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Inhuman   /ɪnhjˈumən/   Listen
Inhuman

adjective
1.
Without compunction or human feeling.  Synonyms: cold, cold-blooded, insensate.  "Cold-blooded killing" , "Insensate destruction"
2.
Belonging to or resembling something nonhuman.  "A babel of inhuman noises"



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"Inhuman" Quotes from Famous Books



... his lapel the black and green ribbon of 1870—a decoration which always filled Desnoyers with remorse. He was tall and gaunt, but was still trying to hold himself erect, with a heavy frown. He wanted to show himself fierce, inhuman, in ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... protest against them? Shall man be juster than his God? This perverse Christian morality is responsible for the worst cruelties which have tormented the human race since the days of ecclesiastical domination. If the Deity is inhuman, why should man be otherwise? Therefore, inhuman tortures will be inflicted on prisoners. The rack and thumb-screw will be used to extract secrets. Men will be immured alive within narrow walls and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... for thee: thou art come to answer A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Uncapable of pity, void and empty ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... the room there came a most unearthly cry. It was weird, terrifying, utterly unlike anything I had ever heard—save once. For it was a repetition of the wild, inhuman note that had thrilled me when I first dashed open the bath room door ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... He closed a fit of reverie resembling his drowsiness, by exclaiming: 'Richie will be indebted to his dad for his place in the world after all!' Temporarily, he admitted, we must be fugitives from creditors, and as to that eccentric tribe, at once so human and so inhuman, he imparted many curious characteristics gained of his experience. Jorian DeWitt had indeed compared them to the female ivy that would ultimately kill its tree, but inasmuch as they were parasites, they loved their debtor; he was life and support to them, and there was this remarkable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that put him beyond all counsel, all assistance and human interdependence. Jeremy, who had arrogantly accepted this responsibility without a question, through so many long years and voyages, now dreaded it, found it an inhuman burden, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... evening stillness with an ear-splitting din, no unholy piccolo sounded above the other tortured instruments, no violin wailed pitifully at its inhuman treatment, and the piano ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... Gipsies, in Grellmann's day, would resort to the most wicked and inhuman practices. Before taking one of their horses to the fair they would make an incision in some secret part of the skin, through which they would blow the creature up till his flesh looked fat and plump, and then they would apply a strong sticking plaster to prevent the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... described himself as a "philosopher, psychologist, and humorist." It was partly because Patrick delighted in long words, and partly to excuse himself for being full of the sour cream of an inhuman curiosity. His curiosity, however, did not extend itself to science and belles lettres; it concerned itself wholly with the affairs of other people. At first, when Deasey retired from the police ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... families who had long been at enmity were drawn together by the tie of common calamity. But if this feeling seemed to calm the passions of some, and open the heart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering them more rigorous and inhuman. In great calamities vulgar minds evince less of goodness than of energy. Misfortune acts in the same manner as the pursuits of literature and the study of nature; the happy influence of which is felt only by a few, giving more ardour to sentiment, more elevation to the thoughts, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... and hatred it displays the Communists seem not very much worse than their antagonists. It sounds like trifling for M. THIERS to be denouncing the Insurgents for having shot a captive officer "without respect for the laws of war." The laws of war! They are mild and Christian compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which the Versailles troops have been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up prisoners, women and children, during the last six days. We have not a word to say for the black ruffians who, it is clear, ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... infantile members of the boat population is sad. They are exposed to a "rough-and-tumble" existence as soon as they are ushered into the world, especially should the poor innocent have the misfortune to be born a girl baby, for in that case she has simply to shift for herself, the inhuman parents considering themselves fortunate if they lose a girl or two overboard. The boys, or "bull" children, as they are termed, meet with rather more care relatively speaking. As, from the nature of their occupation, but little time can be devoted to ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron

... between him and action, between him and human affection; the growth of the critical pessimist sense which laid the axe to the root of enthusiasm after enthusiasm, friendship after friendship—which made other men feel him inhuman, intangible, a skeleton at the feast: and the persistence through it all of a kind of hunger for life and its satisfactions, which the will was more and more powerless to satisfy: all these Langham put into words with an extraordinary magic ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... there died daily numbers gradually rising through the summer from 50 to 180. The streets were encumbered with unburied corpses, the houses infested by robbers and marauders. Some incidents reported of this plague are ghastly in their horror. The infected were treated with inhuman barbarity, and retorted with savage fury, battering their assailants with the pestiferous bodies ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... The inhuman pair were overjoyed, With devilish glee possessed For as the iron, feeling void, Their heart was in their breast, And brisker with the bellows' blast, The foundry's womb now heat they fast, And with a murderous mind prepare To offer up the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... technic of introduction on the cadaver and trained the eye and fingers by practice work on the rubber tube, experience should be had in the living lower air and food passages with their pulsatory, respiratory, bechic and deglutitory movements, and ever-present secretions. It is not only inhuman but impossible to obtain this experience on children. Fortunately the dog offers a most ready subject and need in no way be harmed nor pained by this invaluable and life-saving practice. A small dog the size of a terrier (say ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... the Piazza de Sant Marco at Venice, in the Carnival time. There are all descriptions and classes in society, all casts and sects, all tribes and associations, all colours, complexions and appearances, not only of human and inhuman beings, but also all shades, features, and conformations of vice. The Spendthrift, or degraded man of fortune, lives by shifts, by schemes, by loans, by sponging on the novice, by subscription, or on commiseration's uncertain aid. He has ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... a half-repressed shudder and a deeper clouding of his rather pale face. "Sometimes I try to make myself believe that it isn't, that it's all fancy, that she never could be so inhuman, and yet how else is it to be explained? You can't go behind the evidence; you can't make things different simply by saying that you will not believe." He stirred his tea nervously, gulped down a couple of mouthfuls of it, and then set ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... bandages and cloths, and what part of the face was visible was discolored and pigmented with drugs. Stretched under the white sheet the man looked immensely tall—as Horner saw with vague misgiving—and he lay in an odd, inhuman fashion, as though he had been all broken to pieces. His attempts to move were constantly soothed by the nurse, and he as constantly renewed such attempts; and one hand, though torn and bandaged, was not to be restrained from a wandering, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... But still this inhuman extravagance of Bentley, in following out his hypothesis, does not exonerate us from bearing in mind so much truth as that hypothesis really must have had, from the pitiable difficulties ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... draw back and pluck my arm from the dying man's grasp. I could not do so without using a force that would have been inhuman. His lips drew nearer still to ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... where Diana's temple lately was, as she was turning to the right to the Orbian hill, in order to arrive at the Esquiline, the person who was driving, being terrified, stopped and drew in the reins, and pointed out to his mistress the murdered Servius as he lay. On this occasion a revolting and inhuman crime is stated to have been committed, and the place is a monument of it. They call it the Wicked Street, where Tullia, frantic and urged on by the furies of her sister and husband, is reported to have driven her chariot over her father's body, and to have carried a portion of her father's body ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... could any thing prove more unlucky? such brave fellows deserve better treatment than they'll get (I'm afraid) from the inhuman Carleton. ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... the bourgeois seemed another man. He drew up with such an inhuman gleam in his cadaverous eyes that the customs man ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... to me heaven's joy within her arms? What though my life her bosom warms!— Do I not ever feel her woe? The outcast am I not, unhoused, unblest, Inhuman monster, without aim or rest, Who, like the greedy surge, from rock to rock, Sweeps down the dread abyss with desperate shock? While she, within her lowly cot, which graced The Alpine slope, beside the waters wild, Her homely cares in that small world embraced, Secluded lived, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... monsters who dwelt on the other islands, but plundered indiscriminately on every hand. These turned out to be the notorious Caribs, whose other name, Cannibals, has descended as a common noun to our language, expressive of one of their inhuman practices. They had at that time seized many of the Antilles, and had gained a foothold on the coast of Honduras and Darien, but pointed for their home to the mainland of South America. This they possessed ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... am not abandoned enough yet to forget the respect that is due to rank. On this account, I trust, nobody will show such want of regard for my feelings as to expect me to say much about my mother's brother. That inhuman person committed an outrage on his family by making a fortune in the soap and candle trade. I apologize for mentioning him, even in an accidental way. The fact is, he left my sister, Annabella, a legacy of rather a peculiar kind, saddled with certain conditions ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... from Paris. Napoleon did not suppose that she would leave the house until morning. Much to his surprise, in a few moments he heard Josephine, Eugene, and Hortense descending the stairs to take the carriage. Napoleon, even in his anger, could not be thus inhuman. "My heart," he said, "was never formed to witness tears without emotion." He immediately descended to the court-yard, though his pride would not yet allow him to speak to Josephine. He, however, addressing Eugene, urged the party ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... preaching by which he declared Jesus Christ, and made the Christian law appear amiable in that kingdom. For amongst those barbarians, who reduce all humanity to the notion of not being inhuman, and who acknowledge no other duties of charity, than forbearing to do injuries, it was a thing of admiration, to see a stranger, who, without any interest, made the sufferings of another man his own; and performed all sorts ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... from the scaffold, at great risk to himself, those who had injured him. It is clear that, apart from the organically morbid twist by which he obtained sexual satisfaction in his partner's pain,—a craving which was, for the most part, only gratified in imaginary visions developed to an inhuman extent under the influence of solitude,—De Sade was simply, to those who knew him, "un aimable mauvais sujet" gifted with exceptional intellectual powers. Unless we realize this we run the risk of confounding De Sade and his like with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... cruelties which have been practised by otherwise "good" men under the motive of "saving" other people's souls, and the inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise "good" men under the motive of saving their own souls, have, each of them, the same evil origin. Love sweeps aside, in one great wave of its own nature, all these doubts and ambiguities. It lifts the object of its love into its own ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... arrived the first thing he did was to seize the inhuman king himself and after he had overpowered the keepers, throw him before his own mares. With this food the animals were satisfied and Hercules was able to drive ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... may understand the importance of this request, you must remember that there are especial rules and laws which govern the conduct of a war, and from which no nation dares depart, unless it wishes to be branded as inhuman and savage. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 47, September 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... while he worked Peter's mind seethed with arguments against the building of the new factory. He longed to see his father and talk it out. Surely Mr. Coddington would listen if he realized the conditions. He was a kind man—not an inhuman brute. It seemed as if the noon whistle would ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... and delight, a delight almost malignant; he opened his mouth wide, and from the depths of his chest there broke out with effort a prolonged howl.... Muzzio's lips parted too, and a faint moan quivered on them in response to that inhuman sound.... But at this point Fabio could endure it no longer; he imagined he was present at some devilish incantation! He too uttered a shriek and rushed out, running home, home as quick as possible, without looking round, repeating prayers and ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... black or malign disposition, an effeminate disposition; an hard inexorable disposition, a wild inhuman disposition, a sheepish disposition, a childish disposition; a blockish, a false, a scurril, a fraudulent, a tyrannical: what then? If he be a stranger in the world, that knows not the things that are in it; why not be a stranger ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... State is his idol, if he have one. The State must be supreme in will, in vigor, in intelligence; unflinching, unsparing, remorseless. The humility of Christ has no part in his scheme. He knows no mercy and no justice. One almost can admire his inhuman disregard of men. He cared as little for them as Napoleon. He scorns all gentleness. And yet he thought well of the people, of their prudence and stability. He deemed them liable to err as to generalities ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Something inhuman and yet troublingly personal lay in the performance; it invaded the onlookers with a sense of disquietude. There was primeval ecstasy in those strains and gestures. Giant moths, meanwhile, fluttered ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... to her as he ended. His eyes shocked her inexpressibly. They held a glare that was inhuman, almost devilish. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... was suffering the most excruciating pain. Medical aid was called in by the magistrate, and every attention extended to the little sufferer, who seemed to forget her pain in the consciousness of her mother's presence. The inhuman wretch who had thus brutally maltreated a mere child, enraged to a state of insanity in finding herself thwarted in obtaining the child, made an appeal to the city court, then in session, and had all the parties present. It needed but this to give Mrs. W. uncontrolled ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... attaining the end of their struggles. The swamp, the river, the alligator, the man-hunter, and worse than all, the blood-hound, had been met and successfully overcome or evaded; and after three long weeks of travel from the execrable and inhuman people, who had held them as prisoners of war, and treated them worse than dogs, they now found themselves within ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... so he would say, "am an old struggler." So too, in all conscience, was Carlyle. The struggles of Johnson have long been historical; those of Carlyle have just become so. We are interested in both. To be indifferent would be inhuman. Both men had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots. They were not amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight their way. What they took they took by storm. But—and here is a difference indeed—Johnson ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... to conceive an implacable hatred against all popular domination, though I think it the most natural and equitable of all, so oft as I call to mind the inhuman injustice of the people of Athens, who, without remission, or once vouchsafing to hear what they had to say for themselves, put to death their brave captains newly returned triumphant from a naval victory they had obtained over the Lacedaemonians near the Arginusian Isles, the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... against the storm of world-criticism, has admitted and justified the slaughter of innocent hostages as a "military necessity." No other civilised country does this; and Americans consider the German Government both brutal and barbarous for permitting this utterly inhuman practice. American soldiers in Vera Cruz were killed by franctireurs; but our Government would hang any American officer who permitted the murder of innocent hostages on that account. Your Government justifies and excuses such measures; therefore Americans have been forced to conclude ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson

... preternaturally long in the waist, the skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he always wore snugly buttoned from the throat downward. In this attire he cut a tolerably spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and inhuman that whenever he went into a cornfield, the predatory crows would temporarily forsake their business to settle upon him in swarms, fighting for the best seats upon his person, by way of testifying their contempt for the weak inventions of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... command of the Army of Northern Virginia. As commander of that army he achieved world-wide reputation, without giving occasion during a period of three years to any complaint on the part of officers, men, or citizens, or enemies, that he had been guilty of any act, illegal, oppressive, unjust, or inhuman in its character. This is the highest tribute possible to the wisdom and virtue of General Lee; for, as a general rule, law was degraded; officers, whether justly or unjustly, were constantly the subject of complaint and discord, and ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... because we can never be sure that an action caused by emotion is good, partly because we are easily deceived by false tears. I am in this place expressly speaking of a man living under the guidance of reason. He who is moved to help others neither by reason nor by compassion, is rightly styled inhuman, for (III: xxvii.) he seems ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... cheating you out of your money. I inclose the sealed letter which he gave me at the farmhouse. The week's time before I was to open it expired yesterday. Was there ever anything so impudent and so inhuman? I am too vexed and angry about the money you have wasted on this old wretch to write more. Yours, ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins

... a strick of lightning, and says I, 'Tarnal death to me, but its anngelliferous madam that helped me out of the halter!' Strannger!" he roared, executing another demivolte, "h'yar am I, come to do anngelliferous madam's fighting ag'in all critturs human and inhuman, Christian and Injun, white, red, black, and party-coloured. Show me anngelliferous madam, and then show me the abbregynes; and if you ever seed fighting, 'tarnal death to me, but you'll say it war only the squabbling of seed-ticks and blue-bottle ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... and saying that she had heard from her son of his interference to put a stop to one of those brutal scenes which brought discredit upon the Southern States, and that she considered he had most rightly punished Mr. Jackson, Jr., for his inhuman and revolting conduct; that she was perfectly aware the interference had been technically illegal, but that her son was fully prepared to defend his conduct if called upon to do so in the courts, and to pay any fine that might be inflicted for his suffering himself to be carried away ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... injury, but had been their guardians a long time together, while we continued in the wilderness; and he assured him he should never repent of giving any thing to David. When the messengers had carried this message to Nabal, he accosted them after an inhuman and rough manner; for he asked them who David was? and when he heard that he was the son of Jesse, he said, "Now is the time that fugitives grow insolent, and make a figure, and leave their masters." When they told David this, he was wroth, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... tortures, Girty made the announcement, in a brief speech to the Indians; and then taking up a rifle, loaded with powder only, discharged it upon the prisoner's naked body. A loud yell of satisfaction, from the excited mob, followed this inhuman act; while several savages, rushing forward with rifles loaded in the same manner, now strove who should be first to imitate the renegade's example; by which means, no less than fifty discharges were made, in quick succession, until the flesh of the ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... and myself; and believing that I was doing the duty of a good citizen, I drew the sword which always accompanies me in readiness for such dangers, and started in to drive away or lay low those desperate robbers. But the barbarous and inhuman villains, far from being frightened away, had the audacity to stand against me, although they saw that I was armed. Their serried ranks opposed me. Next, the leader and standard-bearer of the band, assailing me with brawny strength, seized me with both hands by ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... immigration, and must have been great personages celebrated in the traditions of the natives or Dasyus. . . . Pururavas was a king of great renown, who ruled over thirteen islands of the ocean, altogether surrounded by inhuman (or superhuman) personages; he engaged in a contest with Brahmans, and perished. Nahusha, mentioned by Maull, and in many legends, as famous for hostility to the Brahmans, lived at the time when Indra ruled on earth. He was a very great king, who ruled with justice a mighty ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... inhuman sound of horror and despair. Sally, unendurably exasperated, slipped out of bed, and put on a skirt and coat. Then she went into the sitting-room, made up the fire, and curled herself up in one of the armchairs. A thin voice ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... the agony in Gethsemane, the barbarous treatment He had suffered in the palace of the high priest, the humiliation and cruel usage to which He had been subjected before Herod, the frightful scourging under Pilate's order, the brutal treatment by the inhuman soldiery, together with the extreme humiliation and the mental agony of it all, had so weakened His physical organism that He moved but slowly under the burden of the cross. The soldiers, impatient at the delay, peremptorily impressed into service ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... at the door, fell back in awe before the Missing Link, and Mahdi crossed the road, carrying the neck of the broken bottle, his quaint feet, like huge hands, flopping in the dust. Mahdi's make-up did Professor Thunder great credit—it was grotesquely inhuman. The shape of the costume demanded a stooping attitude and shambling gait. Only in a good light and at close quarters could the deception ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... during all their agitation to save these men who were to suffer a punishment that is meted out to such by all governments, thousands of their own people were perishing for the want of something to eat - not inhuman or hard-hearted, but simply do not see how they can prevent it. There is no law by which they can stop starvation. The legislator in a monarchy knows that poverty is inseparable from that form of government ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... into a rippling laugh. "I am in one of my inhuman moods this morning," she said, "but I believe my forte is action rather than speech. Let me take your place, and those ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... as if the wire itself resented these inhuman phases of humanity and spit back at the person who insulted it by trying to transmit over ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call

... cell, or that St. Francis should scourge himself with briers for fear of committing sin. That kind of attitude is too fantastically fastidious altogether. You Catholics seem to aim at a standard that is simply not desirable; both your ends and your methods are equally inhuman and equally unsuitable for the world we have to live in. True religion is surely something far more sensible than this; true religion should not strain and strive after the impossible, should not ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... much there, that he had no real life in the sombre house on the corner of the graveyard; except that the loneliness of the latter, and the grim Doctor with his grotesque surroundings, and then the great ugly spider, and that odd, inhuman mixture of crusty Hannah, all served to remove him out of the influences of common life. Little Elsie was all that he had to keep life real, and substantial; and she, a child so much younger than he, was influenced ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... crowns, lightly conspir'd, And sworn unto the practises of France, To kill us here in Hampton: to the which This knight, no less for bounty bound to us Than Cambridge is,—hath likewise sworn.—But, O, What shall I say to thee, lord Scroop? thou cruel, Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature! Thou that did'st bear the key of all my counsels, That knew'st the very bottom of my soul, That almost might'st have coin'd me into gold, May it be possible, that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange, That, though the truth ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... have been over-praised by them. Woe to him, when they find out their error! and woe now to the Judge! The fact that a dozen other influential citizens had also refused shelter to the vagabond will not help the matter. Those very men will probably be the first to cry, "Hypocrite! inhuman! a judgment upon him!"—for it is always the person of doubtful virtue who is most eager to assume the appearance of severe integrity; and we often flatter ourselves that our private faults are atoned for, when we have ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... crew who had any sense of decency; and of the deaf and dumb passengers selected to be washed ashore a pair who were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast, dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... deception, no longer existed. Was I glad or sorry for this? I asked myself the question a hundred times, and I admitted the truth, though I trembled to realize it. I was GLAD—yes—GLAD! Glad that my own child was dead! You call this inhuman perhaps? Why? She was bound to have been miserable; she ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... of slaves sprang a result, little thought of by the inhuman master; though greatly detrimental to his interests. It caused them occasionally to abscond; so making it necessary to insert an advertisement in the county newspaper, offering a reward for the runaway. Thus cruelty ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... because his inhuman desertion of the poor baby does not incline me to trust him. I run the risk of trusting you—to a certain extent—at starting. Shall I drop a hint which may help you to identify the child, in your own mind? It would be inexcusably foolish on my part to speak too plainly, just yet. The hint must ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... arose. After the governing party had instigated the mutiny by their incapable administration which frustrated all the precautionary measures of the Sicilian officers, had converted that mutiny into a revolution by the operation of their inhuman system of government, and had at length brought the country to the verge of ruin by their military incapacity—and particularly that of their leader Hanno, who ruined the army—Hamilcar Barcas, the hero ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... were lost early in the encounter, and their hair was full of cobwebs; sticky curtains of cobweb hung about their faces, and swathed them from top to toe in what looked like a dirty grey fur. Each boy had cleared his eyes of the thick veil, but so inhuman and unheard of was their appearance that there was presently a suspicion amongst the scholars that the master had captured two previously unknown specimens of the animal kingdom, and consequently further astonishing developments might ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... blood-hounds, and by their inhuman oppressors more savage than blood-hounds, answer the insulting inquiry. Are they brave? Will they fight for the cause which they have dared so many dangers to espouse? I point you to the bloody records of Vicksburg, Million's Bend, Port Hudson, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... allowed to pay my homage," says she, on a note of irony, "although the angelic Stewart has forbid you to see me at my own house. I come to condole with you upon the affliction and grief into which the new-fashioned chastity of the inhuman Stewart has reduced ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... which was broken by the lobby clock striking the first quarter after seven. This harsh announcement on the part of the inhuman clock seemed to render the situation intolerable. Fifteen minutes past seven, and Louis not come, and not a word of comment thereon! Mrs. Maldon had to admit privately that she was in a ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... whom Emerson met in England and Scotland. He thought "the two finest mannered literary men he met in England were Leigh Hunt and De Quincey." His diary might tell us more of the impressions made upon him by the distinguished people he met, but it is impossible to believe that he ever passed such inhuman judgments on the least desirable of his new acquaintances as his friend Carlyle has left as a bitter legacy behind him. Carlyle's merciless discourse about Coleridge and Charles Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... attend the deathbed of his ducal relative. Essendine himself, entering the hotel to explain matters to the lady, finds (1) that she is the wife who divorced him before marrying Greville; (2) that she has just died of heart disease. Next, being of a placidity almost inhuman, he decides to bury the corpse as that of his wife, and not worry anyone with explanations. What he didn't know then, or I either, was that another lady was at the moment gadding about London in one of Mrs. Greville's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various

... inhuman order filled the whole army with horror. Yet none dared interfere, and the unnatural mandate was obeyed, in full view of an army whose late exultation was turned to deepest woe and indignation. The youngest ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... cry from the afflicted community for the policing of the devastated region, and there is no doubt it is greatly needed. Happily, Nemesis does not sleep this time in the face of such provocation as is given her by these atrociously inhuman human beings. It is a satisfaction to record that something more than a half dozen of them have been dealt with as promptly and as mercilessly as they deserve. For such as they there should be no ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... quite capable of ruining herself, and even of perpetrating something which would send her to Siberia, for the mere pleasure of injuring a man for whom she had developed so inhuman a sense of loathing and contempt. He had sufficient insight to understand that she valued nothing in the world—herself least of all—and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was a coward in some respects. For instance, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... bridge. Then, like a handful of snowflakes, the drachenflieger swooped to the attack, and a multitude of red specks whirled up to meet them. It was to Bert's sense not only enormously remote but singularly inhuman. Not four hours since he had been on one of those very airships, and yet they seemed to him now not gas-bags carrying men, but strange sentient creatures that moved about and did things with a purpose of their own. The flight of the Asiatic and German flying-machines joined and dropped earthward, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... quantity," said Nick, "and even I can't measure it just yet. Have I been rather a bore and a brute? I can easily believe it; I haven't talked to you—I haven't amused you as I might. The truth is that taking people's likenesses is a very absorbing, inhuman occupation. You can't do ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... know, but its demon, as of most northern inland waters, is the loon, and a very good demon he is too, suggesting something not so much malevolent, as arch, sardonic, ubiquitous, circumventing, with just a tinge of something inhuman and uncanny. His fiery red eyes gleaming forth from that jet-black head are full of meaning. Then his strange horse laughter by day and his weird, doleful cry at night, like that of a lost and wandering spirit, recall no other bird or ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... race noble, and well it deserves the title if we follow dispassionately the sufferings it has had to endure from the remote times of the conquest until the present, with habits so moderate, so frugal, so mild, that only the inhuman treatment of civil as well as religious authorities has been able to exasperate them. Theirs have been always the sufferings, the labors—never the enjoyments—that accompany enlightenment and healthy morality." An extended and unprejudiced account of this rebellion has just been published ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... the Revere House, and I was alone in my room. Then I broke the seal and read, while my blood curdled within my veins and every hair pricked at its roots. The old man knew he was about to die, and confessed to me in part his manifold transgressions, particularly his inhuman treatment of his last wife, the mother of little Miggie, but as this cannot, of course, be interesting to you, I will not ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... am very sure of this, that the sane, healthy, well-balanced nature must have a fund of wholesome laughter in him, and that so far from trying to repress a sense of humour, as an unkind, unworthy, inhuman thing, there is no capacity of human nature which makes life so frank and pleasant a business. There are no companions so delightful as the people for whom one treasures up jests and reminiscences, because one is sure that they will respond to them and enjoy ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cock-pit, where it is supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their inhuman feastings upon the bodies of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... stuck in his throat: he was not Rutton and ... and it is very hard to lie effectively when you stand in stark darkness with a mouth dry as dust and your hair stirring at the roots because of the intensely impersonal and aloof accents of an inhuman Bell-voice, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... my dry lips. Tugh was smiling now, and suddenly I saw the full inhuman quality of his face—the great high-bridged nose, and high cheek-bones; a ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... the contrary, it means exactly the opposite. Trust, perfect trust, with loved ones far away! No, it is an inhuman ideal, and the more one loves the less one lives up to it. If not, what ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... of the mind that he was trying so hard to cleanse from prejudice and prepossession—to school indeed to an inhuman fairness—there clung small circumstances and smaller details which could influence no one else, which would not constitute evidence before any tribunal, but which weighed more with Langholm himself than all the points arrayed in his note-book with so much ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... the wind from tower to tower Low-murmuring at midnight hour? Athwart the darkness light is stealing, Portentous, red with unrelenting ire, Inhuman deeds, and secrets dark revealing! Ye guilty, who may quench the kindled fire! Fall, city of the Czars, to rise Ennobled by self-sacrifice, Than tower and temple higher and more holy! The wilful king appointed o'er mankind To plague ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... procession passed under a triumphal arch which commemorated the complete destruction of the Goths. For the last time, the amphitheatre of Rome was polluted with the blood of gladiators, for Honorius, exhorted by the poet Claudian, abolished forever the inhuman sacrifices. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... offerings, sacrifices, expiations, useful, in fact, to the ministers of God, but very onerous to the rest of mankind. I find also, that they often have a tendency to render men unsocial, disdainful, intolerant, quarrelsome, unjust, inhuman toward all those who have not received either the same revelations as they, or the same ordinances, or the same favors ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... view, which was the subjugation of the Southern States," and that "the civil war which the powers at Washington had chosen to inaugurate would be met by the South in a spirit as determined." Governor Jackson considered "the call to be illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary; its objects to be inhuman and diabolical," and it "would not be complied with by Missouri." Governor Harris said that Tennessee "would not furnish a single man for coercion, but would raise fifty thousand men for the defense ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... Scroggs, Jeffreys, North, Wright, Sawyer, Williams, are to this day the spots and blemishes of our legal chronicles. Differing in constitution and in situation, whether blustering or cringing, whether persecuting Protestant or Catholics, they were equally unprincipled and inhuman. The part which the Church played was not equally atrocious; but it must have been exquisitely diverting to a scoffer. Never were principles so loudly professed, and so shamelessly abandoned. The Royal prerogative had been magnified to the skies in theological works. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... through his flesh, his head hanging, his brow dripping bloody sweat, and left to die. A priest muttered religious consolation by his side. By such sights as these was the populace of the French cities trained to enjoy the far less inhuman spectacle of the guillotine.[Footnote: Mercier, iii. 267. Howard says that the gaoler at Avignon told him that he had seen prisoners under ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... away, and the country was rife with stories of the inhuman treatment of our men, daily dying by hundreds, while those who survived the cruelties were reduced to maniacs and imbeciles. And Helen, as she listened, grew nearly frantic with the sickening suspense. She did not know ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... men, the power to cause the death of Catulus, a man of the greatest dignity? But there would be no end of enumerating examples of good men made miserable and wicked men prosperous. Why did that Marius live to an old age, and die so happily at his own house in his seventh consulship? Why was that inhuman wretch Cinna permitted to enjoy so long ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... utensils, and ornaments used daily by the deceased were interred, and it was customary to bury alive around the tombs of Imperial personages and great nobles a number of the deceased's principal retainers. The latter inhuman habit was nominally abandoned at the close of the last century before Christ, images of baked clay being substituted for human sacrifices, but the spirit which informed the habit survived, and even down to modern times there were instances of men and women committing suicide for the purpose of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... we can punish England for her unlawful conduct. Should America's good offices prove to be in vain it will be not ours but England's fault, and the Americans will then readily understand that the reproach of an inhuman mode of warfare must be laid at the doors of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... been called inhuman, a monster, a creature without bowels. All that is really of small importance. He was a soldier who carried out orders. His orders were ruthless orders. The instrument he used was a very perfect one. He carried out his orders with the utmost precision ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... having administered the inhuman castigation, Landry (the owner of the girl) pleaded guilty, but urged, in extenuation, that the girl had dared to make an effort for that freedom which her instincts, drawn from the veins of her abuser, had taught her was the God-given right of all who possess the germ ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... black and white the Model Republic's criminal anomaly, by making the African Slave a companion-piece to the Greek Slave, among "Jonathan's" contributions to the great Crystal Palace Exhibition. In this same vein of a wide-ranging application of the Golden Rule, he is ever on the alert to brand inhuman deeds and institutions, wherever found. You cannot very often hit him with the "tu quoque" retort, insinuate that he lives in a house of glass, or charge him with visiting his condemnation upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... Justice Parker who said it was not for the jury to judge whether a law were harsh or not; I showed how he charged the jury in the case of Bowen, and how the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty," thus setting his inhuman charge at nought.[195] But Judge Curtis, for his law, relies upon Judge Parker's charge. It is not a Statute made by the legislature that Judge Curtis relies on for his law; it is not a Custom of the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... thirst. Not a morsel of food had they tasted since their incarceration! The terrible doom to which they were consigned was too apparent; there was nothing to foreshadow even the slightest hope of redemption. A few days' intercourse with their inhuman persecutor had demonstrated too plainly that he was equal to any crime which his own ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... I," said he, with an inhuman laugh. "And when the work is completed, and you have faithfully stood by me, then, signora, you may be sure of the gratitude of the empress. Catharine is the exalted protectress of the muses, and in the fulness of her grace she will not forget ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... hath grown blind among the kings of this entire earth. Is it not because he hath banished Kunit's son from his kingdom? I have no doubt that Vichitravirya's son, when he with his sons perpetrated this inhuman act, beheld on the spot where dead bodies are burnt, flowering trees of a golden hue. Verily he must have asked them, when those stood before him with their shoulders projected forward towards him, and with their large red eyes staring at him, and he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... which mankind is only now beginning to realize, that the pursuit of profit will transform natures inherently capable of much good into sordid, cruel beasts of prey, and accustom them to committing actions so despicable, so inhuman, that they would be terrified were it not that the world is under the sway of the profit system and not merely excuses and condones, but justifies and throws a glamour about, the unutterable degradations and crimes which ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... beauty is desecrated; thy form is but unhallowed clay. Dog!" he cried, more fiercely, glaring round upon the unmoved face of the Inquisitor, "this is thy work: but thou shalt not triumph. Here, by thine own shrine, I spit at and defy thee, as once before, amidst the tortures of thy inhuman court. Thus—thus—thus—Almamen the Jew delivers the last of his house from the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the very protoplasm of life, as she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search, and his voice gradually filled her with fear, so level it was, almost inhuman, as if ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... began to say that it was better that what was inevitable should be recognised at once than that it should be established later on by violence, after a struggle in which more than monarchy would be imperilled, and which would bring to the front the most inhuman of the populace. To us, who know what the next year was to bring, the force and genuineness of the argument is apparent; but it failed to impress the National Assembly. Scarcely thirty members shared those ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... three years older than myself, behaved in a very different manner. I used to think the difference between us was merely that of sex; that every boy was boisterous, ungrateful, imperious, and inhuman, as every girl was soft, pliant, affectionate. Time has cured me of that mistake, and, as it has shown me females unfeeling and perverse, so it has introduced me to men full of gentleness and sensibility. My brother's ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... these straw-roofed burrows, eight persons had died in the last fortnight, and five more were lying upon the fetid, pestiferous straw, upon which their predecessors to the grave had been consumed by the wasting fever of famine. In scarcely a single one of these most inhuman habitations was there the slightest indication of food of any kind to be found, nor fuel to cook food, nor any thing resembling a bed, unless it were a thin layer of filthy straw in one corner, upon which ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... the white frock, hat, and tippet. The rest of the things shared the same fate, and Eliza was compelled to put on some old rags which the inhuman creature took out of a bag she carried under her petticoat; then, taking a bottle of liquid from the same place, she instantly began washing Eliza's face with it, and, notwithstanding all her remonstrances, cut her beautiful hair ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... Link were in the dugout, and presently they would return to the cabin. They would have to remain in the cabin, for it would be inhuman of him to compel them to stay very long in the dugout with the horses. Thus was Miss Wharton shielded against the impropriety of staying for any length of time in ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... provisions. Without a mast or without provisions a sail-ship could not continue her cruise against the enemy; and yet the neutral permitted her to supply herself with these articles. Nor can such supplies as these be placed on the ground of humanity. It would be inhuman, it is true, to permit the crew of a belligerent cruiser to perish in your ports by debarring from access to your markets, from day to day; but it does not follow that it would be inhuman to prevent her from laying in a stock of provisions to enable her to proceed ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... inhuman, she said, to make him suffer so. The magistrate, before leaving, asked her whither she intended taking her patient. She replied, "To Italy." That, said the magistrate, would be impossible until his inquiry was closed. In the meantime she might take him to any place within the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... fire. He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm-books, Maria with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled and critical; and at once he was struck with indignation, not unjustly. It was inhuman to go off to church, and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished, unforgiven. And at the very touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity was lessened; yet the paternal terror only grew; and the two strands of feeling pushed him in ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... The inhuman, inconsistent, and cynically selfish conduct of England toward the North in this war, whenever we have been threatened by reverses, should not be forgotten. It has been literally devilish in its grossness and meanness. Whatever wickedness the South has been guilty of was at least ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... marriage. Even if my cousin looked upon me with partial eyes, could I rob my benefactors of that dearest hope? Could I repay all their benefits to me by causing them such a cruel disappointment? I could never be so ungrateful,—so guilty,—so inhuman. Therefore, I say, the obstacle lies in my own heart: that heart revolts at the very contemplation of such an act. I pray you never to speak to me again on this subject; and give me your word that no one shall ever ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie



Words linked to "Inhuman" :   nonhuman



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