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Retribution   Listen
noun
Retribution  n.  
1.
The act of retributing; repayment. "In good offices and due retributions, we may not be pinching and niggardly."
2.
That which is given in repayment or compensation; return suitable to the merits or deserts of, as an action; commonly, condign punishment for evil or wrong. "All who have their reward on earth,... Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find Fit retribution, empty as their deeds."
3.
Specifically, reward and punishment, as distributed at the general judgment. "It is a strong argument for a state of retribution hereafter, that in this world virtuous persons are very often unfortunate, and vicious persons prosperous."
Synonyms: Repayment; requital; recompense; payment; retaliation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Retribution" Quotes from Famous Books



... a painful punishment. They shall desire to go forth from the fire, but they shall not go forth from it, and their punishment shall be permanent. If a man or a woman steal, cut off their hands,[87] in retribution for that which they have committed; this is an exemplary punishment appointed by God; and God is mighty and wise. But whoever shall repent after his iniquity, and amend, verily God will be turned unto him, for God is inclined to forgive and be merciful. Dost thou not know that the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... me, "and you will be the daughter of my choice, as well as my adoption. My blessing, and the blessing of approving God, will be yours. The woman, who limits her ambition to the triumphs of beauty and the influence of personal fascination, receives the retribution of her folly and her sin in the coldness and alienation of her husband, and the indifference, if not the contempt of the world. She, whose highest aim is intellectual power, will make her home like the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... been freely offered up on the scaffold and beneath the axe, the living exiles now scattered through distant lands, have not suffered, are not suffering in vain. Governments were created for the benefit of the many, and not of the few. A day, an hour of retribution will yet come; the Almighty promise will not be forgotten—"Vengeance is mine—I will repay it, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... self-sacrifice—not for thee the pleasures of sense and time, not for thee may peal earth's songs of triumph! Fainting oft beneath the burden of the cross, we trace thy way by bloody footprints, suffering as a saint;—falling from thy estate, how terrible will be thy retribution as a sinner! ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... attribute which was most proper to God, to perform all he promiseth, appertained also to her; and that she was all truth, all constancy, and all goodness. And he concluded with these expressions: "Neither do we present our thanks in words or any outward sign, which can be no sufficient retribution for so great goodness; but in all duty and thankfulness, prostrate at your feet, we present our most loyal and thankful hearts, even the last drop of blood in our hearts, and the last spirit of breath in our nostrils, to be poured out, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... met Dawn he was greatly dejected. She thought he appeared too old and wan for one of his years. The brow on which the light of hope and life should repose, was indeed wrinkled, and furrowed with unrest because the spirit was ill at ease. There was a claim upon him, a voice calling for retribution, which through the very law of life, aside from personal wrong, would not let him rest; and was only in the presence of Dawn that he experienced anything like repose. His wife and friends taunted him daily upon his depression, because they were far from his ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... lives and safety of the whites. Many of them have gone to lay their deaths to my charge in heaven. All I can now do is, by one more death (would to God it were my own!) to save and to reassure those who are left. It is my retribution that Moyse must die. As for Paul, as for Genifrede—the sin of the brother is visited upon the brother—the sin of the father ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... uncouth philosophies, expressed, we verily believe, in the darkest language ever used by civilised man, are applied to the solution of the problems of theology and ethics, no wonder that the natural consequence, as well as just retribution, of such temerity is a plunge into tenfold night. Systems of German philosophy may perhaps be advantageously studied by those who are mature enough to study them; but that they have an incomparable power ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... the wild, or menacing, or warning, or complaining crescendos and diminuendos of the unresting saws, the man's brain seethed with plans of vengeance. After all these years of waiting he would be satisfied with no common retribution. To merely kill the betrayer would be insufficient. He would wring his soul and quench his manhood with some strange unheard-of horror, ere dealing the final stroke that should rid earth of his presence. Scheme after scheme burned through his mind, and at ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... one time of a man's life, and not all at another; nor all in one circumstance of need, and not all in another; nor all to the saints and not all to the sinner; nor all in the hour of joy, and not all in the hour of retribution; being ready and able to supply one want, and unwilling to supply another. For," as he would add, "does a man want righteousness? there it is laid for him in Christ; does he want merit? there is the treasure full and brimming over; does he want rest and peace? they are also provided ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... that the recantation of Mirabeau, from avowed democracy to aristocracy and royalty, through the medium of enriching himself by a 'salva regina', made his friends prepare for him that just retribution, which ended in a 'de profundis'. At a period when all his vices were called to aid one virtuous action, his thread of vicious life was shortened, and he; no doubt, became the victim of his insatiable ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... time to notice what a conspicuous object it was when in a swirl of water a score of small fish of all sorts surrounded the morsel. But the groupers followed hotfoot and the little fish fled. Then came retribution, for, from a crevice in a near-by rock, out shot the eel-like form of a green moray and disposed of one of the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... by Garcia for retribution was to be further signalised on the American side by a cattlemen's convention, a bull fight, and an old settlers' barbecue and picnic. Knowing the avenger to be a man of his word, and believing it prudent to ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... the subject on which you conversed with me once, —the future state of retribution. It is evident to me that the spirit of Christianity has produced in the human spirit a tenderness of love which wholly revolts from the old doctrine on the subject, and I observe the more Christ-like ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... reported to the master, and was sentenced to study during the usual recess for a week to come. The punishment was hard, for he loved play better than his book; but how slight in comparison with the retribution which awaited him. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various

... unheard of beyond the ship, and unpunished. It must be remembered that there were no telegraphs, no newspaper correspondents, no questioning public, so that the evil side of human nature (so often shown in the very young in their cruelty to animals) had its swing, fearless of retribution. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... revenge; her reproach had killed the King; her summons brought him at once within the ban of that judgment to which she had called him. It would be well if one could believe the story; there would seem a dramatic justice—a tragic retribution—about it. Its very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on the whole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for ourselves, we confess that we cannot believe in the mysterious letter, the fatal summons, the sudden ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... said—"That ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope." And observe how carefully he expresses himself; for he does not say, Those who have not the hope of a resurrection, but simply, Those who have no hope. He that has no hope of a future retribution has no hope at all, nor does he know that there is a God, nor that God exercises a providential care over present occurrences, nor that divine justice looks on all things. But he that is thus ignorant and inconsiderate is more unwise than a beast, and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... guilty of so unfeeling an act may one day be disclosed, and it would surely excite little compassion to learn that they suffered that retribution which such inhuman conduct merits. That people dressed in the habit of Englishmen, though belonging to a different nation, could take advantage of misery instead of relieving it, will scarce seem creditable at the present day, were not some instances of a similar nature ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... only with meditative Buddhism (Dhyana) as at the beginning of the T'ang epoch and earlier, but with the main branch of Buddhism, monastery Buddhism (Vinaya). From now onward the Buddhist doctrines of transmigration and retribution, which had been really directed against the gentry and in favour of the common people, were turned into an instrument serving the gentry: everyone who was unfortunate in this life must show such amenability to the government and the gentry that he would have a chance of a better ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... commissioner—he seems a very great man—or I would accompany you all the way, and we might stop at the houses of some of my friends. Still I must go a little way with you. Wait a moment; I will send for my horse: it is a poor animal—the only one those thieving French have left me. But a day of retribution is coming, and ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile 300 Children of Wretchedness! More groans must rise, More blood must stream, or ere your wrongs be full. Yet is the day of Retribution nigh: The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal:[120:1] And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire 305 The innumerable multitude of wrongs By man on man inflicted! Rest awhile, Children of Wretchedness! The hour is nigh And lo! the Great, the Rich, the Mighty Men, The Kings and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the villain in his delirium, enough to show what were his intentions toward his prisoners, and the utter blackness of his heart, we will depict another phase of his madness, in which he imagines the swift feet of retribution to be on his track, while the future was uncurtained to ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... understand me. You do not know how thoroughly I have repented of the evil that I have done, or how far I would go to make retribution, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime—WHEN CRIME IS FOUND OUT!—otherwise, conscience takes matters much more easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... shake and endanger the very thrones which now seem to be most firmly established. The unfriendly blow aimed at us might possibly react upon its authors, and transfer to them the misfortunes and disorders which now afflict this country. So just a retribution is not beyond the probabilities of the present situation in Europe, whether intervention should come from the English aristocracy or from the French emperor. The instincts of the people, everywhere, are on our side; their strong arms ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... shrinks from is the physical fact plus its associations, its dim forebodings, its recoilings from the unknown regions into which the soul goes from out of 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and plus the possibilities of retribution, the certainty of judgment. All these Christ sweeps away, so that we may say, 'He hath abolished Death,' even though we all have to pass through the mere externals of dying, for the dread of Death is gone for ever, if we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... opening of spring. During the day of the festival a taboo is placed on all work in the village, particularly that done with any sharp pointed tool which might wound some wandering ghost and bring retribution on the people. ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... one of these noisy belligerents being determined on, I looked round my room for the tools of retribution. Not a moveable thing, however, could I discover, save a new pitcher, which had been sent home that very day, and to which my name and address were appended on a bit of card. I clutched it with desperate fury, and pouring into my ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... indignation. We find him, in reference to this shameless piece of business, figuring as the Fagin of France after Condemnation, the idea being suggested of course by Cruikshank's famous etching in "Oliver Twist." Retribution overtook the mercenary monarch in the year of disquietude and national unrest—1848; foreign kings and potentates were sent flying in all directions, and Louis Philippe, who, like the rest of his family had learnt nothing by misfortune, was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... She has had a fight with another girl about suffrage—I don't know which side she was on, Beulah, I am merely giving you the facts as they came to me—and the other girl was so unpleasant about it that she has been visited by just retribution in the form of the mumps, and had to ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... having regained the old footing, there is the memory of pain, and the presence of regret. To cultivate contention as an art, and to trade upon the supposed benefit of renewing friendship, is a folly which brings its own retribution. ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... this day to his garden, to take his pleasure amongst its trees and pluck the ripe fruits, when this young man slew him and swerved from the road of righteousness; wherefore we demand of thee the retribution of his crime and call upon thee to pass judgment upon him, according ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... surmounted antipathies I once thought insurmountable. I am not the only one who has often retired from our disgusting repast, to my bunk or sleeping birth, in silent agony, there to breathe out to my Maker, woes too great for utterance. O, Britain! Britain! will there not be a day of retribution ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... like one of Southey's or Edwin Arnold's oriental poems to peruse the account of the splendid coronation of the Afghan Emperor of All India. Retribution here, indeed, for the folly of that charlatan prime minister who once prated about a "scientific boundary" of the British Empire of India. Another instance of the "slow grinding of the mills of the gods," ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... known to me, I still have no choice but to satisfy the claims of justice by proceeding to take stern measures. I am also aware that I shall be accused of undue severity; but, lastly, I am aware that it is my duty to put aside all personal feeling, and to act as the unconscious instrument of that retribution which justice demands." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... guessing it to be, as guarded as Pollard's had been, broke in and for several minutes it was the only sound that came to her, save twice when a low laugh from Broderick interrupted. She frowned at that; to her it seemed that in this stern discussion which had for theme crime and retribution there was no place for a man's laughter; even then her dislike for Ben Broderick ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... confusion of chance. Mildred Tresham and Henry Mertoun, both very young, ignorant and unguarded, have loved. They attempt a late reparation, apparently with success, but the hasty suspicion of Lord Tresham, Mildred's brother, diverted indeed into a wrong channel, brings down on both a terrible retribution. Tresham, who shares the ruin he causes, feels, too, that his punishment is his due. He has acted without pausing to consider, and he is called on to pay the penalty of "evil wrought by want ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... regards!" shouted Will. But only the thud! thud! of horsehoofs answered him. Retribution was sweeping like a hawk ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... that is just the question! Why should she? There is no retribution behind it all—no atonement, I mean. Eyolf never did her any harm. He never called names after her; he never threw stones at her dog. Why, he had never set eyes either on her or her dog till yesterday. So there is no retribution; the whole thing is utterly groundless ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen

... figs presented than the monkey is revealed; your lips are the lips of a philosopher, and your heart is quite other; it is no injustice to say that those sentiments for which you claim admiration have 'wetted your lips, and left your palate dry.' You have not had to wait long for retribution; you spoke unadvisedly in scorn of human needs; and, this little while after, behold you making public renunciation of your freedom! Surely Nemesis was standing behind your back as you drank in the flattering tributes to your ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... say there has been none, and will be none, elsewhere. If there has been the massacre of three hundred there, or even the tenth part of three hundred, it will be conclusively proved; and being so proved, the retribution shall as surely come. It will be matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... every conclusion, and every purpose, with all that they remember of the past, and all that they imagine of the future, is at once known to the Almighty, who without labour or confusion weighs every thought of every mind in His balance, and reserves it to the day of retribution; my follies cover me with confusion, and my soul is ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... caught one of these men creeping through the window of a small bank on Montgomery Street and shot him dead. But the police were kept too busy at other necessary duties to devote much time to these wretches, and for a time many of them plundered at will, though some of them met with quick and sure retribution. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"—observed Empeiristes, and paused to look at, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... eyes left the sacred volume, and seemed to gaze upon some coming struggle in which the sins of the people would meet a bloody retribution. Then, referring to the page, he pronounced with bitterness of holy indignation the prophetic curse which was that day fulfilled in our cherished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... you cannot share with him. You are afraid of blurting it out in your sleep. At last you go to him and confess everything. What then? The idol he worshipped has turned to clay. What he thought an act of retribution is a crime. The dead man had told the truth, and he committed murder on the word of a woman who was ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... desired my absence by thus encouraging the supposition that the house was unoccupied? I would see this man in spite of all impediments; ere I died, I would see his face, and summon him to penitence and retribution; no matter at what cost an interview was purchased. Reputation and life might be wrested from me by another, but my rectitude and honor were in my own keeping, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... will immediately be filled by another, as young, as inexperienced as she had been, and as utterly in need of the protection that experienced and permanent co-workers could give her. The girl, although she guesses it not, is only too frequently made the instrument of a terrible retribution; for the poor wage, which was all that she in her individual helplessness was able to obtain for herself, is used to lower the pay of the very man, who, had he stood by her, might have helped her to a higher wage standard and at the ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... revelation of the invisible. Strange that the human race has never entirely realized as yet the depth of meaning in the words describing hell: 'Where the worm dieth not, and where the flame is never quenched. The 'worm' is Retribution, the 'flame' is the immortal Spirit,—and the two are forever striving to escape from the other. Horrible! And yet there are men who believe in neither one thing nor the other, and reject the Redemption that does away with both! God forgive us all our sins,—and especially ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... Meroz, because he came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Up, then, and be doing; the blood of martyrs, reeking upon scaffolds, is crying for vengeance; the bones of saints, which lie whitening in the highways, are pleading for retribution; the groans of innocent captives from desolate isles of the sea, and from the dungeons of the tyrants' high places, cry for deliverance; the prayers of persecuted Christians, sheltering themselves in dens and deserts from the sword of their persecutors, famished with hunger, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... to find lodging, another week—three days at all events. But the stern-natured man with his rigid religion was inexorable. It was God's will that I should be punished, and who was he to step in between the All-high and his just retribution? ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... treatment of patriots who fell into their hands, and repeated executions of Americans on pretended charges of violating compulsory oaths of allegiance, or no charges at all, excited thirst for retribution among the friends of liberty. General Nathaniel Greene, of Quaker birth, but one of the greatest soldiers of the Revolution, was sent to command a new army of the South; with Daniel Morgan, William ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... history is gradually unfolded. And no vague phrases concerning the ennobling of humanity can conceal the central fact: the play derives its power from a traditional plot and a conventional if sound motive—crime and its discovery, sin and its retribution. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the street to the gate and causeway of Tacuba, over which Cortez retreated on the "sorrowful night" (triste noche), I naturally fell into reflections upon the righteous retribution that overtook a portion of the Spanish robbers on that night, and upon the mysterious ways of Providence in allowing Cortez and a remnant to escape being burned alive by the Indians after the infamous ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... the close, predict to the haughty Clytemnestra and her paramour, Aegisthus, the punishment which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In the Choephorae, Orestes, upon the execution of the deed of retribution, finds that all peace is gone: the furies of his mother begin to persecute him, and he announces his resolution of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... little interest himself in the mission of the minister among his people, he would undoubtedly have led a party to the search for the audacious savage who had abducted the respected white woman; and, had he been overtaken, a swift and merciless retribution would have ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... multinational peacekeeping force in late September 1999, anti-independence Timorese militias - organized and supported by the Indonesian military - commenced a large-scale, scorched-earth campaign of retribution. The militias killed approximately 1,300 Timorese and forcibly pushed 300,000 people into West Timor as refugees. The majority of the country's infrastructure, including homes, irrigation systems, water supply systems, and schools, and nearly 100% of the country's electrical grid were destroyed. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... useful at the same time that we punish them for their crimes. We farm them out and compel them to earn money for the State by making barrels and building roads. Thus we combine business with retribution, and all things are lovely. But in ancient Rome they combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary that the new sect called Christians should be exterminated, the people judged it wise to make this work profitable to the State at the same time, and entertaining to the public. In ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... fixed its roots in their hearts so profoundly, that the prince grasped for his sword at the very sight of Assyrian warriors. It seemed that the spirits of all the slain Egyptians, their toils and sufferings, had risen in the soul of this descendant of pharaohs and cried for retribution. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... people, our serfs, people like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... swollen face, - Pollution's last and best embrace, Will call, as such a picture can, For retribution upon man. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of indeterminate sentences has been recently discussed also by Pessina, who combats it, of course, because the essence of the classic school of criminology is retribution for a fault by means of corresponding punishment. We might reply that no human judge can use any other but the grossest scale by which to determine whether you are responsible to the extent of the whole, one half, or one third. And since there is no absolute or objective criterion by which the ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... bitter as they might have been. Bitterness was in abeyance. She waited to hear what he might have to say for himself and about her—about this new disaster that had befallen her, and with the thought of the retribution that she held, almost, within her grasp, came something of a softening to sadness and regret over Jack. In spite of that glorious moment of the pine woods, with its wide vistas into the future, some torn fiber of her heart would go on aching when she thought of Jack and his ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... seemed, shadow-like, to replace the one before him. Words, long since uttered, knelled in his ear: "There shall be a death-bed yet beside which you shall see the spectre of her, now so calm, rising for retribution from the grave!" His blood froze, his hair stood erect; he cast a hurried, shrinking glance round the twilight of the darkened room: and with a feeble cry covered his white face with his trembling hands! ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... to these cities, summoning them to appear before him at his public place of audience in the city, and in the presence of the Roman Senate. The women were exceedingly terrified at receiving this summons. They supposed that death or some other terrible punishment, was to be inflicted upon them in retribution for the offenses committed by their countrymen, and they came into the senate-house, hiding their faces in their robes, and crying out with grief and terror. Romulus bid them calm their fears, assuring them that he intended them no injury. "Your countrymen," said he, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... man who had taken him in would come to a tragic end. He would not have hung that man with his own hands: he was too mild for vengeance. But if he had seen that man hanging he would have said piously, "Fitting retribution," and passed on his way soothed and comforted. Taken in!—taken in at last!—he, Josiah Hartopp, taken in by a fellow ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... however, it was to give utterance, in short and broken sentences, to wild and incoherent fancies, incomprehensible to those who listened, taking, as they did, shape and color from his present experiences; first, as an object of Manitou retribution, now as an object of Manitou regeneration. But always, the moment Bertha, returning all odorous from the glades, entered the room, the tossings and the ravings would cease and he would sink into a deep and peaceful sleep, and so remain throughout ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... think I ought to give myself up to justice. But I felt and feel that I owe my brother reparation, not my country the opportunity of retribution. It cannot be demanded of me to pretermit, because of my crime, the duty more strongly required of me because of the crime. Must I not use my best endeavour to turn aside its evil consequences from others? Was I, were it even for the cleansing of my vile soul, to leave ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... attempted to throw open the sash of his window, to discover the import of this unusual disturbance of the nocturnal stillness of Wimbledon. Good Deacon Allen, who was lying on his deaf ear, became restless, and visions of the final retribution and doom of the wicked harassed his slumbers. Suddenly he awoke, and dismal groans and unearthly rumblings struck his terrified ear. "Sally! Sally!" said he, leaping from bed and giving his sleeping spouse a vigorous shake, "why sleepest thou? ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... cruelty of the act, but it will be of no avail. I grant that I am doing you an injustice, and you will assail me with tears and entreaties, but, when my stoical indifference renders them useless, you will threaten me with future retribution, and cry out that God will never permit such injustice; but I shall not pause, nor relent. I am no better, nor yet worse, than others. Here, in a Christian community, deeds similar to mine are perpetrated every day, and strong-handed might, reeking ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... harm," he said at last. "We will see what can be done. I'll take the proper steps. It can be done legally and verified by the other witnesses. The butler identifies her, you say. It's a curious case of retribution. I can't help imagining Mahr's feelings when he recognized her voice. Is your patient at all dangerous otherwise?" He addressed himself to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... We believe he contracted an affection for some other girl, and for her sake jilted your mother. If so, retribution fit and proper followed on his perfidy, because he brought no wife later on to grace his home. Doubtless he was betrayed in his turn. That was ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... nevertheless too little in the foreground, so that the worship of the divine, as in the older nature-worship, especially in the feasts in honor of Dionysus and Aphrodite, was marked by immoral practices. The conception of a future life, which taken in connection with a future retribution has a moral tendency, had but little attraction for the Greek, who rejoiced in the glory of the earth, and saw in nature and in man the kingdom of the divine. The passage from the earlier poetical nature-worship to the worship of the divine in human ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... to be cast off, and slid down into the stern to take my place. Then the oars fell with a splash, and away we went over the ruddy sea to try and save all we could of the wretches upon whom so terrible a retribution had come. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... Nancy? Very well, early bed, of course"—and she chalked up Nancy's name with "Bed at eight-thirty." Judith and Josephine were treated in like manner; not that they minded very much, for bed at eight-thirty had a soothing sound. But Madam Retribution was ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... and again it burst upon Europe with its words of fire. We all know how the Republic which was then established was soon suppressed in blood by the gang of adventurers presided over by Napoleon the Little. But the day of retribution came, and the empire went the way of all tyrannies. On its ruins the Republic has been established anew, and now it reckons in its service and among its champions the best intellects and the noblest characters in France; ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... informed of the bequest, a fact which he supposed was known only to himself, had unnerved him. And the failure of his attempt to get the letter and thus destroy all evidence of the trust fund, had caused him to be seized with a great fear lest retribution should be ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... Republic. There is a very good proverb, Citizen-Deputy," he added, once more addressing Deroulede, "which you seem to have forgotten, and that is that the pitcher which goes too often to the well breaks at last. You have conspired against the liberties of the people for the past ten years. Retribution has come to you at last; the people of France have come to their senses. The National Convention wants to know what treason you are hatching between these four walls, and it has deputed me to find out all there is ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... here means, not any kind of religious belief, but that theological faith which the Tridentine Council calls "the beginning, the foundation, and the root of all justification."(559) Mere intellectual assent to the existence of God, immortality, and retribution would not be sufficient for salvation, even if elevated to the supernatural sphere and transfigured by grace. This is evident from the condemnation, by Pope Innocent XI, of the proposition that "Faith in a ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... than to adopt (as they actually did) Virgil's own words, and talk of Tartarus, Styx, and Phlegethon, as indisputable Christian entities. They were not aware that the Buddhists of the far East had held much the same theory of endless retribution several centuries before; and that Dante, with his various bolge, tenanted each by its various species of sinners, was merely re-echoing the horrors which are to be seen painted on the walls of any Buddhist temple, ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... fate threatens the late crew of the Chilian barque, in horror equalling that to which those left aboard of her have been consigned. Well may they deem it a retribution—that God's hand is upon them, meting out a punishment apportioned ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... of living. He often did this, using his eyes at the same time with the utmost assiduity. All that he learned deepened the sad impression he had formed, and he saw with unerring prevision the appalling retribution ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... particular. The relations which every individual student sustains to God and to eternity, call imperiously and aloud, that the great principles of moral obligation, the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, the methods of the Divine administration, and the solemnities of eternal retribution, should be kept before him, in all their significancy, and enforced by the constraining motives of the gospel of Jesus Christ, without which all secondary authority and influence will be comparatively vain. The relations ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... desires at the expense of other men. But after their gratification when past and weaker impressions are judged by the ever-enduring social instinct, and by his deep regard for the good opinion of his fellows, retribution will surely come. He will then feel remorse, repentance, regret, or shame; this latter feeling, however, relates almost exclusively to the judgment of others. He will consequently resolve more or less firmly to act differently for the future; and this is conscience; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... the Ariel of the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM; and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in the Tempest. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with the sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... that mixed kind of government which Scipio has been commending. Thus justice, according to these facts, is not the daughter of nature or conscience, but of human imbecility. For when it becomes necessary to choose between these three predicaments, either to do wrong without retribution, or to do wrong with retribution, or to do no wrong at all, it is best to do wrong with impunity; next, neither to do wrong nor to suffer for it; but nothing is more wretched than to struggle incessantly between the wrong we inflict and that we receive. Therefore, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... pianos, shattered pictures, slaughtered stock, and vile inscriptions, all exhibit a predatory and violent side to the paradoxical Boer character. [Footnote: More than once I have heard the farmers in the Free State acknowledge that the ruin which had come upon them was a just retribution for ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bark. The violence of the wrench upset it to its foundations; it tottered, swayed, and suddenly descended. The girls picked up Raymonde out of a cloud of dust and a mass of touchwood. By all strict rules of retribution she ought to have been hurt, but as a matter of fact she was only a little bruised, considerably choked with pulverized wood, and very much astonished. When she recovered her presence of mind, she set to work to break off pieces ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... exacerbated ethnic tensions culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Since then most of the refugees have returned to Rwanda. Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... letter in her hand. All pretence of incredulity was gone. She began to walk stormily up and down. Doris sank back in her chair, watching her, conscious of the most strangely mingled feelings, a touch of womanish triumph indeed, a pleasing sense of retribution, but, welling up through it, something profound and tender. If he should ever write such a letter to a stranger, while his mother ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... fallen that if he slip his foot nobody will take him by the hand?—Whoever sowed the seed of vice and expected a virtuous produce, pampered a vain brain and encouraged an idle whim. Take the cotton from thy ear and do mankind justice, for if thou refusest them justice there is a day of retribution. The sons of Adam are members one of another, for in their creation they have a common origin. If the vicissitudes of fortune involve one member in pain, all the other members will feel a sympathy. Thou, who art indifferent to other men's affliction, if they call thee a ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... highly criminal to be contented with the religion which our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to us as the most precious of possessions, and which it would have broken their hearts if they had foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal pains the just retribution of what at worst is but indifference ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... with a sinking heart. The ship was a stolen ship; the stores, whether from initial carelessness or ill administration during the voyage, were insufficient to carry them to any port except back to Papeete; and there retribution waited in the shape of a gendarme, a judge with a queer-shaped hat, and the horror of distant Noumea. Upon that side there was no glimmer of hope. Here, at the island, the dragon was roused; Attwater with his men and his Winchesters ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not always that retribution so quickly overtakes the wrongdoer," said Melville. "St. Louis will hardly be proud of the ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... a sensational homicide occurs, the aim of the editors of these papers is—not to see that a swift and sure retribution is visited upon the guilty, or that a prompt and unqualified vindication is accorded to the innocent, but, on the contrary, so to handle the matter that as many highly colored "stories" as possible can be ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... moment the Colonel hurried from the spot. Horror possessed him; he felt no less than a murderer. Again he walked and walked. Retribution had overtaken him. The accursed habit that had disgraced him for twenty years had wrought its punishment. Plunged into despair he plodded along the streets, till at length, out of his stupefaction, came ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... satisfied with the self-wrought retribution on Stukely. It ranged lower, and it ranged higher. It condescended to spurn the tool of a tool. Manourie, too, had to publish his apology. He called God to witness that Stukely had bribed him to lay traps for Ralegh, and to put into his mouth malcontent speeches. All the evil he told ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... would have been to other men, to one who had been a wanderer for the greater part of his life. At the best it was a painful and dreary ending for so vigorous a life, and unless we pitilessly regard it as a retribution for his moral defects, it is some comfort to think that the old man's infirmities and anxieties were not aggravated by the pressure of hopeless and helpless poverty. Nor do I think that he was as distressed as he represented to his son-in-law by apprehensions of ruin to his family ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... death to many unoffending persons. Possessed of power and filled with pride, thou hast, before this, slain many Rishis living in the woods, and insulted the very gods. Thou hast slain also many great kings and many weeping women. For those transgressions of thine, retribution is about to overtake thee! I will slay thee with thy counsellors. Fight and show thy courage![59] O wanderer of the night, behold the power of my bow, although I am but a man! Release Sita, the daughter ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... about it more of the desire to drown unpleasant thoughts and haunting fears than of spontaneous exultation or mirth; and their drunkenness seemed but a garment, thrown over the head to shut out the approaching spectre of Roman retribution. All Capua presented to her the spectacular results of a turbulent democracy exalted to power; for the vagaries of the Roman plebeians seemed as nothing beside the unbridled insolence of this populace. Here was Pacuvius ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... what I saw was a reality or some hallucination of the mind, such as the imagination of a sleeper conjures up, but from the exclamations I heard around me I was soon convinced that the pirate crew who had effected all the mischief we had witnessed had met with a sudden and just retribution for their crimes, and that they and their ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... alone. There are many things I like about the Catholic church, but why, oh, why is it so silent as a general thing on the liquor traffic? Why are so many of its members in this devil's work? Oh! what a retribution will be theirs when it will be proven that instead of clothing the naked they have robbed children of clothes. Instead of feeding the hungry they have allowed them to starve because their bread was taken to buy drink. They sent souls to prison and ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation



Words linked to "Retribution" :   penalty, retaliation, payback, vengeance, revenge, correction



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