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Maim   Listen
noun
Maim  n.  (Written in law language maihem and mayhem)  
1.
The privation of the use of a limb or member of the body, by which one is rendered less able to defend himself or to annoy his adversary.
2.
The privation of any necessary part; a crippling; mutilation; injury; deprivation of something essential. See Mayhem. "Surely there is more cause to fear lest the want there of be a maim than the use of it a blemish." "A noble author esteems it to be a maim in history that the acts of Parliament should not be recited."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Maim" Quotes from Famous Books



... wounded in the strife, Their valor still will burn, And to the bloody field again, Their spirits brave return; Tho' maim'd, and bruis'd, and battle worn, Their names are honor'd here, Next to the names of those who fought, And ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store thou shalt fill each jar brim-full, by-and-by, dost thou think that then wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... several cases in the mornin'. Appear promptly at the palace at ten o'clock to answer to the followin' charges, to wit: breach of the peace; seditious and treasonable utterance; violent assault on the chief magistrate with intent to cut, wound, maim, an' bruise; breach of quarantine; violation of harbour regulations; and gross breakage of custom house rules. In the mornin', fellow, in the mornin', justice shall be done while the breadfruit falls. And the Lord have mercy on ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the child-like, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... only way. It is the nature of the borer to maim or kill the tree; it is for the interest of the owner that the tree should live. The conflict is irrepressible, and the weakest must go to the wall. The borer evil can be reduced to a minimum by keeping the young trees banked three or four inches ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... what ill counseling Prevail'd on thee to break the plighted bond Many, who now are weeping, would rejoice, Had God to Ema giv'n thee, the first time Thou near our city cam'st. But so was doom'd: On that maim'd stone set up to guard the bridge, At thy last peace, the victim, Florence! fell. With these and others like to them, I saw Florence in such assur'd tranquility, She had no cause at which to grieve: with these Saw her so glorious and so just, that ne'er The lily from the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... charge you roundly, off with both their heads! Away! War. Farewell, vain world! Lan. Sweet Mortimer, farewell! Y. Mor. England, unkind to thy nobility, Groan for this grief! behold how thou art maim'd! K. Edw. Go, take that haughty Mortimer to the Tower; There see him safe bestow'd; and, for the rest, Do speedy execution on them all. Be gone! Y. Mor. What, Mortimer, can ragged stony walls Immure thy virtue that aspires to heaven? No, Edward, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... any padding on at all, would let the men dive into him running at full speed, and the men would throw him in a way that seemed as though it would maim him for life. Some of the men weighed a hundred pounds more than he did, but he would get up and, with a ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... of the House of Commons had to determine, some years ago, whether it is in order to allude to the Members as "infesting" the House. Had Milton been called upon for such a decision he would doubtless have ruled that the word is applicable only to Members whose deliberate intention is to maim or ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... relations of the wife ten dollars. In wounds a distinction is made in the parts of the body. A wound in any part from the hips upward is esteemed more considerable than in the lower parts. If a person wounds another with sword, kris, kujur, or other weapon, and the wound is considerable, so as to maim him, he shall pay to the person wounded a half-bangun, and to the chiefs half of the fine for murder, with half of the bhasa lurah, etc. If the wound is trifling but fetches blood he shall pay the person ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... contained. Say, good Mr. M'Choakumchild: when from thy store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within, or sometimes only maim him ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... the day when that dress was first put on,—the day of Helen's marriage, when Salome had attended her mistress to the altar,—when she hoped before many weeks to stand at an altar on her own account.—Not yet, Salome, nor in this world. Perchance not in another; for they who maim their earthly lives may not enjoy in heaven the happiness whose seed was not planted here. The injury is justly irreparable; else had angels ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... dream? I thought I was alone. Have you been hunting on the Windy Height? Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting. Or have I heard you singing through my sleep? Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts Of what the ways of life will do to you To mould and maim you, and I have a power To bring these to expression that I knew not. Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown? I am falling, falling! Lift me: ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... danger, interrupt thy prayer? The sacred wrestler, till a blessing given, Quits not his hold, but halting conquers Heaven; Nor was the stream of thy devotion stopp'd, When from the body such a limb was lopp'd, As to thy present state was no less maim, Though thy wise choice has since repair'd the same. Bold Homer durst not so great virtue feign In his best pattern:[2] of Patroclus slain, 10 With such amazement as weak mothers use, And frantic gesture, he receives the news. Yet fell his darling by th'impartial ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... then the tyrants dare 340 Let them ride among you there, Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,— What they like, that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... has neither beauty, nor worth, nor credibility. Some teach only a very small portion of Christianity, and the portion they teach they often teach amiss. Some doctrines they exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... companion, Joseph Lewis—both now and for some time past residing in the borough— to be bound over to keep the peace, as he was in fear of his life or some bodily hurt to be done or to be procured to be done to him by H. Fielding and his man. Mr. A. Tucker feared that the man would beat, maim, or kill him. ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... narrated, though in the attitude there be implied a whole experience and a theory of life. An author who has begged the question and reposes in some narrow faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many of the sides of this various existence; for, his own life being maim, some of them are not admitted in his theory, and were only dimly and unwillingly recognised in his experience. Hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian religion; and hence we find equal although unsimilar limitation ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this terrible, Laertes' son Should ever think to bring me with soft words And show me from his deck to all their host? No! Sooner will I listen to the tongue Of the curs'd basilisk that thus hath maim'd me. Ay, but he'll venture anything in word Or deed. And now I know he will be here. Come, O my son, let us be gone, while seas And winds divide us from Odysseus' ship. Let us depart. Sure timely haste brings rest And quiet slumber when the toil ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... their Mausers; crack, crack went our rifles. Imagine the above weapons and a few others, please, all firing, not so much to make themselves heard at the same time (they did that), but to destroy, kill and maim, and you can guess it was hard for a poor tired beggar to sleep. I was fagged out, and when we rested while our gunner friends had their innings, laid down in the blazing noon-day sun, and, with a stone for a pillow, half-dozed for an hour ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... corps did its best at the new trade. It was utterly inadequate on either side. It's always so in war. The work of war is to maim, to murder—not to ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; 30 Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us, every day, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... him to evade—and in acknowledgment of which, I write you this letter. He is responsible to the community in which he lives, and to the laws under which he enjoys his civil rights. Those laws do not permit him to kill, to maim, or to punish beyond certain limits, or to overtask, or to refuse to feed and clothe his slave. In short, they forbid him to be tyrannical or cruel. If any of these laws have grown obsolete, it is because they are so seldom violated, that they are forgotten. You have disinterred one of them, from ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... he muttered. And, though he had not thought as much, he might have done so. "I knew that a man who could maim his own body in that way was capable of ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... am alone, sir, alone in this workman's house, Belle and Lloyd having been down all yesterday to meet the steamer; they were scarce gone with most of the horses and all the saddles, than there began a perfect picnic of the sick and maim; Iopu with a bad foot, Faauma with a bad shoulder, Fanny with yellow spots. It was at first proposed to carry all these to the doctor, particularly Faauma, whose shoulder bore an appearance of erysipelas, that sent the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to them, the countenances in the streets and labouring-places, too, are shocking. All men who know that there are laws against instructing slaves, of which the pains and penalties greatly exceed in their amount the fines imposed on those who maim and torture them, must be prepared to find their faces very low in the scale of intellectual expression. But the darkness - not of skin, but mind - which meets the stranger's eye at every turn; the brutalizing ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she flies away, rushes into the tube, which enables me, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... said. "Every Tough in the place is free to maim or kill any Jelly he sees, without fear of restraint or punishment. That should bring them to heel ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... beauty, may not match This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; But we, alas, are not more beautiful: We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. We sing, our musd words are sped, and then Poets are only men Who age, and toil, and sicken.... This maim'd tree May stand in leaf when I ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... and libraries, and sanitation, and all this damned 'welfare'. Fancy a girl chained up for twelve hours every day to a thundering, whizzing, iron machine that never gets tired. The machine's just as fresh at six o'clock at night as it was at six o'clock in the morning, and just as anxious to maim her if she doesn't look out for herself—more anxious. The whole thing's still going on; they're at it now, this very minute. You're interested in a ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... free lodging at the police station was the open door to permanent and hopeless vagrancy. Men, a good bishop said, will do what you pay them to do: if to work, they will work; if you make it pay them to beg, they will beg; if to maim helpless children makes begging pay better, they will do that too. See what it is to encourage laziness in man whose salvation ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... it. In one year, 1917, we spent $96,700,000,000 for war. We blew it away to murder, maim, and destroy! Why? Because the blind, brutal crime of powerful and selfish interests made this path through hell the only visible way to heaven. We did it. We had to do it, and we are glad the putrid horror is over. But, now, are ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... toward me. "It is like being a surgeon. I must cut out the ambition. I can never fulfill it. Never, never, I tell you. The news of this prize will make it grow and grow like a cancer or something, till it will hurt worse, maim, kill, when I fail at last. If she would only see that I love mathematics and can do something in that maybe some day. But in literature. Suppose I shut myself up for years, struggle, struggle, struggle to wring out something that ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... watched her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let" boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... him, but at the cost of a fearful maim. When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all necessary to him. He is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. If the principal, instead of being ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... attend the assembly, setting all other business aside. Others, alarmed by their own consciences, and, fearing a politic stroke, created phantoms of their own imagination. Persuaded, that Napoleon was marching troops, to maim and dissolve the national representation, they demanded with loud cries, that the national guard should be summoned, to protect the chamber. Others moved, that the command of this guard should be taken from the Emperor and General Durosnel, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... customs, which would pay the provincial army, would have been a bargain of such advantage, both to them and this commonwealth, as is not to be found otherwise by either. To receive the Jews after any other manner into a commonwealth were to maim it; for they of all nations never incorporate, but taking up the room of a limb, are of no use office to the body, while they suck the nourishment which would sustain a ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... formed a ring round the two antagonists, who faced each other with the savage intensity of gamecocks, with no thought but to maim and kill the enemy in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... who had received a maim on his limbs, that disabled him from following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got, by making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my mother's keeping a little day-school ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... from the pool, And brought it forth into the light; The Shepherds met him with his charge An unexpected sight! Into their arms the Lamb they took, Said they, "He's neither maim'd nor scarr'd"— Then up the steep ascent they hied And placed him at his Mother's side; And gently did the Bard Those idle Shepherd-boys upbraid, And bade ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... shell—link by link, out of hardship and pain, Toil, sickness, endurance, is forged the bronze chain Of those terrible siege-lines! No change to that toil Save the mine's sudden leap from the treacherous soil. Save the midnight attack, save the groans of the maim'd, And Death's daily obolus due, whether claim'd ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... know—and wise it were If each could know the same— That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim. ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... instance, who was visited by such a seductress. What is the legend? To get rid of her he burns off his hand, whereupon she falls dead. He prays and she returns to life and becomes a nun. No, Messer Diavolo, I am not Paphnutius. I will not maim myself, nor do I want Carlotta to fall dead; and I cannot pray and effect a pietistic resurrection. I am simply a fool of a modern man tempted out of his wits, who scarce knows what it is that ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... to gentlemen, of different families, but of the name of Lord. In describing their depredations, it was said that a party of the E.L.'s, D.L.'s, or the R.L.'s, had made an excursion. The complaining farmer was told that he might impound, but not maim them; but a troop of horsemen were required for ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... nasty blow, my poor boy?" Antonio was so refreshed and charged anew with vital energy that he had raised himself completely up; his eyes flashed, and he shook his doubled fist above his head, crying, "Oh! that rascal Nicolo; he tried to maim me, because he envies me every wretched penny that any generous hand bestows upon me. You know, old dame, that I barely managed to hold body and soul together by helping to carry bales of goods from ships and freight-boats to the depot ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... that one of his slaves should stay behind, and destroy and bury the lion; which he commanded to be done with the utmost caution, as Almurah had made a decree that if any subjects should wound, maim, or destroy any lion in his forests, the same should be ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... without the ordinary and most common scientific instruments of travelling. I have, however, an hour-glass, which embraces four hours in the time of emptying, and which I found useful in Ghadames, but make no use of it en route. I consider the objects of my tour moral, a random effort to maim, or kill, or cripple the Monster Slavery, a small rough stone picked up casually from the burnt and arid face of The Desert, but with dauntless hand thrown at this Titanian fabric of crime and wickedness. However, as my friend Mr. Fletcher advises, it does not prevent ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... consequences, and to forward the ends of justice by telling anything you know which may put us on the traces of the fellow who has injured my poor gamekeeper. A fellow who would come behind and strike a cowardly blow like that, trying to murder or maim a man who was simply doing his duty, does not deserve that you should shield him. Come, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... no doubt, a considerable Maim to us, in some Peoples opinions, who never digested the benefits arising from the Stage in its Moral Representations, that this smarting Lash is given us by a Clergy-man of the Church of England, that is, good friends, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... do not rise; for you may look on me, And in your looking you may kneel to God. Speak! is there any of you halt or maim'd? I think you know I have some power with Heaven From my long penance: let him ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... if a man deviates from a path, he is sure to stumble into one of these contrivances, and to be lamed. The holes need not exceed one foot in diameter; and the stake may be a stick no thicker than the little finger, and yet it will suffice to maim an ill-shod man, if its point be baked hard. A traveller could only use these pitfalls where, from the circumstances of the case, there was no risk of his own men, cattle, or dogs falling ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... another vessel, or attacking her broadside to broadside, our enemy generally depressed his guns in order to hull and if possible sink us, as in that way only could they prevent us from running alongside. And every shot that pierced a galley's hull was certain to kill or maim at least four or five slaves. But our masters cared nothing for that; when one crew of galley-slaves was exhausted, another batch was sent for to take their place. There were always plenty of slaves to be had from the Spanish ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... be this: That a sentinel shall not use more force or violence to prevent the escape of a prisoner than is necessary to effect that object, but if the prisoner, after being ordered to halt, continues his flight the sentinel may maim or even kill him, and it is his duty ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain I DID say. I reckon he can stand a little thing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... strange gods, and worshiped at the worldly altar of wealth and cleverness, and believed that these things were success in life. Now we have had before our eyes the spectacle of clever men using their cleverness to kill, maim and destroy innocent women and children; we have seen the wealth of one nation poured out like water to bring poverty and starvation to another nation, and so, through our tears, we have learned the lesson that it is not wealth or cleverness or skill ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... veteran after struck the sight, Scarr'd, mangled, maim'd in every part, Lopp'd of his limbs in many a gallant fight, In nought entire — except his heart. 70 Mute for a while, and sullenly distress'd, At last the impetuous sorrow fir'd his breast. 'Wild is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... contact, rushed, closed and caught his antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms. The battle at once resolved itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier. And it was free! Each might kill or maim if so he could. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... people, but we will dispatch thee hence Incontinent on board a sable bark To Echetus, the scourge of human kind, From whom is no escape. Drink then in peace, And contest shun with younger men than thou. 370 Him answer'd, then, Penelope discrete. Antinoues! neither seemly were the deed Nor just, to maim or harm whatever guest Whom here arrived Telemachus receives. Canst thou expect, that should he even prove Stronger than ye, and bend the massy bow, He will conduct me hence to his own home, And make me his own bride? No such design His heart conceives, or hope; nor let a dread So vain the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... the sympathising Gladdener which He manifested Himself as being in the 'beginning of miracles in Cana of Galilee' unless, side by side, there had lain in Him the power of holy indignation and, if need be, of stern rebuke. Brethren, we must retain our conception of His anger if we are not to maim our conception of His love. There is no wrath like the wrath of the Lamb. The Temple court, with the strange figure of the Christ with a scourge in His hand, is a revelation which this generation, with its exaggerated sentimentalism, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... it strange that love like thine and mine 'Twixt two in state so sunder'd should be bred, That he who did all worths in him combine, Birth, beauty, wit, wealth, me thus honoured, Me, the poor motley, maim'd by Fortune's spite, Sear'd and o'erworn with tyranny of time, Whose wit was but the wit to learn to write When thou, my Muse, inspir'dst my pupil rhyme. Thou wert the wide world's pride, but I his scorn; His pattern thou, ...
— Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost • Gregory Thornton

... were well started that Bill o' Burnt Bay was a marked man in Saint Pierre. There was no price on his head, to be sure, but he was answerable for several offenses which would pass current in St. John's for assault and battery, if not for assault with intent to maim or kill (which Bill had never tried to do)—all committed in those old days when he was young and wild and loved a ruction better than ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... offices and honors they did him, and that those honors they paid him were not at all inferior to what they could pay to either their high priests or their kings; and what was a greater motive to determine him, they said, was this, that he could not have those dignities [in Judea] because of that maim in his body, which had been inflicted on him by Antigonus; and that kings do not use to requite men for those kindnesses which they received when they were private persons, the height of their fortune making usually no small ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... into all the practices by which he has attempted to maim the Company's records, I shall state one more to your Lordships,—that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents, who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and ostensible agents who are not in the secret. The correspondence ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of one travail born, Doomed to one death, in one brief life we moil; The pangs that maim us and the powers that spoil Are common sorrows heired from worlds outworn. Alike in weakness, time too long hath torn Our mother, Patience, and our father, Toil. Brothers in hatred of the fates that foil, Say not in vain we murmur and ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... went Thomas at a dog-trot again: the lust to punish, maim or kill in his heart. He was not a university man; he had not played cricket at Lord's or stroked the crew from Leander; but he was island-born, a chap for cold tubbings, calisthenics and long tramps into the country on pleasant Sundays. Thomas was ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... pretty mess we mortals made of life! I might almost have laughed at the irony of it all, except that my laughter would have choked in my throat and turned me sick. They were beasts, and worse than beasts, to maim and mutilate each other like this, having no real hatred in their hearts for each other, but only a stupid perplexity that they should be hurled in masses against each other's ranks, to slash and shoot and burn in obedience to orders by people ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... the recollection was like a dream to them; and what can the merely civilian imagination do on the Plains of Abraham, with the fact that there, more than a century ago, certain thousands of Frenchmen marched out, on a bright September morning, to kill and maim as many Englishmen? This ground, so green and oft with grass beneath the feet, was it once torn with shot and soaked with the blood of men? Did they lie here in ranks and heaps, the miserable slain, for whom tender hearts away yonder over the sea were to ache and break? Did the wretches ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... on the forehead with a red hot iron, "that the mark thereof may remain." If a white man met a slave, and demanded of him to show his ticket, and the slave refused, the law empowered the white man "to beat, maim, or assault; and if such Negro or slave" could not "be taken, to kill him," if he ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... meet him, and it was evident that Levi was coming for his boat. Stooping down, he adjusted the plank over the chasm in such a way that his victim would be pitched down upon the sharp rocks beneath, the instant he stepped upon it. The fall would not kill him—it would only bruise and maim him. Levi was beneath the rocky precipice, and could not ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... man!" replied Crispus quickly, "turn yourself round so as to bring your back to the crag's face, else shall the angles of the rock maim, and the dust blind you. That's it; most bravely done! you are a ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... Monseigneur and Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne. At another time M. de Bourgogne put a cracker under her chair in the salon, where she was playing at piquet. As he was about to set fire to this cracker, some charitable soul warned him that it would maim her, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... was electrical. In a moment the savages turned and gazed around them astonished. One of their number was hit and wounded in the leg. Granville had aimed so purposely, to maim and terrify them. The natives faltered and fell back. As they did so, Granville emerged from the shelter of the acacia bush, and fired a second shot from another point at them. At the same instant the Namaqua raised a loud native battle-cry, and brandished ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... imp and fairy. When any one of his limbs was lopped off, he had the power of restoring it; and when his head was cut off, he could take it up and replace it. When Astolpho encountered this magician, he was informed that his life lay in one particular hair; so instead of seeking to maim his adversary, Astolpho cut off the magic hair, and the magician fell lifeless at his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the ruin and death of the body rather than gain it in a manner which the spirit disavows. Pascal laid aside mathematics; Origen doctored his body with a knife; every day some one is thus mortifying his dearest interests and desires, and, in Christ's words, entering maim into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is to supersede the lesser and less harmonious affections by renunciation; and though by this ascetic path we may get to heaven, we cannot get thither a whole and perfect man. But there ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... may not meet to-morrow; who can tell What mighty ills befall our little band, Or what you'll suffer from the white man's hand? Here is your knife! I thought 'twas sheathed for aye. No roaming bison calls for it to-day; No hide of prairie cattle will it maim; The plains are bare, it seeks a nobler game: 'Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host. Go; rise and strike, no matter what the cost. Yet stay. Revolt not at the Union Jack, Nor raise Thy hand against this stripling pack Of white-faced warriors, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... calculating its numbers, its equipment, and what it may do. Keep your hand away from that pistol. I might not hit you, but the chances are that I would. But as I said, I don't want to shoot. It wouldn't help our cause or me any to maim or kill you. Suppose we call it peace between us ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... man with the blue-white scar had only begun. The cross-cut had brought wealth and the promise of riches to Fairchild and Harry for the rest of their lives. But it had not freed them from the danger of one man,—a man who was willing to kill, willing to maim, willing to do anything in the world, it seemed, to achieve his purpose. Harry's suggestion was ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... of the wood, No other tree disputes its claim. The shining shaft in venom stewed Flies fiercely forth to kill and maim." ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... harmony he may have brought out of that chaos. The chaos in itself will offend, and it is no part of rational art to produce it. As well might a physician poison in order to give an antidote, or maim in order to amputate. The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better. The depth to which an artist may find current experience to be sunk in discord and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... we walked home together in the moonlight, "that we shall scotch this Home-Rule Bill yet. Expectation only just dawned on me. When I went down to House in the afternoon, was of different opinion. Had philosophically settled down to acceptance of inevitable. Might maim it a bit in Committee; play with it so as to block off other business, and send it up to Lords at so late period of Session that they would seem justified in throwing it out, on score of inadequate time to discuss it. Now I think we shall go one better. COURTNEY thought he could serve Unionist ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various

... wantonly torture or maim an enemy, whoever or whatever he may be, however great his crime. Not even the express command of a superior officer can justify such doings, because it is barbarity, pure and unmitigated. In war these things ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... despotical power: for the master could not have power to kill him, at any time, whom, at a certain time, he was obliged to let go free out of his service; and the master of such a servant was so far from having an arbitrary power over his life, that he could not, at pleasure, so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye, or tooth, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... years for the protection of such defenseless beauties. Happily, too, shooting from the river boats is no longer permitted,—on the regular lines, that is. I myself saw a young gentleman stand on the deck of an excursion steamer, with a rifle, and do his worst to kill or maim every living thing that came in sight, from a spotted sandpiper to a turkey buzzard! I call him a "gentleman;" he was in gentle company, and the fact that he chewed gum industriously would, I fear, hardly invalidate his claim to that title. The narrow river wound in and out between low, densely ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... with a more or less unconscious insight into the secrets of Nature, offer up human sacrifices on their altars, and when some ignorant European intrudes and calls them "blood-thirsty" we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend the half, and sometimes more than ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... at liberty to return to your wife and family, to whom I am about to conduct you; but it is on this express condition, to which you must bind yourself by a solemn oath, viz. that you will never maim or kill a seal in all your ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... Vice hath, that dares win, And bribe the father to the children's sin; But whom have gifts defiled not? what good face Did ever want these tempters? pleasing grace Betrays itself; what time did Nero mind A coarse, maim'd shape? what blemish'd youth confin'd His goatish pathic? whence then flow these joys Of a fair issue? whom these sad annoys Wait, and grow up with; whom perhaps thou'lt see Public adulterers, and must be Subject to all the ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... he declared. "You're past help, Clint. You've tasted blood. Go on, you poor mistaken hero, and maim yourself for life. I wash ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... and began his usual introductory address of "O-yez! O-yez!" These words immediately arrested the ears of our adventurer; and, to his very great astonishment, he heard him thus proceed—"This is to give notice, that whereas some evil-disposed person, or persons, did wantonly cut and maim the parson's white mare, which was grazing in the church-yard last night, a reward of ten guineas will be given to any person who will discover the offender, or offenders, so that they may be brought ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... it, in the thick of the tournament, on the helm of a knight who, he knew, had vowed to maim him or take his life; and, wishing to give him a chance of fulfilling his vow, rode him down, horse and man. The knight's Norman friends attacked us in force; and we Flemings, with Hereward at our head, beat them off, and overthrew so many, that we ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... that was not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it is still a custom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy "Quite So." It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; but it stuck to him with such ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... their opinions—so that to cut off the discussion of other personalities, on ethical grounds, is like any other stiff and Puritanical attempt to limit interests, to circumscribe experience, to maim life. The criticism, then, or the discussion, of other people is not so much a CAUSE of interest in life, as a SIGN of it; it is no more to be suppressed by codes or edicts than any other form of temperamental activity. It is no ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... weren mice, They broken speares all to slice. There might knight find his pere, There lost many his distrere:[13] There was quick in little thraw,[14] Many gentle knight yslaw: Many arme, many heved[15] Some from the body reaved: Many gentle lavedy[16] There lost quick her amy.[17] There was many maim yled,[18] Many fair pensel bebled:[19] There was swordes liklaking,[20] There was speares bathing, Both kinges there sans doute Be in dash'd with all their ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sensible that there is no appeal from his master." Where the slave is placed by law entirely under the control of the man who ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... annihilation. The Feejees are also very much afraid of Samiulo, ruler of a subterranean world, who sits at the brink of a huge fiery cavern, into which he hurls the souls he dislikes. In the road to Ndengei stands an enormous giant, armed with an axe, who tries to maim and murder the passing souls. A powerful chief, whose gun was interred with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... one's steps in, of a dark night,' muttered Sampson, as he stumbled for the twentieth time over some stray lumber, and limped in pain. 'I believe that boy strews the ground differently every day, on purpose to bruise and maim one; unless his master does it with his own hands, which is more than likely. I hate to come to this place without Sally. She's more protection ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... against the principle of his own aphorism; and says, "It is certainly to be feared that, if this pruning of our words of all the superfluous letters, as they are called, should be much farther indulged, we shall quickly antiquate our most respectable authors, and irreparably maim our ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... encouragingly. "It had to be done. He was in a desperate predicament, and he would have shot Haggerty had the detective been careless in has turn; and he wouldn't have aimed to maim, either." ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath

... Times. In the first-class English journals a large space is always devoted to police reports, in which the vilest and most vulgar criminal cases are always given in full detail, to gratify the almost universal British craving for filth and cruelty. A drunken vagabond cannot maim his wife but all England must know all about it. Let it be borne in mind that while English writers are never weary of speaking of the blackguardism of the American press, nine tenths of our journals abandoned many years ago the abominable practice of regularly publishing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... So a bear may kill a foe with a single blow of its mighty fore-arm, either crushing in the head or chest by sheer force of sinew, or else tearing open the body with its formidable claws; and so on the other hand he may, and often does, merely disfigure or maim the foe by a hurried stroke. Hence it is common to see men who have escaped the clutches of a grisly, but only at the cost of features marred beyond recognition, or a body rendered almost helpless for life. Almost every ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... life that we create for ourselves real things out of what to some are airy nothings. Real things, against which we often bruise or maim ourselves, while to others they are as ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... go up in smoke, end in smoke &c (fail) 732. render powerless &c adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable^; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple^, maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten^, silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat [Fr.], spike the guns; take the wind out of one's sails, scotch the snake, put a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville



Words linked to "Maim" :   injure, mar, maimer, lame, cripple



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