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Torment   /tˈɔrmˌɛnt/  /tɔrmˈɛnt/   Listen
Torment

noun
1.
Unbearable physical pain.  Synonym: torture.
2.
Extreme mental distress.  Synonyms: anguish, torture.
3.
Intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain.  Synonyms: agony, torture.  "The torments of the damned"
4.
A feeling of intense annoyance caused by being tormented.  Synonym: harassment.
5.
A severe affliction.  Synonym: curse.
6.
The act of harassing someone.  Synonyms: badgering, bedevilment, worrying.



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"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books



... equally detests. Hence, too, must flow those tears which a widow sometimes so plentifully sheds over the ashes of a husband with whom she led a life of constant disquiet and turbulency, and whom now she can never hope to torment any more. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... them to her to read or throw them into the fire, just as you choose. Your wife never sets foot in the streets, she only drives out with me; her only walk is on the island, and I am always with her; I see her suffer, but I never hear her complain. How could she complain to me, who suffer the same torment, and on her account? For from the time when that ghostly face appeared in the house my misery began; till then I was happy and beloved. Do not be afraid of my bursting into tears; I love no longer—now I only hate, and with my whole ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... phlegmatic musical animal who called forth such stormy devotion in a female breast, and who, himself cold and indifferent, was loved to the extent of a watery grave being sought by his inamorata as solace for his indifference, let me ask the question why the women who torment men with their uncertain tempers, drive them wild with jealousy, laugh contemptuously at their humble entreaties, and fling their money to the winds, have twice the hold upon their affections that the patient, long-suffering, domestic, frugal Griseldas have, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... cause, the rust-hued spots upon the flags were the tokens of their courage and their death, and the prisoners were the miserable remnant spared from death in battle to die upon the scaffold. Poor old man! he had outlived all joy. Had he lived longer he would have seen increasing torment and increasing woe; he would have seen the clouds, then but gathering in mist, cast a more than midnight darkness over his native hills, and have fallen a victim to those bloody persecutions which, later, sent their red memorials ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... individuals who get a chance to indulge it. For unlike the true Jigger, the female of which deposits eggs in the wound she makes, these Harvest-mites have no object of the kind, and when not killed by the hands of those they torment, they soon die victims to ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... laugh—laugh—some time he go away like a man at a window, but he come again. M'siu, he live there! And Filon, he know that I see, so he make like he not care; but I think he care a little, else why he make for torment me all the time? Ever since I see him at that shearing at Agua Caliente eight, ten year gone, he not like for let me be. I have been the best shearer in that shed, snip—snip—quick, clean. Ah, it is beautiful! All the sheepmen like for have me shear their sheep. Filon is new man at ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... is death to me? I meet it daily on the sea. My greatest, my only torment is the pain that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... me among them, and in return they honoured me with a dance. Am I not very childish? I am sure you will think so, but then I feel so much happier every day now in spite of the horrible dreams which sometimes torment and make ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... o' him!' said another, and several joined in with their remarks.—'Nae muckle o' a deevil was there to gang oot! He was aye an unco hairmless cratur!'—'And that saft-hertit til a' leevin thing!'—'He was that! I saw him ance face a score o' laddies to proteck a poddick they war puttin to torment, whan, the Lord kens, he had need o' a' his wits to tak care o' himsel!'—'Aye, jist like him!'—'Weel, the Lord taks care o' him, for he's ane ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... soul is incomparably greater, and the power of showing it is still less; for there is no power in the body, and the soul has none, whereby this fruition can be made known. Everything of that kind would be a great hindrance, a torment, and a disturbance of its rest. And I say, if it really be a union of all the faculties, that the soul, even if it wished,—I mean, when it is in union,—cannot make it known; and if it can, then it is not ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... tortured unceasingly. The sun had passed the zenith—this sun of a culminating summer throughout which he had thrived regal and lustful. It seemed ignoble of him that he now should stoop to torment only us, and one of us a small woman. There was all his boundless domain ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... as Fred came near he made frantic signals to him to get down and crawl too; so we all knelt down and crawled behind Fred, striving to make no noise and filling the unhappy chief so full of fury at the noise we did make that he writhed in nervous torment. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... quotations that Jesus not only preached belief in his divinity as essential to salvation, but endeavored to terrify people into belief by threats of eternal torment. Jesus was responsible for the theological conception of a fiery hell. If he was mistaken, if there never was a place of torment for the wicked after death, is it not an act of constructive criticism to expose the person most responsible for ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... coast was closely watched on the African side, to prevent the embarkation of slaves, as it was on the Brazilian side, to prevent their being landed, the poor wretches were frequently waiting for weeks on the seashore undergoing every species of torment. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... cried. "Where is heaven? I am not guilty of her death. She was a fool to die, and I shall not soon forgive her for leaving me so. If she came back I would punish her, torment her, make her scream with pain—if ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... remain in torment until the final Judgment Day if I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on which his ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the swallows. They set off on this expedition with anticipations of a fine frolic; but before they had gone far, Isaac began to feel a strong conviction that he was doing wrong. He told his companions he thought it was very cruel sport to torment and kill poor little innocent birds; especially as they might destroy mothers, and then the little ones would be left to starve. There was a Quaker meeting-house about a mile and a half distant, and he proposed that they should all go there, and leave the swallows ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... is upon the anvil which it is my duty to provide against. I will, therefore, pass over no circumstance by which I can affect the mind through hope or fear; but, please God to give me light from any other source, I will not think it lawful to torment these unfortunate, and, it may yet be, honest men." He accordingly took his departure from the library, whispering a word to Greenleaf ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... avenging and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ is that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say; there is no pit of burning torment. But they know there is something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak, but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back and declare pitilessly,—'There ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... man was not at all in the most enviable state; grief and torment followed him, and what he said about the true, and the good, and the beautiful, was, to most persons, like roses for a cow!—he was quite ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... made no answer, but tore and scratched among the papers, and yelled and screeched like a fiend in torment. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The survivors of the people scattered over the country—leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd—the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... self and strive to develop your own individuality. Keep this in view, play joyously with Puffie, and go to sleep early, for long watching spoils the complexion of young ladies. Begin to think to-morrow of the dress which you will wear at that brilliant ball—planned by our father to torment mamma—and you will have success. Do not mind those mists, dreams, and other visions which come and go. They are conditions of mind which are very much subject to fancy, and other painted pots. This is all that I, your great-grandfather, can tell you, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... formerly member of Parliament for Greenwich, I had been called upon to set to sleep, and to arrest a continuous barking cough from which a young lady who was staying in the house was suffering, and who, consequently, was a torment to herself and her friends. I thought this a good opportunity for a control experiment, and I sat her down in front of a lighted candle which I assured her that I had previously mesmerized. Presently her cough ceased and she fell into a profound sleep, which lasted until twelve ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... much from the heat, but more from the bad food and the bad water. For the first time in his life he found his body shaken with fever and was compelled to use quinin in great quantities. The attacks of insects, of insects that flew, that crawled, that tunneled beneath the skin, turned life into a torment. His huge triple-terraced neck became raw with countless wounds. But he did not stop by the way. His eyes became oblivious of the tangled and overcrowded life about him, of the hectic orchids and ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... house in Arlington Street, whence I will myself conduct you to the school I may have chosen as your residence. Remember, that from to-day you will begin a new life. Ah, by the bye, there is one other question I must ask. You have no relations, no associates of the past who are likely to torment you in ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the timid fellow-traveller of Frank Osbaldistone, who carried the portmanteau. Osbaldistone says, concerning him, "Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful, pitiable."—Sir W. Scott, Rob ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... these glories cease to shine? Shall sinful man grow great by his offence, And from its course turn back Omnipotence? "Forbid it! and oh! grant, great God, at least This one, this slender, almost no request; When I have wept a thousand lives away, When torment is grown weary of its prey, When I have rav'd ten thousand years in fire, Ten thousand thousand, let me then expire." Deep anguish! but too late; the hopeless soul, Bound to the bottom of the burning pool, Though ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... Sugar House as a dreadful place of torment, and says that thirty disorderly men were allowed to steal from the other prisoners the few comforts they possessed. They would even take the sick out of their beds, steal their bedding, and beat and kick the wretched ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... you to settle them," said Erica, laughing, "and see if I can't sketch a little in the amphitheatre. They can't torment us there because there is ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... Samuel Gray, who he is; a stranger, the black man, the devil, who hath assumed this form to mislead and torment us. One can only wonder at the various cunning of Satan," ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... entertainment of their pleasure; yours is only a diversion of your pain. The muses have seldom employed your thoughts, but when some violent fit of the gout has snatched you from affairs of state; and, like the priestess of Apollo, you never come to deliver his oracles, but unwillingly, and in torment. So that we are obliged to your lordship's misery for our delight: You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish triumph, where those, who cut and wound their bodies, sing songs of victory as they pass, and divert others with their own sufferings. Other ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... thou desire that both the despotism should fall to others, and also the substance of thy father, carried off as plunder, rather than that thou shouldest return back and possess them? Come back to thy home: cease to torment thyself. Pride is a mischievous possession. Heal not evil with evil. Many prefer that which is reasonable to that which is strictly just; and many ere now in seeking the things of their mother have lost the things of their father. Despotism is ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... found in a score of widely separated regions, down to our day, when the death, revival and revelation occurred to the founder of the Arapahoe new religion of the Ghost Dance. The belief "works for righteousness". "The common sort... have great care to avoyde torment after death, and to enjoy blesse," also they have ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... talking when there's Naisi on the foreshore, and Fergus with him? LAVARCHAM — despairingly. — I'm late so with my warnings, for Fergus'd talk the moon over to take a new path in the sky. (With reproach.) You'll not stop him this day, and isn't it a strange story you were a plague and torment, since you were that height, to those did hang their lifetimes on your voice. (Overcome with trouble; gather- ing her cloak about her.) Don't think bad of my crying. I'm not the like of many and I'd see a score of naked corpses ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge

... the primitive ancestor-worshippers of Aryan race did the early Japanese think of their dead as ascending to some extra-mundane region of light and bliss, or as descending into some realm of torment. They thought of their dead as still inhabiting this world, or at least as maintaining with it a constant communication. Their earliest sacred records do, indeed, make mention of an underworld, where mysterious Thunder-gods and evil goblins dwelt in corruption; ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... these "pulpit fevers" in Salem Chapel one day, and Sally, his wife, was there; she sat all the time in a nervous torment, and as soon as he had finished, she rushed off out of the place ashamed of him. Dear woman, her homely criticisms were sometimes very severe upon him, partly because she was jealous for his reputation, and partly because she so loved him, and that was her way of showing the ardour ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... perhaps, condemn me, but Camille knows very well that you did everything. He does not torment me at night as he ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... the survey which he usually took of his fields before breakfast, and immediately beginning on the subject on which he was anxious, he gave a full account of his sister's proceedings. 'In short,' said he, 'Emily and Ada torment poor Lily every hour of her life; she bears it all as a sort of penance, and how it is to end I ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... travellers chiefly notice the mosquito, which is in many places a cruel torment; the centipede, which grows to an unusual size; the locust, of which there is more than one variety; and the scorpion, whose sting ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... had been torture to him. Yet he had not questioned whether one should go through this torture. He seemed to believe in education through subjection and torment. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... loved even her naughtinesses, as when she stamped her foot at me, which she could not do without also gnashing her teeth, like a child trying to look fearsome. How pretty was that gnashing of her teeth! All her tormentings of me turned suddenly into sweetnesses, and who could torment like this exquisite fury, wondering in sudden flame why she could give herself to anyone, while I wondered only why she could give herself to me. It may be that I wondered over-much. Perhaps that ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of such-like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At last, in desperation, she hurried out, "Tell me, sir, for what you want the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... Him like grey thunder-clouds, and all the saints lean forward from their vantage ground to curse and threaten. At the very bottom bestial features take the place of human lineaments, and the terror of judgment has become the torment of damnation. Such is the general scope of this picture. Of all its merits, none is greater than the delineation of uncertainty and gradual awakening to life. The middle region between vigilance and slumber, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... lasted a long time; it was not only the indignity of having my best ornament taken from me, though that was bad; but it was this, how could I ever brush the flies off my sides and my hind legs any more? You who have tails just whisk the flies off without thinking about it, and you can't tell what a torment it is to have them settle upon you and sting and sting, and have nothing in the world to lash them off with. I tell you it is a lifelong wrong, and a lifelong loss; but thank heaven, they don't do ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... with a strangely new feeling of companionship. Again he made no effort to analyze the change in himself; he accepted it as one of the two or three inexplicable phenomena this night and the storm had produced for him, and was chiefly concerned in the fact that he was no longer oppressed by that torment of aloneness which had been a part of his nights and days for so many months. He was about to speak when he made up his mind not to disturb the other. So certain was he that Father Roland was asleep that he drew away from the door on the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... find out if you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be sporty like ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... him. The well had supplied good drinking water since the days of Julius Caesar, but shortly after entering the cellar one of the old women had drunk from it, and shortly afterward had died in great torment. The little ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... they consider themselves suffering beings who deserve heavy recompense; and the Carmelite or Trappist sister, who macerates herself by the hair-shirt or the cilex, would look upon God as a false or wicked Being, if, after such cruel torment, He did not promptly open to her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... continually playing tricks upon the members of the company, and it was his especial delight to torment the "supers." Quite frequently in our sham Indian battles he would run up to the "Indians" (the supers), and putting his pistol close to their legs, would fire at them and burn them with the powder, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... Albert wrote at this time about having "a world of torment," he really took matters very patiently and philosophically. In the devotion of his wife, in the affection of his children, in his beloved organ, "the only instrument," he said, "for expressing one's feelings," he found consolation and peace. He wrote,—"Victoria has taken the whole affair ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... is admired by no one, not even by a woman with no eye at all for the physical points of the male. It would be a real kindness to save worthy Tetlow. What a fool she'd make of him!—how she'd squander his money—and torment him with jealousy—and unfit him for his career. Poor Tetlow! If he could get what he wanted, he'd be well punished for his imprudence in wanting it. Really, could friendship do him a greater service ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... cannot think any such thing likely to take place," she continued more positively; "and, sir, you at least will not permit Miss Eve to torment herself with any notions as unreasonable, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... eternity tell me, then, how can a soul awaking in purgatory at the moment of separation from this body be sure that she is not really in hell? how can she know that the flames that burn her and consume not will some day cease? For the torment she suffers is like that of the damned, and the flames wherewith she is burned are even as the flames of hell. This I would fain know, that at this awful moment I may feel no doubt, that I may know for certain whether I dare hope or ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... (them that would) to imbrace it and by the use of a stock of five thousand pounds to ease them of the superfluity of most of their companies that had but strength and health to labor; near a year I spent to understand their resolutions, which was to me a greater toil and torment, than to have been in New England about my business but with bread and water, and what I could get by my labor; but in conclusion, seeing nothing would be effected I was contented as well with this loss of time and change ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... week in torment, and then it occurred to me that this low-born, gaitered person would have been better pleased with my brother. So I tried to recall the tricks with which my brother had particularly aggravated me; and, the next time I smelt ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit

... prospection[obs3], lookout; prospect, perspective, horizon, vista; destiny &c. 152. suspense, waiting, abeyance; curiosity &c. 455; anxious expectation, ardent expectation, eager expectation, breathless expectation, sanguine expectation; torment of Tantalus. hope &c. 858; trust &c. (belief) 484; auspices &c. (prediction) 511; assurance, confidence, presumption, reliance. V. expect; look for, look out for, look forward to; hope for; anticipate; have in prospect, have in contemplation; keep in view; contemplate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... "Do not torment her thus, madam," cried Alizon, who with Dorothy looked at the strange scene with mingled apprehension and wonderment. "Much as I desire to know the secret of my birth, I would not obtain ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... blacker than jet; her eyes, I say, of which the gaze could scarce, from their excess of lustre, be supported, which have been celebrated as a miracle of tenderness and sprightliness, which have given rise, a thousand times, to the finest compliments of the day, and have been the torment of many a rash man, must excuse me, if I do not pause longer to praise them, in a letter; her mouth was the feature of her face which compelled the most critical to avow that they had seen none of equal perfection, and that, by its shape, its smallness, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind may very well torment the conscience of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... Chet, as it was usually styled, was accustomed to be strangled the greater part of the morning by the baby. Most of the afternoon it was worried by Zackey, and, during the intervals of torment, it experienced an unusually large measure of the vicissitudes incident to kitten life—such as being kicked out of the way by Maggot senior, or thrown or terrified out of the way by Mrs Maggot, or dashed at by stray dogs, or yelled ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... sister filled her with a vague sense of terror which she could not explain to herself; which it was imperatively necessary that she should conceal; and which, on those very accounts, became a daily and hourly torment to her that was almost more than she ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... panting of the fearful heart? This miser love of Life that dreads to lose Its cherish'd torment? shall the diseased man Yield up his members to the surgeon's knife, Doubtful of succour, but to ease his frame Of fleshly anguish, and the coward wretch, Whose ulcered soul can know no human help Shrink from the best Physician's ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... muttered he. "Not even the rack affrights him; and in his blasphemous haughtiness he moves along in the midst of the soldiers, not as a prisoner, but as a commander. Oh, these Howards are destined to torment me; and even their death will scarcely be ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... wonder my uncle compares him to a burr, a sting-nettle, and a hedgehog. I'm sure he's been nothing but a plague to everybody, ever since he came here. I'm glad he's gone, anyhow. And yet, poor fellow, I pity him. He must be miserable himself, or he wouldn't torment everybody else so—but I must go to ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... But you were unable to communicate your certainty to the court. Well, you must now compel me to share it. I am not asking you to go into details and to live again through the hideous torment which you have suffered, but merely to answer certain ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... of indescribable agony—another long night of torment; and again up rose the sun in ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... jolly book read unto them. And we have seen those who have given themselves to a hundred puncheons of old devils, in case that they did not feel a manifest ease and assuagement of pain at the hearing of the said book read, even when they were kept in a purgatory of torment; no more nor less than women in travail use to find their sorrow abated when the life of St. Margaret is read unto them. Is this nothing? Find me a book in any language, in any faculty or science whatsoever, that hath such virtues, properties, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... withdraws, presumably, after this, to give St. Nicholas an opportunity to amend matters. Whereupon one representing the real celestial St. Nicholas suddenly appears, perhaps from behind a curtain at the rear of the image, and seeks out the thieves. He threatens them with exposure and torment unless they restore their plunder; they give in; and St. Nicholas goes back to his concealment. When the barbarian returns, his delight is naturally very great at perceiving so complete an atonement for the saint's initial ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... facility with which sin may be expiated by penance, have led to great mental debility and superstition. Force has been added to the doctrine of a material paradise of trees, flowers, banquets, hymns; and to a hell, a dismal place of flames, thirst, torment, and horrid spectres. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... love Had been the very sum of my confession! O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... my song with ghosts forlorn, Three gibbering ghosts that mope and mourn, Then shrieking, flee at breath of dawn, Where creatures fell In torment dwell, Blind things and foul, That creep and howl, That rend and bite And claw and fight. Where fires red-hot Consume them not, And they in anguish Writhe and languish And groan in pain For night again. Sing hey for ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... and spices to fall to a degree which spelled ruin for the Venetians. The Turks continued to harry Italian traders in the Levant, and the Turkish sea-power grew to menacing proportions, until in 1571 Venice had to appeal to Spain for help. To the terror of the Turk was added the torment of the Barbary pirates, who from the northern coast of Africa frequently descended upon Italian seaports. The commerce of Venice was ruined. The brilliance of Venice in art and literature lasted through another century (the seventeenth), supported on the ruins of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... and indignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.' One day George visited his wife in a distracted state of feeling. '"I have been careful, and I have been patient," said he; "but it's growing worse and worse: flesh and blood can't bear it any longer. Every chance he can get to insult and torment me, he takes. I thought I could do my work well, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out of work-hours; but the more he sees I can do, the more he loads on. He says that though I don't ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... which left him stammering, unable to speak any precise prayer. He thought of the overwhelming reassertion of Nature's powers which had attended the death of those two poor children. Was it not awful? To have taken that vow to the Virgin, to have endured torment throughout life, and to end by plunging into death, on the loved one's neck, distracted by vain regret and eager for self-bestowal! The brutal fact of impending separation had sufficed for Benedetta to realise how she had duped ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... well. She almost felt sorry for him now. Jealousy is a terrible torment. Would Martin have returned from the fields by now? [Pg 199] Would he be sitting with Rosa, or perhaps standing about with Marianna? She grew hot and cold by turns. Both things were dreadful, she could not permit either of them. She, who a moment ago had been ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... pride, my good old friends, My heart you will not blame, That rack'd my agonizing breast, And set my brain on fire; The thought to fall from honour's sphere In undeserved shame, And see my baby, and myself; The torment of his sire!" ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley

... of unspeakable anguish—the prayer of a soul in torment. It seemed to Tranter that the speaker had thrown himself down, and was beating ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... sitting in torment, and now he rose to go. "No, uncle," he said, in a thicker voice, "I shall never marry. A clergyman who is married is bound to life by too many ties. Even his affection for his wife is a tie. And then there is her affection for the world, its ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... of how this person's contemplated action will affect your own celestial condition? It is a distressing but entirely unavoidable fact, that if this person acts in the manner which he has determined upon, he will be condemned to the lowest place of torment reserved for those who fail at the end of an otherwise pure existence, and in this he will never have an opportunity of meeting the very much higher placed Ah-Ping, and of restoring to him the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... of Bailey's history was very different from what he said of himself. He had been long the disgrace and torment of his own relations in the United States, and at last, after years of every kind of vice, had been obliged to fly from his country under strong suspicions of forgery. He went to the north, and for a year or two lived a wild life full of adventure; during which he occupied himself diligently ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... help expressing my amazement at his universal readiness upon all subjects, and Mrs. Thrale said to him, "Sir, Miss Burney wonders at your patience with such stuff, but I tell her you are used to me, for I believe I torment you with more foolish questions than anybody else ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... an occasional pastime, harmless and playful enough in itself, yet intended as a special means of discipline for Grandpa, and certainly, a source of great torment and anxiety ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... to-day? The lady or the gentleman? Ah, neither, I see. Both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the doctor shy. It is spring without, but summer within," ran on Dr. Rob gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "Flannels seem to call up boating and picnic parties; and I see you have discarded the merino, Nurse Gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. More becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed up well. In this air people ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... began, muffled, in the deeps of sleep, that swiftly rushed upward, like a wail, into passionate belligerence, and that died away and sank down into an inarticulate whine. It was a bestial cry, as of a soul in torment, filled with ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... Why torment the fellow more? This thing had happened, that was all. And the fewer who realized the danger, and were thereby put under still greater strain, the ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... and evil, the knowledge of what she is. She sees at last the good she is not, the evil she is. She knows that she is herself the fire in which she is burning, but she does not know that the Light of Life is the heart of that fire. Her torment is that she is what she is. Do not fear for her; she is not forsaken. No gentler way to help her ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... clinging to it for air, completely barred its entrance. They strove to force their way through apertures in length fourteen inches and barely six inches in breadth, and in some instances succeeded. The cries, the heat, I may say without exaggeration, the smoke of their torment which ascended can be compared to nothing earthly. One of the Spaniards gave warning that the consequences would be 'many deaths;' this prediction was fearfully verified, for the next morning 54 crushed and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... his own breast, and with a rapid movement, right over the heart, he thrust in the blade with all his might, up to the hilt. Not a drop of blood spurted out, the thick blade obstructing the wound. His face convulsed with an expression of excruciating torment; his hanging ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... 'tacit', 'digit', 'deposit', 'compact', 'complex', 'revise', 'response', 'acute'. Those which have the suffix -es prefixed throw the stress back, as 'honest', 'modest'. Those which have the suffix -men prefixed also throw the stress back, as 'moment', 'pigment', 'torment', and to the antepenultima, if there be one, as 'argument', 'armament', 'emolument', the penultimate vowel becoming short or obscure. In 'temperament' the tendency of the second syllable to disappear has carried the stress still further back. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... without taste or feeling; he is one of the best fellows in the world, and without a particle of vanity. Whenever I played for him he looked immovably at my fingers, and one day he said 'My God! how I am obliged to torment myself and sweat, and yet without obtaining applause; and for you, my friend, it is mere play!' 'Yes,' said I, 'I had to labor once in order not to show ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... ruling and guiding motive of his life. He was patient with his enemies, and equally patient with equally unreasonable friends. No hasty act of his administration can be traced to his impatience. He had a tender, brotherly regard for every human being; and the thought of oppression was torment to him.... A statesman without a statesman's craftiness, a politician without a politician's meannesses, a great man without a great man's vices, a philanthropist without a philanthropist's impracticable dreams, a Christian ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... or of Rupert. That they had not succeeded in recovering their freedom I was pretty well assured, but what had become of them, and whether they were alive or dead, was more than I could learn. The shadow and the secrecy of the East had closed like a curtain over their fates, and I was left to torment myself with ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... forget, we make the most trivial things a pretext to recall remembrances, which is due above all to the fact that we persist in living amidst the same surroundings in which the beings who have so long been our torment lived. We are less the slaves of passion than of habit. It is this captivity that must be escaped from, or we shall wear ourselves out in a ridiculous and shameful slavery. Well, the past is past, we must break the ties ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... nothing," I interrupted her,—"nothing. I am shorn of it all. It has all gone from me, like the strength of Samson. Spare me, and torment me not.... I cannot heal your child. I am not like you. I was not prepared for—this condition of things. I did not expect to die. I never thought of becoming a spirit. I find myself extraordinarily embarrassed by it. ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... olive is an artificial beauty; to make it look like an umbrella is the ne plus ultra of arboriculture. But the present race of olives, twist and torment them as we will, are inferior to those of the times of our grandfather. 'Towards the close of the last century, there was a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That year, there was not an olive gathered in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... marvellous thing the world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all. These messages are erratic—fitful. I have now waited for weeks for a renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in the midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment me. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... blazing eyes. His soul was in torment with the touch of her; yet somewhere back of his trained brain lingered a spark of wit not yet extinguished along with his other wits by her spell. He lowered ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... since he could not meet the passions themselves; and he met them, for they could not rest, but returned to their former habitation, like unclean spirits as they were, each bringing seven more along with it, but not to torment him. Such were the beings with which the soul of this aged materialist was crowded. During life his well known motto was, "let us eat, and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." Upon this principle, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... that there is any deep-laid scheme or profound mystery, with which we mean to torment him during the course of our tale, we may as well say at once that the little plot, which Ruth had in view, and which began to grow quite into a romance the longer she pondered it, was neither more nor less than to bring Captain Bream and Mrs David ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... FAUSTUS. Torment, sweet friend, that base and aged man, That durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer, With greatest torments ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... of heaven toils without hope in the darkness of the mine, riots in the delights of paradise compared with me. By the caprice of one woman, I am robbed not only of enjoyment but of peace, and condemned for ever to the torment of ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... knew him to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good old family. He was always a Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment himself and others with scruples about everything that was pleasant. On the contrary, he was as keen a sportsman, and as jolly a boon companion, as any man who had taken the oath of supremacy and the declaration ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... meekly at the heels of a youngster like Gedge, who had been commissioned to put him to work and look after him. But Reginald was too sick at heart and disgusted to care what became of himself, as long as Mr Durfy's odious voice ceased to torment his ears. The only thing he did care about was what was to become of Horace. Was he to be put in charge of some one too, or was he to remain a ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... causing agony rather than anger, and proceeding from love, not from hate. The fear, distress, humiliation, anguish of modern jealousy are in the mind of the injured husband. He suffers torments, but has no wish to torment either of the guilty ones. There are, indeed, even in civilized countries, husbands who slay erring wives; but they are not civilized husbands: like Othello, they still have the taint of the savage in them. Civilized husbands resort ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... he joined the living to the dead, Hand linked to hand in torment, face to face. The rank flesh mouldered, and the limbs still bled, Till death, O misery, with lingering pace, Loosed the foul union and the long embrace. Worn out at last with all his crimes abhorred, Around the horrid madman swarmed apace The armed Agyllans. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... hour had wrought a change. Her eyes were grown restless, her colour came and went. The past stirred in its shallow—ah, so shallow—grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she might, thrust out hands to plague and torment her. If the man who sought to speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the skirts of her party, were Tignonville—her lover, who at his own request had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure from Paris—then her plight was a sorry one. For what ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... and sages, Gods and men of climes and ages, Conquerors of lifelong sorrow, Torment that ye made your throne, Help, Oh! help in us the morrow, Full of triumph ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... orders have never slept in the Bastille. They would know better; the thickness of my walls, the vigilance of my officers, the number of rounds we go. But, indeed, what can you expect, monseigneur? It is their business to write and torment me when I am at rest, and to trouble me when I am happy," added Baisemeaux, bowing to Aramis. "Then ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... that then the victory would have been easy; but no, she ever looks as if she had some inward resource—some security—and therefore could be calm. I should deem it some Huguenot fanaticism, but she is a very saint as to the prayers of the Church, the very torment of our lives.' ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be added another class of men—the stern and gloomy enthusiasts, who would make earth a hell, and religion a torment: men who, having wasted the earlier part of their lives in dissipation and depravity, find themselves when scarcely past its meridian, steeped to the neck in vice, and shunned like a loathsome disease. Abandoned by the world, having nothing to fall back upon, nothing ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... truth that with thee I am last of the Godheads." Vex'd was the spirit of Zeus, as at last he made answer to Thetis:— "Plagueful indeed is the hour which to strife and contention with Hera Sees me committed by thee, and her words of reproach are a torment; Ever, when cause there is none, she upbraids me before the Immortals, Saying I favour the Trojans, and succour the press of their battle. Quickly depart from me now, lest thy coming be noted of Hera; Go, and the care be with me henceforth till it all is accomplish'd. See now, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... have not told you that I should always love you, I have lied. Read my—heart; you will behold your name, your name alone, written there; and tell me, courageous creature, noble-hearted woman, how can one stifle the aspirations of a love which has been the only joy, the only torment of one's life? Remember the past, Dolores—our childhood, the blissful existence in which love was first awakened in our hearts. I do not know what was passing in yours; but mine has nourished but one thought, cherished but one hope: to belong to you and ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... ludicrous or piteous in the particular. The loneliness, the coarseness, the everlasting insistence of the pettiest and most troublesome wants and difficulties, harden and brace many minds, but narrow most and torment some. Wild game, song-birds, fish, forest trees, were but some of the things of which there were few or none round nearly all the young pastoral settlements. Everything was to make. The climate might be healthy and the mountain outlines noble. But nothing but work, and successful ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... being loved? How can you know? It is torture beyond the gift of words—misery beyond the relief of tears. It is not jealousy; that is no more than a vulgar kind of envy. It is a nameless, measureless torment." ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine



Words linked to "Torment" :   curse, chafe, chivy, injure, molestation, martyr, hassle, vexation, chevvy, distress, chivvy, persecute, wound, harry, harass, beset, hurting, provoke, badgering, hurt, annoyance, oppress, molest, suffering, affliction, pain, plague, chevy, tease, anguish, bug, crucify, martyrize, madden, beleaguer, hamstring, martyrise, badger, pester



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