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Torturing   /tˈɔrtʃərɪŋ/   Listen
Torturing

noun
1.
The deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason.  Synonym: torture.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Torturing" Quotes from Famous Books



... that a hope for the realization of which sense-organs are required, should after death be transformed into despair, and that a wish that can be fulfilled only by the physical world should be changed into torturing deprivation. Yet we can hold such an opinion only as long as we fail to realize that the wishes and desires seized by the "consuming fire" after death do not, in a higher sense, represent forces beneficial to life but ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... glass and he threw it at his head screaming, "Poison! poison! The boy wants to poison me!" One morning he was gone. His companions searched for him in vain, and finally recognized his agonizing cries from the opposite shore where the cannibals were torturing him. In his delirium he had swum across the narrow inlet which separated them from their enemies; his heartrending cries told of the reception accorded him. "Oh, if he had only repented!" cried the boys with ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman

... my very heart!" Then pausing, to struggle with his feelings, he endeavored to force a smile, as he added, "But, after all, we may be torturing ourselves with unnecessary fears, and Henry, when I know the circumstances, may be nothing more than a prisoner of war; in which case, I ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... which could not be put in words. Brooke saw Death awaiting himself, and, worse than that, he saw Talbot—alone, friendless, despairing, in the hands of remorseless fiends. Talbot, on the other hand, saw Death awaiting Brooke, and never could shake off the torturing thought that his death was owing to her, and that he was virtually dying for her. Had it not been for her he might still have been safe. And it seemed to her to be a very hard and bitter thing that such a man as this should have to die in such ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... rescuing thought would occur to him, cudgel his brain as he might. And torturing, self-abasing reflections crowded again into ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... broke down under the strain I put on him and on the rest of my torturers. So desperate did he become that he dared words with the Warden and washed his hands of the affair. From that day until the end of my torturing he never set foot ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... is it not torturing me to leave me and to go away? What will everybody say? One of two things, either that I am a bad woman, or that you ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... right if I did lay violent hands upon you," she cried. "If I took you by the throat, and squeezed the life out of you, as I could, though you are my father. You're not a man, you're a beast—a monster—a soulless caricature, whose only delight is the torturing of others. I could have been a good woman and a good daughter, but for your carping, sneering insults. At different times, you have imputed to me every vile motive that suggested itself to your evil brain. You hated me from my birth. You ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... frantic, George-be a philosopher-try again-here's a ten. Luck 'll turn," says Mr. Snivel, patting the deluded man familiarly on the shoulder, as he resumes his seat. "Will poverty never cease torturing me? I have tried to be a man, an honest man, a respectable man. And yet, here I am, again cast upon a gambler's sea, struggling with its fearful tempests. How cold, how stone-like the faces around me!" he muses, watching ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... roar was perceptible; one instant coming as from the far distance, then from nigh at hand, causing the air-ship to quiver and tremble, as a sentient being might in the presence of a torturing death. ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... hesitated. The shock had revealed the depths of her own heart which she had not sounded. She came in a moment to know that love is not a feeling to be analyzed or nurtured or trained into growth; the thing she had been repressing and torturing into subjection suddenly became ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... her London home and informed her of all he had discovered, delighting in the fear and dread which she could not help showing. She knew now that this cruel man would always hold his knowledge over her head, torturing her with the threat of making it known to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... tortured him seven times, but they must garble and twist the very words that he said in his agony? The process they have published is foully falsified,—stuffed full of improbable lies; for I myself have read the first draught of all he did say, just as Signor Ceccone took it down as they were torturing him. I had it from Jacopo Manelli, canon of our Duomo here, and he got it from Ceccone's wife herself. They not only can torture and slay him, but they torture and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... the better hope,' she began; but the impatient movement of his foot warned her that she was only torturing him, and she proceeded,—'Well, I trust you implicitly; I can understand that there may be confidences that ought not to pass between us, and will give you what you require to help you out of your difficulty. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... knoweth but it may be true? that spirits of wickedness and enmity may execute each other's punishment, as those of righteousness and love minister each other's happiness! that—damned among the damned—the spirit of a Nero may still delight in torturing, and that those who in this world were mutual workers of iniquity, may find themselves in the next, sworn retributors of wrath? No idle threat was that of the demoniac Simon, and possibly with no vain fears did the ghost ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... no 'breaking' it. It will break him. It will kill him. Alas, it is the ungrateful child that has the power to inflict a slow and torturing death! Poor father! Poor mother! And it is I that must witness it. I, that would die to save them from ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... cruel, torturing screw, And oft its driver's ire. Song, Sophomore Supper, Bowdoin ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... allay her fears; but gradually the girl was prevailed upon to go to bed, and Mrs. Ramsay retired to the next room. But all night she heard Mysie tossing and turning, and quietly weeping, and she knew that despair was torturing and tearing her frightened little heart, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... unfortunate man, Russell, is a striking instance of divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him; he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach."—The Derwent ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... which as a child she had been used to quote darted back into her mind with a torturing pang. How much longer of this agony could she stand? Anything, anything would be better than this dragging on in suspense, hour after hour. But when once again the little party approached the Senate House, she experienced a swift change of front. No, no, this was not suspense; it was hope! Hope was ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... they advanced. He lay back on his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeing pictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, long ago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, in which dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit of reminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of his relationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that that relationship was finally, hopelessly closed. His was not a character that was the stronger ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... fell back upon San Vincente, where he had left the arms and ammunition of the deserters and a rear-guard of eighteen men. He found not one of these to welcome him. A dozen had deserted, and the Mexicans had surprised the rest, lassoing them and torturing them until they died. Walker now had but thirty-five men. To wait for further re-enforcements from San Francisco, even were he sure that re-enforcements would come, was impossible. He determined by forced marches to fight his way ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... monster, recovering itself, was turning madly to finish off its insignificant but torturing opponent, A-ya came leaping back to the rescue, with a blazing and sparkling faggot in each hand, and the old men, some with fire-brands, some with spears, clamoring resolutely behind her. With fearless dexterity, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... to buy her in his own name instead of that of Vincent; and the Jacksons, having no idea of the transfer that had subsequently taken place, took no further interest in the matter, believing that they had achieved their object of torturing Tony, and avenging upon him the humiliation that Andrew had suffered at Vincent's hands. Had they questioned their slaves, and had these answered them truly, they would have discovered the facts. For although Tony himself said no word to any one of what he had learned from ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... with which they floated forward torturing. He glimpsed Crain and Liggett ahead, Marta beside him, Krell floating behind him to the left. They reached the projecting freighters, climbed over and around them, braced against them and shot on. They sighted the Pallas ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton

... between the hole and the sea, and the sea did the rest. The wider and deeper the opening that we make in our natures by our simple trust in God, the fuller will be the rejoicing flood that pours into us. There is an old story about a Christian father, who, having been torturing himself with theological speculations about the nature of the Trinity, fell asleep and dreamed that he was emptying the ocean with a thimble! Well, you cannot empty it with a thimble, but you can go to it with one, and, if you have only a thimble in your hand, you will only bring away a thimbleful. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... week or it might be ten days after his meeting with Florimel, Jurgen married her, without being at all hindered by his having three other wives. For the devils, he found, esteemed polygamy, and ranked it above mere skill at torturing the damned, through a literal interpretation of the saying that it is better to marry ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... though I never spoke a word to him. Frankly, I was in a state that made me bad company, and I desired to be alone. The face of De Ganache seemed ever to be between me and Diane, and I morosely kept to myself, envying the lot of Adam, who was the only man who never had a rival, torturing myself, as is the custom with lovers, with a thousand suspicions, and cursing myself for a fool in having undertaken this task. Nevertheless, I am sure, such is the frailty of man, that were it to be all over again I would do in ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... and holds our entire attention. It is only when the storm is over and the calm has come, that we can look out again upon the broad and peaceful landscape. There are other trials that remind one of a nail in one's shoe: everywhere one goes, it is present, irritating, annoying, torturing. It hinders and detracts from all ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... Brian was forced to acknowledge, though for many days afterward he was still angry at Turlough for torturing and hanging those men. He had no scruples about a downright hanging, but torturing was a very different matter, and one of ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... was Diego's child, she must go with him. Jose could no longer endure this torturing thought. He rose from the bed and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... The worldly, the audacious, escape easily; but these pliant excitable temperaments, so anxiously in earnest, may be made useful. The more dangerous, frightful, or unnatural their performances, the more profit for their keepers. Men and women are trained by torturing processes to deny their nature, and then they are exhibited to bring grist to the mill—like birds and beasts forced to postures and services against the laws of their being—like those who must perform perilous feats on ropes or with lions, nightly ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... in mind that convents have many tortures outside of the torturing conscience on account of having the virtue of their inmates destroyed. The teachings of Catholicism lead people to practice self-infliction upon their person in order to appease a living God, as they seem to worship a living God the same as the pagans would worship a ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... had been torturing me before Godensky came! I had been thinking of the Juge d'Instruction, and his terrible cross-examination which only a man of steel or iron can answer without trembling. I had thought that questions had been asked and answers given which might mean everything ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... wanted to explain, but his captor rubbed the face of the outlaw deeper into the torturing spines of ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... proposed that the decision with respect to these eventualities—which might exceed both the Constitution and the Act of Union—should be deferred till after the new elections, as the Constitution with an almost torturing emphasis insists on caution when a change in the government system is contemplated. Even the rest of the few in the minority made known their different views, and among them the Shipowner JOeRGEN KNUDSEN openly confessed ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... case with the men from whom I chanced to recede, to whom I ceased to give, and, by this action, denied good, I experienced a torturing sense of shame. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... had done to the woman who was ten thousand times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face like ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... at least as I have gone, there is no impertinent desire of appearing what one is not: no searching for talk, and torturing expression to vary its phrases with something new and something fine; or else sinking into silence from despair of diverting the company, and taking up the opposite method, contriving to impress them with an idea ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... an hour—nay, a moment, when in that twilight hour which the French call "'Twixt dog and wolf," the most torturing and shameful of human passions, jealousy, had taken possession of Jacques de Wissant, disintegrating, rather than shattering, the elaborate fabric of his House of Life, that house in which he had always dwelt so ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... I'm not going into this because I want to, but to save this man from the den of wolves into which he has fallen. If you knew how I despise and hate you, how my whole soul loathes you, maybe you wouldn't be so eager to go on with it! You'll get nothing out of this but the pleasure of torturing a girl who ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... but living, all of her, as she was in reality. He was just going in, stepping on his whole foot so as not to creak, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he suddenly remembered what he always forgot, and what caused the most torturing side of his relations with her, her son with his ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... midnight hour they stood, speaking nervously, oppressed by the torturing heaviness which accompanies such partings. With an effort Marian turned to ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... external changes that have marked Flora T—'s sad history. I could take you to many houses, fine houses too, and richly arrayed within, where hearts are breaking in the iron grasp of a husband's unfeeling hand, that contracts with a slow, torturing cruelty, keeping its victim lingering day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, looking and longing for the hour when the deep quiet of the grave shall bring ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... no fear. She is as hard to capture as a she-wolf is, and twice as dangerous; besides, she is well disguised. But is there any news from the Palace to-night, President? What is that bloody[4] despot doing now besides torturing his only son? Have any of you seen him? One hears strange stories about him. They say he loves the people; but a king's son never does that. You cannot breed them ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde

... delight; but suddenly sobered down, and a look of care stole over the little face, as the torturing question recurred to her ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... was over, its story to this generation seeming as incredible as it is shameful. Brutality is not quite dead even to-day, but there is cause for rejoicing that, for America at least, freedom of conscience can never again mean whipping, branding and torturing of unnamable sorts for tender women and even children. Puritan and Quaker have sunk old differences, but it is the Quaker who, while ignoring some phases of a past in which neither present as calm an expression to the world as should be the portion ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Half-miles of coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead, stopping when they stop, backing when they back. Red-hot embers showering out upon the ground, down this dark avenue, and down the other, as if torturing fires were being raked clear; concurrently, shrieks and groans and grinds invading the ear, as if the tortured were at the height of their suffering. Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the drooping beasts with horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... Indian hunters, who were far from favourably disposed towards their poaching neighbours. Then, again, it might be merely that they had missed their track in the forest; or could it be that they had ventured to reach Goat Island in a canoe, and had been carried down the rapids. Such were the torturing doubts that passed as some shrill squirrel, or hoarse night owl pierced the air with a cry, and then all was silent again. While thus the hours went slowly by, his attention was attracted by a bright light in the sky. It appeared as if part of the heavens were ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... had taken place in the Spice Islands were repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen were all saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying, robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these pieces indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the lifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with equal courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the German Ocean. The tyranny of James, as it had reconciled Tories ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... heartless, torturing questioning which was once the crudest weapon of the inquisition. With all her heart she fought to raise her voice above the whisper whose very sound accused her, but could not. She was condemned to that voice as the man bound in nightmare is condemned ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... to forbid further questions; and it needed all his sense of the service this woman had just rendered him to repress his haughty displeasure at so close an approach to his torturing secrets. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... dreaded to go to sleep. Then he discovered that an extra two glasses of whiskey-and-water would solve that particular difficulty, and send him into prompt, leaden slumber—but the early mornings remained as torturing as ever. In the twilight he awoke oppressed and sick at heart with gloom—and then dozed at intervals through fantastic new ordeals of anguish and shame and fear, till it was ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... it o'er their fellow-men With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen Their baaing vanities, to browse away The comfortable green and juicy hay From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight By ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... next to the corroding cares of Europeans, principally occasioned by their love of accumulating money which they never enjoy, the principal cause of the modern disorder of dyspepsia prevalent among them is their irrational habit of interfering with the process of digestion by torturing attempts at repartee, and racking their brain at a moment when it should be calm, to remind themselves of some anecdote so appropriate that they have forgotten it. It has been supposed that the presence of women at our banquets has occasioned this fatal and inopportune desire to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... believe in anything but a notary's signature—that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.—Let us see the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... be expected. Whenever he wanted directions he sent a message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to which she was obliged to reply in the same offhand style. Poor Bathsheba began to suffer now from the most torturing sting of all—a sensation that ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... sign of suffering, some shrieking plea for mercy. Once I marked a red devil stick a sharpened sliver of wood into the Frenchman's bare shoulder, touched it with fire, and then stand back laughing as the bound victim sought vainly to dislodge the torturing brand. ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... need doubt about his quarters in this country town. The Albergo di Pompeii is a truly sumptuous place. Sofas, tables, and chairs in our sitting-room are made of buffalo horns, very cleverly pieced together, but torturing the senses with suggestions of impalement. Sitting or standing, one felt insecure. When would the points run into us? when should we begin to break these incrustations off? and would the whole fabric crumble at a touch into chaotic heaps ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... passage and apparent endlessness be the two main qualities of the divine existence, then the lives of men in Keewatin are both divine and real; only we, of the outside world, would call this same smoothness dulness, and its endlessness its most torturing agony. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is no torturing in the [blank space] for the Iliad happens not to ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... of the Lord's then recent utterance in prayer, "Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none."[1244] It is possible that had any of the Eleven been apprehended with Jesus and made to share the cruel abuse and torturing humiliation of the next few hours, their faith might have failed them, relatively immature and untried as it then was; even as in succeeding years many who took upon themselves the name of Christ yielded to persecution and went ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... common foe, Her sisters shun the Mother and disown, On pain of his intolerable crow Above the fiction, built for him, o'erthrown? Irrational he is, irrational Must they be, though not Reason's light shall wane In them with ever Nature at close call, Behind the fiction torturing to sustain; Who hear her in the milk, and sometimes make A tongueless answer, shivered on a sigh: Whereat men dread their lofty structure's quake Once more, and in their hosts for tocsin ply The crazy roar of peril, leonine For injured majesty. That sigh of dames ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the country. Thus the state of this troop of human beings, women covered with wounds from the "havildars'" whips, children ghastly and meager, with bleeding feet, whom their mothers tried to carry in addition to their burdens, young men closely riveted to the fork, more torturing than the convict's chain, is the most lamentable ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... its effect by ever-varying means. Scientific discoveries open up new vistas, and the twentieth century will evolve many fresh devices for torturing the nerves. The telephone set ringing by a ghostly hand, the aeroplane with a phantom pilot, will replace the Gothic machinery of ruined abbeys and wandering lights. The possibilities of terror are manifold, and it is impracticable here to do more than ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... and gone, To the rice-swamp, dank and lone; There no mother's eye is near them, There no mother's ear can hear them; Never, when the torturing lash Seams their backs with many a gash, Shall a mother's kindness bless them, Or a mother's arms ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... ills were not enough, there have been added methods of medical treatment at once useless, torturing to the mind, and involving great liability ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... girl will have a friend," mused the elder man. "Well, in moments when I could think, that torturing thought of my dragging her down with me was too much. It drove me back always to the old, old despair." The look of terror, that Jack noticed before came back into the haggard face. It was as if ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... poor Mekipiros. It was his mauled and bruised shape, his half-bestial face that they were torturing and tormenting. There is no sight more terrible than that of a tortured beast that ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... been spent in torturing the two, the spokesman announced that they were now ready for the final act. The brother of Sidney Fletcher was called for and was given a match. He stood near his mutilated victims until the photographer present could take a picture of the scene. This being ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... Spain. It was ruled with no very paternal hand by the Duke of Alva, who resided chiefly at Brussels. He had been employed for several years in burning, hanging, drowning, and cutting off the heads of his loving subjects, and torturing them in a variety of ways, in order to make them dutiful children of the Church of Rome, and of his master, Philip. Not with great success, for they still hated, with an unalterable deadly hatred, both one and the other. Brill at that time was not a populous city, nor ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston

... Pilgrim labored onward, through the torturing heat, under the sky of brass, he saw on either hand lakes of living waters and groves of many palms. And the waters called him to their healing coolness: the palms beckoned him to their restful shade and shelter. Night after night, in the dreadful solitude, frightful Shapes came on silent ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright

... Then there begin your pity. There is enough behind to melt ev'n Rome, And Caesar into tears; since never slave Could yet so highly offend, but tyranny, In torturing him, would make him worth lamenting.—— A son and daughter to the dead Sejanus, (Of whom there is not now so much remaining As would give fast'ning to the hangman's hook,) Have they drawn forth for farther sacrifice; Whose tenderness of knowledge, unripe years, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... at thirty-five she saw herself maturing into a gaunt and grizzled dame, incapable of all poetic and youthful impersonations. To be thus crippled was torture to her lively imagination, and in this danse macabre of thought, a grim procession of blasted hopes, withered ideals and torturing ambitions, her mind gave itself first to one issue, then to another, while it was clear that her position at St. Ignace was fast growing untenable and that something would have ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... to suffer. You must love me, must you not? Very well, then you must answer me. Were I to lose you forever, were these walls to crumble over my head, I will not leave this spot until I have solved the mystery that has been torturing me for more than a month. Speak, or I will leave you. I may be a fool who destroys his own happiness, I may be demanding something that is not for me to possess, it may be that an explanation will separate ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... embodiment of pride. Her peculiar beauty—the source of which I have never to this day been able to fathom—lent itself so readily to the expression of fury and disdain, that, recoil as I would from her principles, I could not shut my eyes to the fascination of her glance or the torturing charm that hid in the corners of her pouting lips. She was a queen. Oh, yes, but the queen of some strange realm in a distant oriental land, where right and wrong were only words, and the sole end of beauty was delight, without reference to God or one's fellows. I saw ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... Meanwhile all this torturing and questioning had taken so much time that when the stake and the scaffold were ready it was almost dark, so that the duke put off the executions until the next day, instead of carrying them out ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... strongest impulses; but it is the poet's office to pamper the imagination of his readers and his own with the extremes of present ecstacy or agony, to snatch the swift-winged golden minutes, the torturing hour, and to banish the dull, prosaic, monotonous realities of life, both from his thoughts and from his practice. Mr. Wordsworth might have shewn how it is that all men of genius, or of originality and independence of mind, are liable to practical errors, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... opposite side of the room, proceeded cautiously through the blackness until her feet came in contact with her "shake-down," which consisted of a pair of blankets placed upon a hay tick. The odor of the blankets was anything but fresh, but she sank to the floor, and with much effort and torturing of strained muscles, succeeded in removing her boots and jacket and throwing herself upon the bed. Almost at the moment her head touched the coarse, unslipped pillow, she fell into a deep sleep, from which hours later she was awakened by an insistent ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... and the torturing of exoteric texts by Archeologist or Paleographer will ill repay the time ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... repulsed, as it has been stated above, left us a little repose. The moon lighted with her melancholy rays this disastrous raft, this narrow space, on which were found united so many torturing anxieties, so many cruel misfortunes, a madness so insensate, a courage so heroic, and the most generous—the most amiable sentiments of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... felt that she was looking upon Satan in that moment when he first realized that his fall from heaven was for eternity and that, against every torturing passion of conviction, he must turn his talents and his fearful courage to ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... B., who has entirely forgotten any theories he may have advanced on the subject, but has no option but to comply; as he leaves the room with Mrs. GRAPPLETON on his arm, he has a torturing glimpse of Miss ROUNDARM, apparently absorbed in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various

... inquisition for the purpose of torturing and badgering Ross into submission. His one ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... the distance when the air around them began to show a definite tinge of purple. With the appearance of the purple hue there came a strange and swiftly increasing agony, a torturing vibration that seemed to be tearing every atom in their ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... ate them all, nor ever did anything taste better than those tiny bits of nourishment, within which I knew must lie the seeds of death—possibly of some hideous, torturing death. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... would soon die; and if not, who would be there to tend them, to earn them bread, to find them the comforts which their old arms were unfit to earn by themselves? These reflections were terrible; and besides, to make his pain more torturing, he was in love. A young girl of his own age had been destined for him by his parents and by hers, and she was to become his wife at once if—if—and ever uppermost to cloud all his prospects came that fatal if—if he should draw a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... and Dutch, deserters and outlaws, the scum of their nations, made the rich merchant and treasure ships of Spain their prey, slaughtering their crews, torturing them for hidden wealth, rioting with profuse prodigality at their lurking-places on land, and turning those fair tropical islands into a pandemonium of outrage, crime, and slaughter. As they troubled little the ships of other nations, these nations rather favored than ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... you what we will do. Instead of torturing each other with our unpronounceable names, let us at once adopt the familiar 'thou,' and call each ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... was no sound or movement to distract him, his imagination succumbed to torturing thoughts of Mara and sometimes of his wife, with whose sufferings he occasionally used to reproach himself. Now that Ingigerd Hahlstroem had dishonoured his love for her, his conscience smote him all the more. His whole ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... easy to conceive a situation more severely torturing than this of captain Snipes. His house, with all his furniture, his kitchen, his barn and rice-stacks, his stables, with several fine horses, and his negro houses, all wrapped in flames; himself scorched and ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... woman gently. "Poor fellow to have died with such terrible delusions torturing him!" She passed her hands over her eyes, wiping away her tears and with them every last trace of violence and anger. Subtly her face had changed back to the babylike, laughing, sleepy face they all knew so well—the face that had held the dead man in thrall and made ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... the escritoire to get the papers. When she opened the senseless chamber of wood, she found herself in the presence of many a torturing, tender memory. In one compartment there were a number of trout-flies. She remembered the day her husband had made them—a long, rainy, happy day during his last visit. Every time she passed him, he drew her face down ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... historian, knew him, and had heard him say, that "if the king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not live to bear it."[106] And yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What was it? Had the meaning of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross suddenly revealed itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the prayer for his persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there might be some affinity with words which had lately sounded in his own ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... catch the drowsy cry Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise Of revel reeling home from midnight cups. Those are the moanings of the dying man, Who lies in the upper chamber; restless moans, And interrupted only by a cough Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs. So in the bitterness of death he lies, And waits in anguish for the morning's light. What can that do for him, or what restore? Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices, And little images of pleasures past, Of health, and active life—health ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... that regrets were futile, Toni turned away and went home, there to spend a sleepless night torturing herself with all sorts of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... he knew the inevitable second was almost completed, a faint rustling came from the other side of the iron door. Warren's face brightened with hope. With a nerve-racking rasp, the iron bar on the other side was raised: it was a torturing delay as the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... of Epictetus is unknown. The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome, and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero. There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him; but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Encheiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age. It is not said how ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... nervous before. It was not hard work that had worn upon her. The doctor told them when they were freshmen that no girl ever broke down from work unless worry was added. Gertrude knew perfectly well what torturing little worry was gnawing away in her mind. She kept telling herself that her speech to Sara had been true—it was so—Sara had broken her engagement—and she could not, could not, could not humble herself to apologize. In fact, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... preceding day the Prince of Orange had landed in Devonshire. During the following week London was violently agitated. On Sunday, the eleventh of November, a rumour was circulated that knives, gridirons, and caldrons, intended for the torturing of heretics, were concealed in the monastery which had been established under the King's protection at Clerkenwell. Great multitudes assembled round the building, and were about to demolish it, when a military force ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... reason, in a word, was not awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle were alive, but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... dreams of conquest. There could be no doubt of his meaning in this letter: he had cut himself off from her, perversely, bitterly, in despair and deep humiliation. She did not doubt his ability to keep his word. There was something inexorable in him. She had felt it before—a sort of blind, self-torturing obstinacy which would keep him to his vow though ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... joy, and glory, and triumph, if it had been greeted at its entrance and applauded on the way, He would have been as truly the consecrated soul that He was in the days when, over a road that was marked with the blood of His footprints, He found His way up at last to the torturing cross. It is not suffering; it is obedience. It is not pain; it is consecration of life. It is the joy of service that makes the life of Christ, and for us to serve Him, serving fellow-man and God—as he served fellow-man and God—whether it bring pain or joy, ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... came to him, and injected drugs. Slowly torturing consciousness left him. The doctors began working over his horribly burned body, shuddering inwardly as the protective, feather-like covering of his skin loosened, and dropped from his body. Tenderly they lowered him into a ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... the world had never known. They threw to the winds all the laws of "fair play." Treaties became for them mere "scraps of paper," to be torn if necessity demanded. They marched through Belgium murdering and torturing the people, wantonly destroying the splendid buildings which had been the country's glory and pride. Zeppelins attacked watering places and fishing villages, ruining peaceful homes, slaying women and children, without reason or profit. Submarines waged ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... trial she must undergo to pardon her fault. It would be to her in reality a delicious suffering. She thought of the martyrs of whom she had read in the "Golden Legend," and it seemed to her that she was their sister in torturing herself in this way, and that her guardian angel, Agnes, would look at her henceforward with sadder, sweeter ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... Death has not undeceived them; for it is very plain that it does not suffice merely to die in order to see God. Those who are ignorant of the truth whilst living, will be ignorant of it always. The demons which are busy torturing these souls, what are they but agents of divine justice? That is why these souls neither see them nor feel them. They were ignorant of the truth, and therefore unaware of their own condemnation, and God Himself cannot ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... back, and did not look at her for a long time. That episode in her past history of which she had told him—of the poor Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to Jude's mind; and he saw himself as a possible second in such a torturing destiny. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... who indulged in the liquor yesterday afternoon, and I believe was worse than any one of them. The little Bushman did not fail to take advantage of his defenceless state, and has been torturing him in every way he could imagine during the whole night. I saw him pouring water into the Hottentot's mouth as he lay on his back with his mouth wide open, till he nearly choked him. To get it down faster, Omrah had taken the big tin funnel, and had inserted one ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... them very defective, being generally constructed upon wrong principles. The physician who sends to a mechanic for an appliance, such as are now made in the shops of most instrument makers, and uses the same, is doing himself an injustice, and barbarously torturing his patient by forcing him to wear an apparatus which is heavy, clumsy, and inevitably injurious, instead of being beneficial in its results. In the treatment of diseases and deformities of the spine, there should ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... she had crossed the Channel on a night boat not many hours after Von Hillern had walked away from Berford Place. The exact truth was that she had been miserably prowling about the adjacent streets, held in the neighbourhood by some self-torturing morbidness, half thwarted helpless passion, half triumphing hatred of the young thing she had betrayed. Up and down the streets she had gone, round and round, wringing her lean fingers together and tasting on her lips the salt of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... that answer was all but impossible for her to give. Could she say, "Yes, you can comfort me. Tell me that you yet love me, and I will be comforted?" But he had not designed to bring her into such difficulty as this. He had not intended to be cruel. He had drifted into treachery unawares, and was torturing her, not because he was wicked, but because he was weak. He had held her hand now for some minute or two, but still she did not speak to him. Then he raised it and pressed it warmly ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture of tender ties,—he shrank from the parting with deeply-loved friends,—his soul was overburdened, his spirit was swollen to agony, and he rushed ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... went, when a ship at length hove in sight, and my heart began to beat again with renewed hope, in spite of my despairing thoughts and misery. Oh, heavens! The ship came nearer and nearer, so that I could see she was a vessel of war belonging to the French nation, and my torturing hope became a certainty. But, would you believe it, senor, when she had closed the wreck so that I could see the gun-ports on her upper deck, she luffed up and bore away again, hoisting her tricolour flag, which I ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson



Words linked to "Torturing" :   piquet, strapado, excruciation, kittee, genital torture, rack, electric shock, sleep deprivation, dismemberment, painful, taking apart, prolonged interrogation, persecution, nail removal, nail pulling, strappado, crucifixion, torturous, falanga, boot, kia quen, burning, judicial torture, picket, sensory deprivation, bastinado



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