeds of old, set forth to slay him. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... crescents, circuses, and squares every year: Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, and Liverpool would serve ay King in Europe for a capital, and would make the Empress of Russia's mouth water. Of the war with Catherine Slay-Czar I hear not a breath, and thence conjecture it is dozing ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... he was doing his best to relieve and redeem, by poetry, and by all the many arts and crafts in which he was a master. His narrative poems are, indeed, part of his industry in this field. He was not born to slay monsters, he says, "the idle singer of an empty day." Later, he set about slaying monsters, like Jason, or unlike Jason, scattering dragon's teeth to raise forces which he could not lay, and could ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... lost her own husband and now she must have mine. She has always been my evil angel. When she was kindest to me it was only a different way of serving herself. My soul warned me; my father warned me. She is one of those human vampires who suck love, luck, life itself from all near them, and who slay, and rob, and smile, and caress while they do it. And I am to go home for a year and get back my beauty and my voice. I am sorry I ever was beautiful. If I can help it I will never sing another song. Go home and shame my good father ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... Theatre Francais on the occasion of the unveiling of Ponsard's bust. To the Romanticists, Ponsard was nothing less than the ass's jawbone with which the Philistines attempted to slay Hugo. But Emile Chasles, a son of my old friend, gave a lecture upon him, and afterwards Le lion amoureux was played, a very tolerable little piece from the Revolutionary period, in which, for one thing, Napoleon appears as a young man. There ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... home the nobleman commanded them to bring the huntsman before him. "What hast thou done, thou son of Satan?" he cried. "I must needs slay thee!" But the huntsman said, "My master, bid them bring hither into the courtyard an old mare fit for naught but the knacker." They brought the mare, and he mounted it and said, "My master, last midnight something came beneath the window and said, 'Oh, son of a dog! thou saidst, "If only ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... slay in battle than in peace to spare and save, Of brave men wisest councillor, of wise councillors most brave; How the eye that flashed destruction could beam gentleness and love, How lion in thee mated lamb, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... undertake so dangerous an enterprise, my husband. Well you know that if you slay Thorolf his friend Kolbein will slay ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... to the drum-beat's roll, The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, And bears upon a crimson scroll, "Our glory is to slay." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... has received authentic information of any of these offences having been committed, he issues a written mandate to one of the nayres, commanding him to take two or three other nayres in his company, and to slay the nayre who has committed this offence against the laws. In obedience to this warrant, they attack him with their swords and put him to death where-ever they happen to find him, and then affix the royal order upon his body, that all may know the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... again to be not; this unborn, everlasting, abiding, Ancient, is not slain when the body is slain. Knowing This to be imperishable, everlasting, unborn, changeless, how and whom can a man make to be slain or slay? As a man lays aside outworn garments, and takes others that are new, so the Body-Dweller puts away outworn bodies and goes to others that are new. Everlasting is This, dwelling in all things, firm, ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... the learned say And envy called the tune Mayhap 'twere trite what treason saith That man is dust and ends in death; We'd slay with proof of printed law Whatever was new that seers saw, If Truth were what the learned say And envy ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... she interrupted suddenly. "But are they all-powerful to slay only? Oh no, I cannot believe it! I will go to them; it cannot be too late; I will say to them that I would rather have died than appealed to them if I had known that this was to be the terrible result. And Calabressa—why did he ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... for the man, who came in fear and trembling, thinking that the king would either imprison or slay him. Philip, however, received him kindly, made him sit at his own table, and let him go only after giving him many rich gifts. As the king had not found fault with him in any way, Nicanor was greatly surprised, and vowed that he would not speak ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... year when this unexpected blow struck him. We speak of the Princess's marriage, not her death. In his aunt's house, in which he had suddenly passed from the position of a wealthy heir to that of a hanger-on, he would not slay any longer. In Petersburg, the society in which he had grown up closed its doors upon him. For the lower ranks of the public service, and the laborious and obscure life they involved, he felt a strong repugnance. All this, it must be remembered, took ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... and spoil'd, Time it is thy poor soul were assoil'd; Priests didst thou slay and churches burn, Time it is now to repentance to turn; Fiends hast thou worshipp'd with fiendish rite, Leave now the darkness and wend into light; Oh, while life and space are given, Turn thee ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... condition of not knowing our own merits. We have played a great and splendid part in the history of universal thought and sentiment; we have been among the foremost in that eternal and bloodless battle in which the blows do not slay, but create. In painting and music we are inferior to many other nations; but in literature, science, philosophy, and political eloquence, if history be taken as a whole, we can hold our own with any. But all this vast heritage of ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... molecules of protoplasm are only a little more complex than the molecules of hydrogen or nitrogen or iron or coal. You may fuse iron, vaporise water, intermix the gases; but the molecules of all change little in such metamorphosis. And you may slay twenty thousand men at Waterloo or Sedan, or ten thousand generations may be numbered with the dust, and not an ounce of protoplasm lies dead. All molecules are merely arrangements of atoms made under different degrees of pressure and of different ages. And all atoms ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... at the feast of Pentecost, Arthur again pulled out the sword before all the knights and the commons. And then the commons rose up and cried that he should be king, and that they would slay any ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... from darkness save Achaia's sons; No more I ask, but give us back the day; Grant but our sight, and slay us, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... of a city by an enemy. And straightway summoning Stephanus, he spoke as follows: "Many times have I witnessed the capture of cities and I am well acquainted with what takes place at such a time. For they slay all the men of every age, and as for the women, though they beg to die, they are not granted the boon of death, but are carried off for outrage and are made to suffer treatment that is abominable and most pitiable. ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... Tiberius Gracchus survived its author. The Senate had not power to annul it, though it might slay its author. The work of redistribution continued, even as the National Assembly of France sanctioned the legislation of preceding revolutionists. And in consequence of the law, there was, in six years, an increase of burgesses ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... the Austrasian Franks, Charles, a man of war from his youth up, to whom Eudo had sent warning. There for nearly seven days they strive intensely, and at last they set themselves in battle array; and the nations of the north standing firm as a wall, and impenetrable as a zone of ice, utterly slay the Arabs with the edge of the sword." ["Tunc Abdirrahman, multitudine sui exercitus repletam prospiciane terram," &c.—SCRIPT. GEST. ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... or passive is often formed in en instead of ed; as, been, taken, given, slain, known, from the verbs to be, to take, to give, to slay, to know. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... and pain-sowing hope— The evil self seeking its happiness And shaping horror. And I cast away Myself, and cried: What am I but a dream, A wave within the sea, a passing cloud Upon the radiance of eternity? All yearning will I slay, and slay therewith The sorrow that ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... this clad in silver whose skin is white and whose hair is yellow? Such an one I have not seen for a thousand years, and such as he it is that shall possess themselves of the Land of Tavantinsuyu, shall steal its wealth, shall slay its people, and shall cast down its gods. But not yet, not yet! Therefore this is the command of Pachacamac, uttered by the voice of Rimac the Speaker, that none do harm to or cross the will of this mighty seaborn lord, since he shall be as a strong ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... to it. He was very angry and called them leeches, whereat they laughed, saying that leeches only suck enough and then fall off, whereas they would take all or kill. They made him understand it, taking a great oath together to slay him without mercy unless he should get the letter and give it to them before the train ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... when, in the midst of the melee, a body of French and Spaniards poured in upon the banner of Chandos. He was struck to the ground, and a gigantic Castilian knight flung himself upon him and strove to slay him as he held him down. Chandos had lost sword and battle-axe, but drawing his dagger, he held with one hand his opponent's sword-arm, and at last, after repeated strokes with his dagger, he found an undefended part of his armour and ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... seemed to take hold of my heart, and say, 'Dead-dead-dead.' And I cried out, 'The living, the living shall praise Thee, O God; the dead cannot praise thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But I can work. I can do great things. I will do great things. Why wilt thou slay me?' And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with no power to stir or think; alone with myself; beyond the reach of all human fellowship; beyond Christ's reach, I thought, in my nightmare. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... Iollas, for my birthday guest Send me your Phyllis; when for the young crops I slay my heifer, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... chief, calmly. "My young men will hunt till they find where he is. Then they will bring us the information and Van der Kemp will go out with a band and slay ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... by-gone days, whom I met at Mount Holly, spake of his being at John Woolman's little farm, in the season of harvest, when it was customary, and so remains to the present time, for farmers to slay a young calf or a lamb; the common mode is by bleeding in the jugular vein; but with a view to mitigate the sufferings of the animal in that mode, he had prepared, and kept by him for that express purpose, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... I beg thee, husband, This one thing: ruin not our life together. As yet 'tis young and blind as tiny fledglings, A single speech like this might swiftly slay it! I shall not be an evil wife to thee: I mean that slowly I shall find, perhaps, In other things a little of that bliss For which I held out eager fingers, thinking There was a land quite full of it, both air And earth, and one might ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... Henry of Navarre. The germ that Calhoun has planted shall lie long in the earth, perhaps, but when it breaks the surface, it shall grow in one night to maturity, like that in your so famous 'Mother Goose' story of 'Jack and his Bean-stalk,' forming a ladder wherewith to scale the abode of giants and slay them in their drunken sleep of security. But he who does this deed, this Joshua of the Lord's, this fierce successor of our gentle Moses, shall wade through his oceans of blood to gain the stone. God knoweth—He only—how all this ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... here from west to east awending? And who are these, the marchers stern and slow? We bear the message that the rich are sending Aback to those who bade them wake and know. Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay, But one and all if they would ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris

... recognition,—of all these are the days made; all these are a part of "the flowing conditions of life," which it is the business, the responsibility, the personal duty, to transmute into noble living, into poetry and ecstasy and exaltation, and into that perfect faith in God that can truly say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Though He slay all that made life seem worth the living; the enchantment, the response of sympathy; recognition rather than misconstruction,—though all these be obscured in what may seem a total eclipse,—still let one ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... him off then. But I didn't even entertain the thought. It was no part of my plan to slay from concealment. I was the hero, the avenger, the saviour! I meant to face him in ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... father. But the Rector had not forbidden him when he heard. Steadiness and punctuality had always been Ned's strong points, so that, though he had not taken his degree at the university, and his old masters had said they were not surprised to hear it, he might be trusted not to wreck trains, slay their passengers, and find himself tried for manslaughter. The difficulty was to fancy a big, slow fellow like Ned rushing here and there in a noisy, fussy little station. After all, it would only be ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... the king's palace, he began to feel sorry that he had spoken so rashly. For how should he ever make good his promise and do the king's bidding? He did not know which way to go to find the Gorgons, and he had no weapon with which to slay the terrible Medusa. But at any rate he would never show his face to the king again, unless he could bring the head of terror with him. He went down to the shore and stood looking out over the sea towards Argos, his native land; and while he looked, the ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... women of the tribe followed her and heard her speak. But the father loved his child. He could not hate her, although she forsook her home. At first he thought of taking all his young men and going on the war-path to follow the Eskimos, slay the whole tribe, and bring back his child. But Manitou had put it in the father's mind to think that it is wrong to kill the innocent because of the guilty. He therefore made up his mind to set off alone ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... For the want of food while you have plenteous store. Trade in copper or in household goods we offer, But the swords and guns you ask for in exchange None may part with; for these weapons are to us What your bows and arrows are to you, forsooth—- Means to gain our living—or to slay our foes! Heed you not our words, we'll find some other way Grain to garner; but with you our ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman

... helpless prisoner. But the stout-hearted Wauchee moved onwards with a firm and erect gait, disturbed neither by the blows nor the menaces that were directed against him. He only exclaimed, "You have slain my chief and father, and lo! I have also struck down the head of your nation. It is well. Slay me—torture me, if you will. I can bear unmoved ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... another clean, slid the saloon-pistols down a trouser-leg, and hurried forth to a deep and solitary Devonshire lane in whose flanks a boy might sometimes slay a young rabbit. They threw themselves down under the rank elder bushes, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... no wish to slay your father, maiden," he said gently; "we slay only those who resist, and resistance on the part of a single man, and he wounded, against a whole ship's crew is madness. We are no sea-wolves who slay for the pleasure of slaying, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... Shoshonees, perhaps, do not perceive that policy is the real motive of the Spaniards; but they clearly see that the plea of humanity is fallacious, and they complain that they are thus left to the mercy of their enemies the Minnetarees, who, having fire-arms, plunder them of their horses, and slay ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... the Norsemen had seen no inhabitants of the land. But now as they returned to their ship they saw three mounds upon the shore. When the Norsemen came near they saw that these three mounds were three canoes, and under each were three men armed with bows and arrows, who lay in wait to slay them. When the Norsemen saw that, they divided their company and put themselves in battle array. And after a fierce battle they slew the savages, save one who fled to his canoe ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... sword proceeded out of his mouth," 19:21. "The sword of the Spirit ... is the word of God," Eph. 6:17. "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked," Isa. 11:4. The One who indites this epistle is thus designated, probably, because, unless they repented of the things alleged against them, he would fight against them with the sword ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... hither. A man that is resolved, and hath his will fixed, saith, 'I will do my best to advantage myself; I will do my worst to hinder my enemies; I will not give out as long as I can stand; I will have it, or I will lose my life.' So Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." So Jacob, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." 'I will, I will, I will!' O this blessed inflamed will for heaven! What is like it? If a man be willing, ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan

... tribulation that can come to a good woman, and she knew she had arisen from her overthrow, stronger for the trial; now Karl was battling, and he had cried out to her in his pain—his shame of defeat. But it would not be his extinction. She was sure of that. They might, among them, slay his body, but she could not read his letters, so full of valiant contrasts, and doubt that his spirit must withstand ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... While the rider, flung to the frozen ground, Escapes the horns by a panther's bound. But the raging monsters are held at bay, While the flankers dash on the swarthy rout: With lance and arrow they slay and slay; And the welkin rings to the gladsome shout—— To the loud Ina's and the wild Iho's, [34] And dark and dead, on the bloody snows, Lie the swarthy heaps of the buffaloes. All snug in the teepee Wiwaste lay, All wrapped in her robe, at ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... forward beyond the front ranks to meet Pantauchus. They fought with spears at first, and then, drawing their swords, contended hand to hand with equal skill and courage. Pyrrhus received one hurt, but he wounded Pantauchus in the thigh and in the throat, and overthrew him. Pyrrhus did not slay him, however, as he was rescued by his friends. The Epirots, elated at their king's victory, and filled with enthusiasm by his courage, bore everything before them, routed the phalanx of the Macedonians, and pursued the fugitives, of whom they slew many and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... did the rest, as Gral watched in despair; soon there was only soft melting mud and a gnarled stick that would never slay again. ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... deer and wild turkey were far less plentiful, though the ruffed grouse still drummed in the copses, and the quail whistled from the fences. Different, even, were the hunters in their methods. The boy, whose single-barreled shot-gun had known no law, now carried a better piece, and scorned to slay a sitting bird. Both he and Alf became great wing shots, and clever gentlemen sportsmen from the city who sometimes came to hunt with them could not hope to own so good a bag at the day's end. Wise as to dogs and horses were they, too, and keen riders at country races. And ridges of good ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... of New York," is this sentence: "There can be no doubt that, of all the proximate sources of crime, the use of intoxicating liquors is the most prolific and the most deadly. Of other causes it may be said that they slay their thousands; of this it may be acknowledged that it slays its tens of thousands. The committee asked for the opinion of the jail officers in nearly every county in the State as to the proportion of commitments due, either directly ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... Daylight span round and fell dead, and Sandy's spear flew high in air as a bullet took him fair in the chest. And then the savage instinct to slay came upon and overwhelmed Grainger, as well as his black boy, and shot after shot rang out and laid low half a dozen of the sitting and expectant savages ere they could recover from their ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... "That wicked,"—or rather "THE LAWLESS ONE," (ho anomos, as he is called in 2 Thess. ii. 8,)—must be bound, hand and foot, somewhere in his career of lawlessness; and in these Sermons the threshold of the Bible has been chosen as the place for the conflict. My life for his life. I will slay or be slain on the very portal of Holy Scripture. With the young, you begin at the beginning,—"the Creed, the LORD'S Prayer, the Ten Commandments;" and they must be further instructed in the Church Catechism. But the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... last drop of blood rather than let the enemy set foot inside their town. Even the women busied themselves sharpening axes and scythes, resolute in their purpose to defend their little ones or, if need were, to put them to death with their own hands and then slay themselves. No woman, no child, should fall ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... not attach the slave? Ile rayse the whole Campe but Ile apprehend him. Alarum, drummes! Souldiers, incircle him, And eyther apprehend or slay the wretch. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... The youthful lord on such stupendous woe May never gaze unmov'd; with bitter wail The father's sleeve he clasps. Nought may 't avail, He weeping cries, e'en should the deed be done, For I will slay myself if ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... more, for though thou slay me, Thy heavenly mouth must move, and I shall hear Dulcet delights of perfect music sway me Again—again that voice so blest and dear; Sweet Judge! the prisoner prayeth for his doom That he may ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes freedom's new-lit altar fires. Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light the martyr-fagots ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes; who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress the altar, slay the victims, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... Diomed sprang upon Aeneas, though he knew him to be in the very arms of Apollo. Not one whit did he fear the mighty god, so set was he on killing Aeneas and stripping him of his armour. Thrice did he spring forward with might and main to slay him, and thrice did Apollo beat back his gleaming shield. When he was coming on for the fourth time, as though he were a god, Apollo shouted to him with an awful voice and said, "Take heed, son of Tydeus, and draw off; think not to match yourself against gods, for men that walk the earth cannot ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... drew forth his tobacco pipe and made the three doomed ones sit with him in the path to smoke the peace-whiff all around, we picked out each his man and smote to slay. The scythe-like sweep of Jennifer's mighty claymore left the five-feathered chieftain the shorter by a head in the same pulse-beat that the Ferara scanted a second of the breath to yell with; though now I recall it, the gurgling death-cry ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... feels at his throat a knife, And gasps, as his victim gasped, for life! The thief recoils from the scorching brand; The mariner drowns in sight of land! Thus sinful man have I power to fray, Torture, and rack, but not to slay! But ever the couch of purity, With shuddering glance, I hurry by. Then mount! away! To horse! I say, To horse! astride! astride! The fire-drake shoots— The screech-owl hoots— As through the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the earth. And if I help not the maid she is shamed for ever, and also she shall lose her virginity the which she shall never get again. Then lift he up his eyes and said weeping: Fair sweet Lord, whose liege man I am, keep Lionel, my brother, that these knights slay him not, and for pity of you, and for Mary's sake, I shall succor this maid. Then dressed be him unto the knight the which had the gentlewoman, ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young

... plighted troth to one another, Herbart and Hilda: and watching their opportunity they stole away on horseback from the castle. King Arthur sent after them thirty knights and thirty squires, with orders to slay Herbart and to bring Hilda back again; but Herbart defended himself like a hero, killing twelve knights and fourteen squires: and the rest fled back to the castle. Herbart, though sore wounded, mounted his steed and escaped with his wife to the dominions of a certain king, who received ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... save Blanchefleur from a cruel death, and thus did she further counsel her lord: 'Ah, sir!' said she, ''twere sin and shame to slay the child thus untried and unheard; better far, let her be taken to the harbour, and there sold away into distant lands and never ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton

... convert. The wild Namoqua warrior was turned into a gentle child. The change in this chief was a moral miracle. Wolfish rapacity, leonine ferocity, leopardish treachery, gave way before the meekness and mildness of the calf or kid. His sole aim and ambition had been to rob and to slay, to lead his people on expeditions for plunder and violence, but he now seemed absorbed by one passion, zeal for God and his missionary. He set his subjects to building a house for Mr. Moffat, made him a present of cows, became a regular and devout worshiper, mourned heartily over ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... results of the inspection being unsatisfactory, was cocking his ears and making ready to slay me, there rang out the short, sharp report of a rifle fired within a few yards. Glancing up at the instant, I saw blood spurt from the monster's left eye, where evidently the bullet had ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... can deserve your regard. Even hope is lost as to present life, and if you make use of your reason, it must direct you to turn all your wishes and endeavours towards attaining happiness in a future state. What, then, remains to be examined in respect of this question is whether persons who slay themselves can hope for pardon or happiness in the sentence of that Judge from whom there is no appeal, and whose sentence, as it surpasses all understanding, so is ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... Thyestes, planning horrors, long before Had stealthily procur'd his brother's son, Whom he in secret nurtur'd as his own. Revenge and fury in his breast he pour'd, Then to the royal city sent him forth, That in his uncle he might slay his sire, The meditated murder was disclos'd, And by the king most cruelly aveng'd, Who slaughter'd, as he thought, his brother's son. Too late he learn'd whose dying tortures met His drunken gaze; and seeking to assuage The insatiate vengeance that possess'd his soul, He plann'd a deed unheard ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... that their good is not alien to me, and is a stimulus to me to labor for ends which may not benefit myself, but will benefit them. It is possible that you may prefer to 'live the brute,' to sell your country, or to slay your father, if you were not afraid of some disagreeable consequences from the criminal laws of another world; but even if I could conceive no motive but my own worldly interest or the gratification of my animal desire, I have not observed ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... "Diary of Private lvanov," Garshin gave more pictures of the hideous suffering of war, with a wonderful portrait of the commander of the company, who is so harshly tyrannical that his men hate him, and resolve to slay him in the battle. But he survives both open and secret foes, and at the end of the conflict they find him lying prostrate, his whole body shaken with sobs, and saying brokenly, "Fifty-two! Fifty-two!" Fifty-two of his company had been killed, and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... present intent to go out and return in disguise. [594] Marvel thou not at this and let one of thy slave-girls abide await at the privy door, to open to me forthright, when she seeth me coming; and I will cast about for a device whereby I may slay this accursed one." Then he rose and going forth the [privy] door of his palace, walked on till he encountered a peasant by the way and said to him, "Harkye, sirrah, take my clothes and give me thine." The man demurred, but Alaeddin enforced him and taking ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... have received from men incapable of intentional falsehood, concerning the characters, qualifications, and motives of our anonymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our reading public; I might safely borrow the words of the apocryphal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and I shall slay this dragon without sward or staff." For the compound would be as the "pitch, and fat, and hair, which Daniel took, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof; this he put in the dragon's mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder; and Daniel said, LO, THESE ARE THE ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... but not to wear; I wear a sword, but not to slay, And ever in my bag I bear A pack of ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton

... die by the illest of deaths;" and she continued making signals to them. So, being afraid, they came down to her and she rose be fore them and said, "Stroke me a strong stroke, without stay or delay, otherwise will I arouse and set upon you this Ifrit who shall slay you straightway." They said to her, "O our lady, we conjure thee by Allah, let us off this work, for we are fugitives from such and in extreme dread and terror of this thy husband. How then can we do it in such a way as thou desires"?" "Leave this talk: it needs must ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... so in most parts of the world. In many so-called Christian nations of Europe she is to-day yoked with beasts and is doing the labor of beasts, while her son and husband are serving in the army, protecting the divine right of kings and men to slay and destroy. In the farther East she is still more degraded, being substantially excluded from the world. Man has not been consciously unjust to woman in the past, nor is he now, but he believes that she is in her true sphere, not realizing that he has fixed her sphere, and not ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... timid grandfather Acrisius, and found him, not in his own realm of Argos, but at Larisa, the city of King Teutamias, looking on at some public games. Perseus must needs meddle in the exercises, and so managed to fulfill the old prophecy and accidentally slay his grandfather by an unlucky throw of the discus, a kind of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... throw a blood-red light over his whole character and led men to look on him as the very incarnation of the world-power in its most demoniac aspect, as worse than the Antiochus Epiphanes of Daniel's Apocalypse, as the Man of Sin whom—in language figurative indeed, yet awfully true—the Lord should slay with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming, for Nero endeavored to fix the odious crime of having destroyed the capital of the world upon the most innocent and faithful of his subjects—upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... "Let us slay him for his dreams, and throw him into some pit," said another; "and we will say that some wild ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous

... the altar, silent. Conflicting counsels troubled the air. Let the sacrifice go forward; the gods must be appeased. Nay, the boy must not die; bring the chieftain's best horse and slay it in his stead; it will be enough; the holy tree loves the blood of horses. Not so, there is a better counsel yet; seize the stranger whom the gods have led hither as a victim and make his life pay the forfeit ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... train when he entered it. Catiline, impatient of further delay, resolved himself to break forth and go to Manlius, but he commanded Marcius and Cethegus to take their swords, and go early in the morning to Cicero's gates, as if only intending to salute him, and then to fall upon him and slay him. This a noble lady, Fulvia, coming by night, discovered to Cicero, bidding him beware of Cethegus and Marcius. They came by break of day, and being denied entrance, made an outcry and disturbance at the gates, which excited all the more suspicion. But Cicero, going forth, summoned the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him. ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON



Words linked to "Slay" :   kill, remove, hit, execute, burke, dispatch, off, slayer, slaying, murder, polish off



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