"Ferocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Saintonge, Agenois, Perigord, and the Limousin were nominally under the English crown. But the people did not bear their subjection with patience, and often rose in revolt, and their revolts were put down with ferocity. As to the Barons and Seigneurs of Guyenne, they took which side suited their momentary convenience, and shifted their allegiance as seemed most profitable to them. But the worst season was after the Treaty of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... where there is a gang"—and went "to reside at Parkgate." Parkgate in this way became a resort of sea-faring men without parallel in the kingdom—a "nest" whose hornet bands were long, and with good reason, notorious for their ferocity and aggressiveness. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1446—Capt. Ayscough, 17 Nov. 1780.] An attempt to establish a rendezvous here in 1804 proved a failure. The seamen fled, no "business" could be done, and officer and gang were ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... cables, and it was found to be stronger than Baltic hemp. On account of the ferocious character of the Maoris, the Sydney Government sent several vessels to open communication with the tribes before permitting private individuals to embark in the trade. The ferocity attributed to the natives was not so much a part of their personal character as the result of their habits and beliefs. They were remarkable for great energy of mind and body, foresight, and self-denial. Their average height was about ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... we hurried to the house, surrounded the kitchen table and fell upon our boiled beef and potatoes with such ferocity that in fifteen minutes our meal was over. There was no ceremony and very little talking till the hid wolf was appeased. Then came a heavenly half-hour of rest on the cool grass in the shade of the trees, a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... from the ferocity in Rathburn's tone and manner. That menacing message was again in ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... sixteen companions to make a journey hither. In the following years, similar expeditions were repeated in greater force, till Kamtschatka was subjected and made tributary to the Russian crown. The conquest of this country cost many Russian lives; and from the ferocity of the conquerors, and the difficulty of maintaining discipline amongst troops so scattered, ended in nearly exterminating the Kamtschatkans. Although subsequent regulations restrained the disorders of the wild Cossacks, the population is still very thin; but ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... dropped as if his neck were cracked. He saw what it all meant and would mean. He would have sprawled to the floor, but he caught sight of the pitiful face of his old love still white with the half-death of her swoon. He clenched his will with ferocity, resolving that he must not break, could not, would not break. He laid a hand on his son's knee and said, appealingly, in a low tone, as if he were the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... miracles how the high beatitude consequent upon that wonderful event of Dorothy's love put Richard in a vaguely belligerent mood. It was an amiable ferocity at that, and showed in nothing more dire than just an eye of overt challenge to all the world. Also, he dilated and swelled in sheer masculine pride of himself, and no longer walked the streets, but stalked. Naturalists will not be surprised ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... month of August last the Sioux Indians in Minnesota attacked the settlements in their vicinity with extreme ferocity, killing indiscriminately men, women, and children. This attack was wholly unexpected, and therefore no means of defense had been provided. It is estimated that not less than 800 persons were killed by the Indians, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... upon his countenance, did as they were bidden: they lifted up the box, raised the door, and out burst above twenty of the largest wildest rats the well stocked barns of Mowbray Hall could afford. Their numbers, their squealing, their ferocity, their attempts to escape, and the bounds they gave from side to side struck the whole parsonage house community with a panic. The women screamed; the rector foamed; the squire hallooed; and the men ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... into an argument about the human intellect, and you was to say to Johnson that a splendid illustration of the superiority of the human intellect was to be found in the power of the human eye to restrain the ferocity of a wild animal. And s'posin' Johnson was to remark that that was all bosh, because nobody could hold a wild animal with the human eye, and you should declare that you could hold the savagest beast that was ever born if you could once ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... strangled himself in the capital of Yuennan. He is said to have been a Christian, as also many of his adherents, in consequence of which, the Jesuit father, A. Koffler, bestowed upon him the title of the Constantine of China. In view of the general character for ferocity with which the Manchus are usually credited, it is pleasant to be able to record that when the official history of the Ming Dynasty came to be written, a Chinese scholar of the day, sitting on the historical commission, pleaded that ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... the one thing I had particularly in mind to say, of Fontenette: that, as Senda remarked—for the above is an abridgment—"I rasser see chalousie vissout cause, san cause vissout chalousie;" and that even while I was witness of the profound ferocity of his jealousy when roused, and more and more as time passed on, I was impressed ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch—as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward. Nobody is altogether bad; the scoundrel who has grown rich by underpaying the workmen in his factory will sometimes endow an asylum for indigent seamen. To oppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of a neighbor—to skin those ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Antiochus the brains of a foolish ostrich, he would have read in the fate of Heraclammon, the rich traitor of Tyana, his own. If I err not, he has indiscreetly enough thrust himself into a lion's den. If Aurelian is fierce, his is the grand and terrific ferocity ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... if after some supreme effort of their physical force, they stood and looked at each other. Each to the other's eyes was incredibly transformed. Monica could not have imagined such brutal ferocity in her husband's face, and she herself had a wild recklessness in her eyes, a scorn and abhorrence in all the lines of her countenance, which made Widdowson feel as if a stranger were ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... be termed prepossessing, but it certainly did not denote the ruthless ferocity which the nature of the task he had undertaken would require, and which he exercised in its accomplishment. Nature had not formed him to be a monster gloating in blood; the Republic had altered the disposition ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... been equally at home in a pirate crew or at a land massacre. Enormous black brows and heavy moustache accentuated his ferocity, the particolored Revolutionary garb and in particular the red-and-white striped pantaloons gave him a bizarre appearance ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... But only a little; the hateful nature of the spectacle hurried me away, at the same time that others were hurrying for- ward. As I turned my back upon it I reflected that human beings are cruel brutes, though I could not flatter myself that the ferocity of the thing was ex- clusively French. In another country the concourse would have been equally great, and the moral of it all seemed to be that military penalties are as terrible ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... for the rebel officer at once proceeded to prove that he was no effeminate character, who depended upon a sword, pistol, or other weapon, to fight his battles with, but could, if occasion required, defend himself with his naked arm. He sprang upon Somers with the ferocity of a tiger. The latter fired; but the sudden movement of the former impaired his aim, and the ball whistled harmlessly over the head of the rebel. The desperate officer attempted to gain possession ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... of national genius and civil culture it became more and more debased. So far from being able to uphold the existing morality of the best Pagan teachers, it became barbarized itself, and sank into deep superstition and manifold moral corruption. From ferocious men it learnt ferocity. When civil society began to coalesce into order, Christianity also turned for the better, and presently learned to use the wisdom, first of Romans, then of Greeks: such studies opened men's eyes to new apprehensions of the Scripture and of its doctrine. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... when he heard about this hawk, said that a plain countryman had no business with such a bird. He declared that he would go to his house and take it away from him. This act, so characteristic of the despotic arrogance which marked Richard's character, shows that the reckless ferocity for which he was so renowned was not softened or alleviated by any true and genuine nobleness or generosity. For a rich and powerful king thus to rob a poor, helpless peasant, and on such a pretext too, was as base a deed as we can well conceive a royal personage ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... one legal form of Church government, but all other forms, Episcopalian and Separatist, were to be ruthlessly put down. For heresy there was the punishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind and reckless ferocity. "I deny," wrote Cartwright, "that upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of death.... Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this be bloody and extreme, I am content to be so counted with ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... The old mastiff of Verucchio and the young.] Malatesta and Malatestino his son, lords of Rimini, called, from their ferocity, the mastiffs of Verruchio, which was the name ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and spat full in the doctor's face. Dr. Bird fell back for an instant under the ferocity of her attack and long nails ripped the skin from his face. Denberg stepped forward ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... that maddeningly unreadable cross-eyed expression of cold ferocity which the scars gave his ugly face. We had agreed on one-third each, the other two to split the other third between them. I was footing the bills, Jake was nearly broke. He had found the stuff, and tried to hold out for half, me a quarter, the other two to split ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... passed in wildest excesses, whose amatory exploits have echoed through Europe, and who knows no higher human motive of action than the prosecution of selfish and sensual enjoyment. His good qualities are dauntless personal courage, which, however, often sinks into brutal ferocity, and occasional touches of generous emotion towards his friends. The young girl's heart-strings are again set in tune, and made to quiver in harmony with those of the determined conqueror. Just as her soul is yielded, the intelligence that her lover has a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited animals—animals, however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... some ambitious sovereign will, totally overthrow all the bulwarks of the constitution; for it is not to be supposed that a prince of high spirit will tamely submit to be thwarted in all his measures, abused and insulted by a populace of unbridled ferocity, when he has it in his power to crush all opposition under his feet with the concurrence of the legislature. He said, he should always consider the liberty of the press as a national evil, while it enabled the vilest reptile to soil the lustre ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... be uppermost in all minds, shocked by the ferocity of the civil war; first, a truce to the bloodshed (See App. IX, Sect. 3)-second, the creation of a new Government. There was no longer any talk of "destroying the Bolsheviki"-and very little about excluding them from the Government, except from the Populist Socialists ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... force lay in the dramatic genius with which Defoe personated the temper of a thorough-going High-flier, putting into plain and spirited English such sentiments as a violent partisan would not dare to utter except in the unguarded heat of familiar discourse, or the half-humorous ferocity of intoxication. Have done, he said, addressing the Dissenters, with this cackle about Peace and Union, and the Christian duties of moderation, which you raise now that you find "your day is over, your power gone, and the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the ferocity thus exhibited by the royal pamphleteer against a rival; especially when one can find no crime in 'The Balance' save a stinging and well-merited criticism ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... softening more and more, as if under the influence of recollections mournful but not hostile. At length she said in a low voice, "Poor Jasper! Is all the vain ambition that made you so false shrunk into a ferocity that finds you so powerless? Would your existence, after all, have been harder, poorer, meaner, if your faith had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from her so violently that he tumbled backward down the steps to the very bottom, where, unnerved by the ferocity of the attack and his head bruised by the fall, he felt his consciousness escape like gas from a punctured balloon. When found the next morning, he was barely covered by the old sin-eater's rags, while near ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Arabs. They live under conditions the most unfavourable to their development; on every side they are hemmed in by foes. Constantly falling victims to the cruelty of the slave-hunters, it is no wonder that they regard with suspicion, and too often treat with ferocity, the strangers who traverse their land; not unnaturally they implicate them in the traffic which ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... seditious by the police, who made a dash for those who uttered them. In another instant the man with the red turban would have saved the agents the trouble of arresting the nearest person had not Jean grasped the baton. The brute face had taken on a flush of red ferocity. His blow restrained, the man spat in the face of his ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... tiger pacing up and down in his cage, with his eyes riveted on the human faces before him. He has observed how he will single out some individual, and finally stopping short in his rounds, turn on him with a look of such intense ferocity as makes a man's blood stand still, and his very breath come thick and hard, as he momentarily expects the beast will tear away the bars of the cage and leap forth on the obnoxious person. Now, Andy's fine, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... murder. This woman appears to have been seized with a perfectly demoniacal mania for blood and revenge. Aided by those in authority, who feared lest a widespread conspiracy had been formed, she seized, on the slightest suspicion, hundreds of innocent victims and put them to death with all the ferocity of a famished beast. Members of nearly a hundred noble families, and at least a thousand persons of lower rank, of every age and of both sexes, fell beneath her savage vengeance. She is said to have further whetted her appetite for horrors by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a better man lay before ye.' From the haggard features, and matted red hair and beard, partly grizzled with age, his father and others present recognised the head of Hector of the Mist, a well-known leader among the outlaws, redoubted for strength and ferocity, who had been active in the murder of the unfortunate Forester, uncle to Allan, and had escaped by a desperate defence and extraordinary agility, when so many of his companions were destroyed. We were all, it may be believed, struck with surprise, but Allan refused to gratify our curiosity; ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... tell you. They argued a little, but I told them I was on their business as well as my own, and they let me walk in. They're awfully good fellows, really, and you all exaggerate their ferocity.' ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... time changing to a political despotism, and nepotism was assuming the character which later was to give Caesar Borgia all his ferocity. Sixtus IV, a mighty being and a character of a much more powerful cast than even Alexander VI, was at war with Florence, where he had countenanced the Pazzi conspiracy for the murder of the Medici. He had made Girolamo Riario a great prince in Romagna, and later Alexander VI planned a similar ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... who met his charge half way. With the vigor and alacrity of the latter the reader is already acquainted, but he was no match for the herculean strength of the double-jointed ferryman, who, with the ferocity of the boar he so much resembled, thus furiously attacked him. Nevertheless, as may be imagined, he was not disposed to yield up his life tamely. He saw at once the villain's murderous intentions, and, well aware of his prodigious ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... horror and agony lighted by the torture fire, with sufferings the most exquisite of which the human mind can conceive. When these were inflicted on individuals, it was sufficiently heartrending, but when a whole community fell a victim to their ferocity, as was the case in what is called "The Massacre of Lachine," the details are too horrible for even the imagination to dwell upon. Standing on the river bank, or "shooting" the rapids in the steamer, ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... verse, he surpassed himself. He glowered round upon us with a look of such concentrated ferocity that, but for our being forewarned as to the German method of comic singing, we should have been nervous; and he threw such a wailing note of agony into the weird music that, if we had not known it was a funny song, we ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... his comforts, and too happy to call herself his, was best. Was it not, after one particular step had been taken, the manliest life he could have shaped out? Or did he imagine it so at this moment, because he was a coward, and because pride, and vanity, and ferocity alternately had to screw him up to meet the consequences of his acts, instead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these verses the central picture of calm Christian faith and patient courage, contrasted on the one hand with the ferocity and excitement of heathen fanatical devotees, and on the other with the prudent regard to their own safety of the Asiarchs, who had no such faith in Diana as to lead them to joining the rioters, nor such faith in Paul's message as to lead them to oppose the tumult, or to stand by his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... apes: the lower portion—jaws, lips, and teeth—salient; the nostrils opening at almost right angles, the eyes tiny and bright, the forehead seamed and wrinkled—unnaturally old. Their general expression was of simian cunning and a ferocity that ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... awoke it was morning, but there was no change in the wind, except in an increase of its ferocity. The roar was still steady, high-keyed, relentless. A myriad new voices seemed to have joined the screaming tumult. The ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... The mare crashed into the rockaway on one side and the bay shattered the swingletree on the other with the forewheel of our buggy. The old plow-horses plunged feebly, then lowered their heads in native dejection, while the Brocks shrieked, root and branch. Never have I seen such a look of feline ferocity upon the human countenance as when Brother Brock scrambled down from his seat into the road and, with his mouse-catching eyes, added William Asbury Thompson, preacher, to Charles Jason Weaver, loafer, drunkard and horse ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... chief charges are that Scott does not insist enough on the hardships and brutalities of the persecution, and that the ferocity of the Covenanters is overstated. He does not admit that the picture drawn of "the more rigid Presbyterians" is just. But it is almost impossible to overstate the ferocity of the High Flyers' conduct and creed. Thus Wodrow, a witness not quite unfriendly to the rigid Presbyterians, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... during this performance Black Bart had half risen from his haunches and a growl swelled almost inaudibly in his throat, but now he stalked around the table and pushed his narrow head between Dan's shoulder and the stallion. A snarl of incredible ferocity made Satan turn, but without the slightest dread, apparently. For an instant the two stood nose to nose, Black Bart a picture of snarling danger and Satan with curiously pricking ears and bright ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... leaned forward, peering, while holding tight reins. The wheels of the buggy bumped often over out-cropping bowlders. A window shone forth, a simple square of topaz on a great black hill-side. Four dogs charged the buggy with ferocity, and when it did not promptly retreat, they circled courageously around the flanks, baying. A door opened near the window in the hill-side, and a man came and stood on ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... that extends for three miles along Big Sioux River, Iowa, was hewn through the stone by a spirit that took the form of a dragon. Such were its size and ferocity that the Indians avoided the place, lest they should fall victims ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... up, and the gossip of Council and Legislature churned into a story that pleased every one. What Hamilton's attack on Adams did for Federalists, "Aristides'" reply to Cheetham did for the Republicans; but the latter wrote with a ferocity unknown to the pages of the great Federalist's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... assisting at a dog-fight. The scene was one of indescribable confusion. In the center of the tumult the dogs, obscure in a cloud of dust, rolled over and over, howling, yarring, tearing each other with sickening ferocity. About them the hardly less ferocious men shouted, cursed and struck, encouraged the animals with sibilant utterances and threatened with awful forms of death and perdition all who tried to put an ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacrifice, unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their ardour ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to the present, Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues have the semblance of vice, and whose very capacities ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we had to encounter on our journey down the river, excepting man, were the mosquitoes—which swarmed all along the river borders and pestered us with their bites— and an exceedingly small fish that seemed to be in myriads in parts of the stream, and to make up in absolute ferocity for their want of size. This savageness of nature was of course but their natural instinctive desire for food, but it was dangerous in the extreme, as I knew later on. Our experience ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... of the world from that odious but scientific oppression, by which it had been so long held in misery, and which was repeatedly found, by very direful experience, to be too strong for either of them separately. It was not till the enthusiastic indignation of vulgar minds, and the cordial ferocity of some of the rudest of the allied tribes, had been amalgamated with the disciplined valour and the love of most enviable honour, conspicuous in veteran warriors, that the blasting demon of destruction knew his policy to be unravelled, or felt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... one time the main route of traffic between Tallahassee and St. Augustine. (Interestingly enough, the road is at least 30 miles southwest of St. Augustine where it passes through Grandin; the reason for cutting it in such a wide circle, Coker says was because of the ferocity of the Seminoles in the swamps north and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... fact, that in connection with one of its turrets there was—at the command of Edward I. "the greatest of the Plantagenets," (as his latest biographer boastfully terms him)—constructed, some six centuries ago, a cage of iron and wood, in which he immured, with Bomba-like ferocity, for four weary years, a poor prisoner, and that prisoner a woman—the Countess of Buchan—whose frightful crime consisted in having assisted at the coronation of her liege sovereign, Robert the Bruce. In the construction of the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... than to her companion. "These two men are together, and there are bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally obstinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. If I refuse to pay this money his ferocity will be multiplied by a hundredfold. There's little use in discussing that matter. The ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... none on you got no paper from the Escort—you planted it last night, eh? Jist show us where, and you shan't be touched at all, nor that little wretch yonder, what keeps screeching so; but if you don't—" and here his natural ferocity mastered him, and he wound up with a volley of curses, in the midst of which our ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... nature and history. An observation which he made, not without a certain flash in his light eyes and a transient uncovering of the teeth, on the Irish type of female beauty suddenly suggested to me a stanza of an ancient Polish ballad, very full of milk-and-blood imagery, of alternating ferocity and voluptuousness. This I quoted to the astounded foreigner in the vernacular, and this it was that metamorphosed his mere perfection of civility into sudden warmth, and, in fact, procured me the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... than otherwise in rising families: happening to be acquainted with several whose spirit prevents their settling down to any grovelling occupation, and only displays itself in a tendency to cultivate moustachios, and look fierce; and although moustachios and ferocity are both very pretty things in their way, and very much to be commended, we confess to a desire to see them bred at the owner's proper cost, rather than at ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... wolves followed the man and his horse into the inclosure, when fortunately, the gate swung back, and caught them all as it were in a trap. Finding themselves caught in this manner, the wolves seemed to lose all their courage and ferocity. They shrunk away, and tried to hide themselves instead of pursuing their prey, and they were all killed with very ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... straight, elegant and unassuming in his manners, has fine, regular features, and possesses as mild and intelligent a countenance as is to be found in more civilized life. His eyes are dark, expressive and beaming with goodness, instead of ferocity. ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... find his way into a camp and destroy every object made by the hand of man with a thoroughness akin to genius, and what he cannot destroy he will carry to a great distance and carefully conceal. As his ferocity is equal to his craftiness, he is very appropriately termed the Indian Devil.] and others the Wolverine, who is exceeding subtle above the beasts of the forest, and who is gifted with more evil mischief than all of them in one. And when the Weasels called to him ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... excuse my staring at you?" he inquired with what Rosy had called his "awful, agreeable smile." "When I saw you last you were a fierce nine-year-old American child. I use the word 'fierce' because—if you'll pardon my saying so—there was a certain ferocity about you." ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the huge man, like some beast that had been long held back from its prey, gave a leap forward, his face revealing terrible ferocity; it was a tiger that glares, plunges and devours. I saw something shining, brilliant and instantaneous as an electric flash; then there was the sound of a heavy blow. The spy sprang clean out of the hands that were holding him, high up in the air; and fell, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... confiscating his goods to the community. It is true, the family of a murdered person are expected to pursue the homicide with all the tenacity of a Corsican vendetta, but the tribal laws are kept singularly clean from the ferocity of individual habits. A strange thing, indicating probably a derivation from times at least as early as Augustine, is that the Kabyle code (a mixture, like all primitive codes, of law and religion) is called by the Greek term canon (kanoun). ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... ferocity or images of pain, the art of the twelfth century had no use except to give a higher value to their images of love. The figures on the west portal of Chartres are alive with the spirit of Adam's poetry, but it is the spirit of the Virgin. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Brighton, to display the talents of his redoubtable baboon. I have heard Mr Cross say, that the king placed his hands on the arm of one of the ladies of the Court, at which Jerry began to show such unmistakable signs of ferocity, that the mild, kind menagerist was glad to get Jerry removed, or at least the king and his courtiers to withdraw. He showed his great teeth and grinned and growled, as a baboon in a rage is apt to do. Jerry was a powerful beast, especially in his fore-legs or arms. When he ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to himself. His determination to learn the art and craft of war was almost savage in ferocity. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... outside, the mob which the uproar had attracted hooted me and followed me, and no doubt I should have been torn to pieces if I had not escaped into a church, which I left by another door a quarter of an hour later. My fright saved me, for I knew the ferocity of the Provencals, and I took care not to reply a word to the storm of abuse which poured on me. I believe that I was never in greater danger than on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... slamming the door after him. He was a man with thick short red hair, and an abundance of very red beard. And his face was red,—and, as it seemed to Phineas, his very eyes. There was something in the countenance of the man which struck him almost with dread,—something approaching to ferocity. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... giving them all the old worn-out horses, and they earn a little by making horse-rugs and other articles of riding-gear. These Indians are considered civilised; but what their character may have gained by a lesser degree of ferocity, is almost counterbalanced by their entire immorality. Some of the younger men are, however, improving; they are willing to labour, and a short time since a party went on a sealing-voyage, and behaved very well. They were ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... time the wrecked hall has remained tenantless and unrepaired. Grey and gaunt like a house in battle-scarred Belgium, it stands a mute testimony of the labor-hating ferocity of the lumber trust. Repeated efforts have since been made to destroy the remains with fire. The defense had tried without avail to introduce a photograph of the ruin as evidence to prove that the second hall was raided in a similar manner on Armistice ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... short, for Bogle had fastened on the lad's throat with the ferocity of a bloodhound. He shook him to and fro, dragged him half across the room, and then pitched him roughly on ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... pricked sharply forward, as if to catch the slightest sound. Spasms, as the car swerved and vibrated, ran along her frame. More horrid than all, the lips slowly contracted, and the white, sharp-edged teeth stood uncovered, giving an indescribable look of ferocity to the partially opened mouth. The car suddenly reeled as it dashed around a curve, swaying her almost off her feet, and, as a contortion shook her, she recovered herself, and rearing upward as high ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... moment he saw him coming. When he caught children, he would immediately fly to the island which lay towards the hot winds. Moshup, angry that he could not catch him, and fearing that, if the creature hatched others of equal appetite and ferocity, the race of Indians would become extinct, one day waded into the water after him, and continued in pursuit till he had crossed to the island which sent the hot winds, and which is now called Nope. There, under a great tree, he found the bones of all the children ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the least aptitude in war. It was a profession was not born for, and for which he could not qualify himself by study. During the last fifteen or twenty years of his life, he was accused of something more than fierceness and ferocity. Wanderings were noticed in his conduct, which were not exhibited in his own house alone. Entering one morning into the apartment of the Marechale de Noailles (she herself has related this to me) as her bed was being made, and there being only the counterpane to put on, he stopped ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... strongly to the happy ending]. I wish that your actress had been carried away from Kendal [her critical lover, who worships herself, but despises her art] altogether, carried away by the current of her artistic life, the sudden growth of her power, and the excitement, the ferocity and egotism (those of the artist realizing success, I mean; I allude merely to the normal dose of those elements) which the effort to create, to "arrive" (once she had had a glimpse of her possible successes) would have brought with it. (Excuse that abominable ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... huge height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat, hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and gushed in a dark ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... tranquil reign, collected a noble library, and passed his leisure in learned or religious conversation. A man of the same class was Giovanni II Bentivoglio of Bologna (1463-1508), whose policy was determined by that of the Este and the Sforza. What ferocity and bloodthirstiness is found, on the other hand, among the Varani of Camerino, the Malatesta of Rimini, the Manfreddi of Faenza, and above all among the Baglioni of Perugia. We find a striking picture of the events in the last-named ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... look happy in their possession. His eyes gleamed fiercely; his heavy chin protruded savagely, as though deliberately insulting Main Street and the northward universe. Even his small derby, which he seldom doffed save at the hour for taps, contrived to bespeak a certain ferocity. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was fought and lost during the three days intervening between the thirteenth and sixteenth of December. Burnside's gallant army, in the midst of darkness, rain and tempestuous wind, came reeling back from a conflict of terrible ferocity and fatality. Six times in one day Meagher's gallant Irishmen were literally hurled against Marye's Heights, a point of almost impregnable strength, and which, even if carried, would still have exposed them to the commanding fire of other and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... that the restoration of the Moonstone to its place on the forehead of the Indian idol, is the motive and the justification of that sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now. Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats, and will use it with the ferocity of tigers. How you have escaped them I can't imagine," says the eminent traveller, lighting his cheroot again, and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. "You have been carrying the Diamond backwards and forwards, here and in London, and you are ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... was still blazing with abominable ferocity at half-past twelve when I crossed the threshold of the Taj Mahal Stores and button-holed the first peripatetic marquis ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... Micawber would say, to bed-quilts and pillow-cases—the most gorgeous bed-quilts and pillow-cases—made of patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the awesome strength and ferocity of the Lembarene strain of mosquitoes, but of stout, fair-flowered and besprigged chintzes; and you will observe these things are often being sewn with a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... realized by the people. This appointing of the committee is supposed to save time, and yet the speakership contest consumes weeks, sometimes months. It will grow in ferocity." ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... you won't, eh?" stormed the captain, his feminine air and aspect completely lost in a mien of scowling ferocity. "By the living—but what's the use of swearing! Down with him to the sweat box, and if that don't tame him ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... governmental authority per se, but only to the abuse of authority by subordinates who disgrace their master and his. And in assuming the leadership of the insurgent rabble he thinks to restrain their ferocity and thus earn the thanks of the supreme authority.—It remained for Schiller to convert this rude self-helper in the age of expiring feudalism into a savage anarchist in the boastful ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... where to look, and was almost crying with vexation. Gerasim got up all of a sudden, stretched out his gigantic hand, laid it on the wardrobe-maid's head, and looked into her face with such grim ferocity that her head positively flopped upon the table. Every one was still. Gerasim took up his spoon again and went on with his cabbage-soup. 'Look at him, the dumb devil, the wood-demon!' they all muttered in under-tones, while the wardrobe-maid got up and went out into the maids' ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the subject of The Sale of St. Thomas. The dialogue between Thomas and the captain gives opportunity for description and metaphor almost Elizabethan in their ferocity, though the reflections of Thomas have a spiritual quality which is entirely ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... come with almost unbelievable ferocity. The houses had not been completed when the first hurricanes came, and they were smashed into toothpicks. The winds came, vicious winds full of dust and sleet and ice, wild erratic twisting gales that ripped the village to shreds, tearing off the topsoil that had been broken and ...
— Image of the Gods • Alan Edward Nourse
... men do not exhibit their selfishness and ferocity in the same way; but there are few who do not exhibit both. As for America, Miss Effingham, she is fast getting vices peculiar to herself and her system, and, I think, vices which bid fair to bring her down, ere long, to the common level, although I do not go quite so far in describing her demerits ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to read about them a year or two later. But even to those animals I shall be just, and shall depict their good qualities as well as their preying habits. How many people know that the very worst animal, the tiger, is a better husband and father than many men? Or that the ferocity of the tigress is prompted entirely by her maternal instinct—and that in every case of unusual ferocity yet recorded it was afterward found that there was a helpless cub somewhere near? Hence in subsequent books I shall enter more fully into the causes of animal instincts ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... taken together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. Everything seems out of nature in this chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... for four full years, did contain any bodies of authority and disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not,) such is the levity of those who have expelled everything respectable in their country, such their ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit, their habits of defying everything human and divine, that no engagement would hold with them for three months; nor, indeed, could they cohere together for any purpose of civilized society, if left as they now are. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and stood ready with steel and ball to guard the window by which his men were to enter. A new, wild ferocity was on his face, a new, nervous hardness in his body, as if the latent resolution and strength which a prudent man keeps for a great contest, on which his all may depend, were at last aroused. In such a mood, the man who, governed by interest, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of hypocrisy than in branding France with it; yet the world does not cite Tartuffe as a typical Frenchman as it cites Angelo and Pecksniff as typical Englishmen. We may protest against it as indignantly as the Prussian soldiers protest against their equally universal reputation for ferocity in plunder and pillage, sack and rapine; but there is something in it. If you judge an English statesman, by his conscious intentions, his professions, and his personal charm, you will often find him an amiable, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... of noble natural pity and generosity, wanting. Mohammed makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each called-for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! The War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, to march on that occasion; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget that. Your ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... dust and cobwebs; and the narrow shaft of sunlight that came slanting in at every hour of the day through one of the little windows was always alive with silvery motes. Here Gombauld worked, with a kind of concentrated ferocity, during six or seven hours of each day. He was pursuing something new, something terrific, if only ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... and as she spoke, she raised her head and flung back the thick clusters of soft fair hair that shaded her eyes. The deadly glare of a pair of dark eyes fixed upon her met her terrified gaze, gleaming with sullen ferocity from the angle of the door-post, whence the upper part of the face alone was visible, partly concealed by a mat of tangled, shaggy black hair. Paralyzed with fear, the poor girl neither spoke nor moved; she uttered no cry; but pressing her hands tightly across her breast, as if to still ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... be for the French to blame Rostopchin's ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hungry wolves around the house had shaken the pencil from her fingers—Siberian wolves they were, racing over the arid deserts of debt, large and sharp-toothed, ever increasing in number and ferocity, ready to tear the very door down. There are no wolves like those debt sends against ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... soldiers died, and bravely the more fortunate came on. They tore through the barbed wire with a fiendish frenzy and leaped down on to parts of their enemy's lines. With that mad ferocity which only a Moslem fanatic can display, they plugged their bayonets into the first opposing man. Cold steel is hard to face. Few armies can face it. Only Russians, Britishers, and Japs are good at the game. And these sons of John Bull stood up to ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... and negroes" that must be so fenced in, so guarded against? Why, he would certainly suppose we were monsters, like those fabulous giants or Brobdignagians of olden times, so dangerous to civilized man, from our size, ferocity, and power. Then let him take up our poets, from Pope down to Dana; let him listen to our Fourth of July toasts, and some of the sentimental adulations of social life, and no logic could convince him ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... trundling along like a badger sixty yards ahead. Any creature not easily identified is a scientific possibility in Africa. Therefore we fired at once. One of the bullets hit his foreleg paw. Immediately this astonishing small creature turned and charged us! If his size had equalled his ferocity, he would have been a formidable opponent. We had a lively few minutes. He rushed us again and again, uttering ferocious growls. We had to step high and lively to keep out of his way. Between charges he sat down and tore savagely ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Love He sealed with His life. The cruelty of the Jewish Priesthood, the ignorant ferocity of the mob, and the Roman indifference to barbarian blood, nailed Him to the cross, and He expired ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... It was the battle most famous in early Canadian annals—the Long Sault. All winter Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal had cowered in terror of the coming Iroquois. In imagination the beleaguered garrisons foresaw themselves martyrs of Mohawk ferocity. It was learned that seven hundred of the Iroquois warriors were hovering round the Richelieu opposite Three Rivers. The rest of the braves had passed the winter man-hunting in the Huron country, and were in spring descending the Ottawa to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case,—if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... ready to temporize, when to falter was destruction, as at the time of the casting over of the tea; again in unwise fervor, he would counsel assassination as a proper expedient. Warren, too, could rush into extremes of rashness and ferocity, wishing that he might wade to the knees in blood, and had just reached sober, self-reliant manhood when he was ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... property, simply because of the fidelity to the Constitution and the Union of their fathers. The spirit of the Vendetta, unknown in the Northern States, was frequently shown in the South, where it had long been domesticated with all its Corsican ferocity. It had raged in many instances to the extermination of families, and in many localities to the destruction of peace and the utter defiance of law—not infrequently indeed paralyzing the administration of justice in whole counties. Often seeking and waging open combat with ferocious courage, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of wars were incessant, is well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, there to ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... her hands clasped tightly at her back, the upper part of her body bending forward a little, her thin nostrils expanding and contracting to the force of her hurried breathing like leaves shaken in the wind. The curl of her thin lips added a curious ferocity to the words that passed them. She spoke, only when her face was within a few ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... gorilla; and, therefore, we cannot say whether man has become larger and stronger, or smaller and weaker, than his ancestors. We should, however, bear in mind that an animal possessing great size, strength, and ferocity, and which, like the gorilla, could defend itself from all enemies, would not perhaps have become social: and this would most effectually have checked the acquirement of the higher mental qualities, such as sympathy and the love ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... memory of the man. His fine face softened and set hard by turns. I never knew it so hard. I never knew it so soft. And the same might be said of his voice, now tender as any woman's, now flying to the other extreme of equally unwonted ferocity. But this was toward the end of his tale; the beginning he treated characteristically enough, though I could have wished for a less cavalier account of the island of Elba, where, upon his own showing, he had met ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... was by no means what she had expected, and the ferocity of her attack slackened. Had it been a lynx, or even a bear, her courage would probably not have failed her. Had it been a man, a desperado with knife in hand and murder in his eyes, she would have flown upon him in contemptuous fury. But porcupines ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... brotherhood, united by the tie of a common faith and a common hope, and hereafter to be known to the rest of the world, and to proclaim this unity, under the comprehensive name of Christendom. Baptism therefore was the indispensable condition and forerunner of civilization; and from the peculiar ferocity and the sanguinary superstitions which disfigured the Pagan nations in Central Europe, of which the leaders and the nearest to France were the Saxons, and from the bigotry and arrogant intolerance of the Mahometan nations who menaced her Spanish frontier, it ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... whispered them, 'We are here to protect you in your religions and rights, in your poor consciences and skins.' Upon which hint of the atrocious Russians, the schismatic mind and population one and all rose; and, 'with the cannibal's ferocity, gave way to their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... parallel. Each officer, as he was able to collect twenty or thirty men around him, advanced into the midst of the enemy, where they fought hand to hand, bayonet to bayonet, and sword to sword, with the tumult and ferocity of Homer's combats before the walls of Troy. Attacked unexpectedly in the dark, and surrounded by enemies before we could arrange to oppose them, no order or discipline of war could be preserved. ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... The ferocity of this beast surpasses that of all others, for whilst the lion, the bear and even the tiger and panther have been known to show some feeling of respect, gratitude or fear, the sladan never exhibits one or the other. It would almost seem that in him is concentrated all the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... to attempt a description of Ali, I should speak of his face as large and full; the forehead remarkably broad and open, and traced by many deep furrows; the eye penetrating, yet not expressive of ferocity; the nose handsome and well formed; the mouth and lower part of the face concealed, except when speaking, by his mustachios and the long beard which flows over his breast. His complexion is somewhat lighter ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... leaped into the girl's mind: Supposing such an event lay back of this strange silence about his home and his people? She recalled the ruthless ferocity with which he had broken up a street fight between American and Japanese soldiers one afternoon in Vladivostok. Supposing he had killed someone? But she had to repudiate this theory. No officer in the United States Army could cover ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... men glared at each other. Afterglow and firelight revealed a ferocity in Billy's face and a cool hatred in Charlie's that made Lydia gasp. The shouting of the mob, the beating of the drum was receding toward the road. The flag snapped in ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... drive eight spirited white horses, seated high on one of those gay closed wagons—those that went through the street with that delicious hollow rumble—hearing perchance the velvet tread, or the clawing and snarling of some pent ferocity—a leopard, a lion, what not; to hear each day that muffled, flattened beating of a bass drum and cymbals far within the big tent, quick and still more quickly, denoting to the experienced ear that pink and spangled Beauty danced on the big ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... hardest workers and the most useful members of the community." And in times of war, "they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves at all times, and so far from being an encumbrance on the warriors, they will fight, if need be, as bravely as the men, and with even greater ferocity."[162] This is no exceptional case. The strength of savage women is proved by reports from widely different races, of which all testify to their physical capability and aptness for labour. Schellong,[163] who has carefully studied the Papuans of the German protectorate of New ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... comfortable. At first enclosed in the remains of a Trochus, he changes into that of a Purpura; a little later he seeks asylum in a Whelk. Beside the shelter which these shells assure to the Crustacean, they serve to mask his ferocity, and the prey which approaches confidently what it takes to be an inoffensive Mollusc, becomes ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... an ordinary stature, in complexion copper-coloured, with small, black, vivacious eyes, a rather flat nose, and thick lips; the result of which is an expression of brutal ferocity. Divided into tribes, each one jealous of another, all animated by an unbridled lust of plunder, and ever on the move, their lives are spent in perpetual warfare. The mounted Araucanian is armed with a long ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... higher compliment for Baudelaire than to announce that the latter had discovered a new one. For new shudders are as rare as new vices; antiquity has made them all seem trite. The apt commingling of the horrible and the trivial, pathos and ferocity, is yet the one secret of enduring work—a secret, parenthetically, which Hugo knew ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... nothing. When failure confronted him his mind refused to consider anything but his vital need at the time, and he had supplied that need. And now he grew busy with the future: he saw first the civil suit for restitution, pressed with the ferocity and cunning of one who intended to satisfy a grudge of years; then, perhaps, a criminal prosecution.... But he would fight it! Did they think that such a man was to be overthrown by a breath of air? By a girl, a bank-clerk, and a shyster lawyer? They would find their case difficult to prove in court. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... glee, the savage ferocity aroused by the possession of a few water-white pebbles, set me shuddering. I was ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... Doctor, "this is a very pretty kettle of fish! The Gezireh Palace Hotel is not a hotel at all, it seems to me; it is a lunatic asylum. What with Lady Fulkeward getting herself up as twenty at the age of sixty; and Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle man-hunting with more ferocity than sportsmen hunt tigers; Helen in love, Denzil in love, Gervase in love—dear me! dear me! What a list of subjects for a student's consideration! ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... widow exhibit her drawings,—Livingstone is in raptures, or pretends to be (for he is not an ill-bred man). What a piercing expression flashes from those studies of eyes (in chalk)! what an artistical grouping of legs! what a Saracen's-head-upon-Snow-hill-like ferocity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... reaching out his hand, drew the partridge towards him, knowing the hawk would not leave it; and when he had hold of the jesses, the head was cut from the partridge and opened, for it is the brain the hawk loves; and the ferocity with which this one picked out the eye and gobbled ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... very presence repels and frightens me. When he looked at me in church last Sunday night, I shuddered. It seemed as though a venomous snake had put its folds around my neck. Zibe Turner, called the monster dwarf, seems to me to be almost less than human. He combines the ferocity of the tiger, the slyness of the fox, and the shape of a monkey. I am doubly alarmed when he ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... He had so much wealth that it took two nerve specialists over six months, in fact it took them nearly a year, before the amount of their bills had eaten up all his property. When this was done, however, employment was secured for the old gentleman on the police force, where his peculiar gift of ferocity could find more room for use. The coffee in the station-house, fortunately, was execrable, and this stirred him to a pitch which soon made him the ablest patrolman in his ward. He was then sent to clean up the three toughest ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... which still chills my blood. Having first divested them of every article of clothing but their shirts and trousers, with swords, knives, axes, etc., they fell on the unfortunate crew of the Eliza Ann with the ferocity of cannibals. In vain did they beg for mercy and intreat of their murderers to spare their lives. In vain did poor Capt. S. attempt to touch their feelings and to move them to pity by representing to them the situation ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust, must always ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... neighbourhood of this headland I was induced to enter a hut at a sheep-station, by seeing stuck round a fence a number of the heads of an animal called by the colonists a hyena, from the resemblance it bears in shape and colour, though not in ferocity, to that beast.** My object was to obtain a few of these heads, which the hut-keeper, who was the only inmate, instantly gave, along with an unsolicited history of his own life. In the early part we instantly discovered that this loquacious personage was, what ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... he is coming to dinner?" said the Duke after a pause, during which his anger had settled into a comfortable ferocity. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Cassius knelt with the rest before Caesar. Hugh saw his hand seek the handle of his sword, saw the end of the sheath tilt upwards under his robe as the blade slipped out of it. Then came the sudden outburst of animal ferocity long held in leash, of stab on stab, the self-recovery, the cold stare at the dead figure with ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... for utterance or contemplation, all that phrenzied passion or brutal ferocity could suggest, were perpetrated on the bodies of these noble and virtuous citizens; nor was it till night put an end to the butchery, that their friends were permitted to convey their mangled remains to a secret ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of the Arabs had died out, but they had been succeeded in their schemes of conquest as well as in their adherence to the false faith of Mahomet, by the savage Turks, whose ferocity and hatred of Christianity were especially displayed in the ill-treatment of those Christians whose piety led them to visit the scenes of our Blessed Lord's Life and Death. [Sidenote: Cause of the Crusades.] The ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... her subjects with subduing ferocity Mrs. McGregor drew herself up and moved majestically in at the ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... sometimes said "to have his back up." Of the above points, the stiff gait and upright tail alone require further discussion. Sir C. Bell remarks[1] that, when a tiger or wolf is struck by its keeper and is suddenly roused to ferocity, every muscle is in tension, and the limbs are in an attitude of strained exertion, prepared to spring. This tension of the muscles and consequent stiff gait may be accounted for on the principle of associated ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... inhabitants themselves joined in with whatever weapons fury suggested to them and as that merciless strife swayed to and fro amidst the roar of artillery, the crash of walls, and the hiss of flame, war was seen in all its naked ferocity. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... a curious instance of the treacherous ferocity of the wolf. A butcher at New York had brought up, and believed he had tamed, a wolf, which he kept for above two years chained up in the slaughterhouse, where it lived in a complete superabundance of blood and offal. One night, having occasion for some implement ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... where he was, rooted to the spot, and listened. An awful silence seemed to fall upon the place. Had he hit on the Templeton ghost?—on the disembodied spirit of some luckless martyr to the ferocity of a last century bully? Or, was it an ambuscade prepared for himself? or, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... were so intent upon. In each division of the tray, easily seen through the transparent lids, was a carved figure. The weird denizens of the Venusian polar swamps were there, along with lifelike effigies of Terran animals, a Martian sand-mouse in all its monstrous ferocity, and the native animal and reptile life of half a hundred different worlds. Weeks put down a second tray beside the first, again displaying a menagerie of strange life forms. But when he clicked open one of the compartments and ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... heard a lion roar wrathfully. The sound is harsh and shattering, and is pitched in a higher key than that of the growl. To me the growl was far more awe-inspiring than the roar; it carried a suggestion of stealth combined with latent ferocity and unimaginable force in reserve. The adjective "thunderous" does not fit the roar at all; the latter suggests, more than anything else, the tones of a mighty, cavernous brass trumpet. Most terrifying, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... rolled out of her grasp to the bearskin rug and struck Miss Blake's foot. Before Sheila could even say her quick "I'm sorry," the woman had come at her with a sort of spring, had gripped her by the shoulders, had shaken her with ferocity, and let her go. Sheila fell back, her own hands raised to her bruised shoulders, her eyes phosphorescent in ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... his brother had climbed the fence and had come to see what had happened, hearing from a scared keeper that someone was shot. Peter looked up and saw them. It was a dreadful moment for the three to meet. His friend, Maitland, seeing the unnatural ferocity in his eyes, tried to draw him away. Even Richard Carew, the uncle, looked a little alarmed. But Peter in his madness took a step forward. "You cur, you libelled her," he hissed at his brother, and cursed him bitterly. And then Geoffrey lost his head too. An ugly sneer distorted his face as he ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... barelegged children wading in the willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with a badinage peculiar to himself that they were emboldened to climb up his horse's legs and over his saddle, until he was fain to develop an exaggerated ferocity of demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some kisses and coin. And then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs of habitation failed, he began to sing—uplifting a tenor so singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender, that I wot the robins and linnets stopped ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... instigated a woman situated as she was, to visit Montreal, and there defy the power, and malice, and fury of the Roman Priests, and their myrmidons; by accumulating upon them charges of rape, infanticide, the affliction of the tortures of the Inquisition, and murders of cold- blooded ferocity in the highest degree, with all the atrocious concomitant iniquities which those ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Maria, for the good of thy soul!" whispered the Neapolitan, with a strange mixture of Christian zeal, in the midst of all his ferocity. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... pair o' rascals in Upper Crossleys. Drove all the decent folk away from the place, and Martin keeps the best beer about here, too. If I was Martin," continued the ancient, truculently, "I'd know what to say to them two, I would; aye, and what to do to 'em," he added with great ferocity. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... only knows what startling adventure of scalp-hunters, he pouted out his lower lip in a terrifying way, which gave the honest phiz of the man living placidly on his means the same impression of kindly ferocity which abounded ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... horses into the ford, a wild dog that had been lapping at the brink started up with a snarl under the very feet of Piers Major's steed. Now such is the cowardly nature of the wood-dog that he will run from the presence of man if chance of escape be offered; yet if cornered he will show all the ferocity of a wounded boar. In this instance the dog could not retreat to advantage, and so he sprang at the horse, gripping the tender muzzle in his strong, sharp teeth, and hanging there like a rat on a terrier. The horse, maddened with pain, plunged and reared. His master drew his ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... every one in the house longed for the bursting of the coming storm. At last it came. A wild, long, savage yell from hundreds of throats rose on the still night air, and, confident as they were in their position, there was not one of the garrison but felt his blood grow cold at the appalling ferocity of the cry. Simultaneously there was a tremendous rush at the doors and windows, which tried the strength of frame and bar. Then, as they stood firm, came a rain of blows with hatchet ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... suddenly transformed into the great civil ruler and military chieftain. "He was already," says Mr. A.G. Riddle, "one of the wariest, coolest, and most skilful managers of men. A born strategist, he was now rapidly mastering the great outline ideas of the art of war." "The elements of selfishness and ferocity which are not unusual with first-class military chiefs," said General Keyes, a prominent officer of the Union army, "were wholly foreign to Lincoln's nature. Nevertheless, there was not one of his most trusted warlike counselors in the beginning of the war ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... was soon done. A back cloth of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a cradle hanging from a pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to dissociate the two braves from their war-paint. The lines were drawn so cleverly that the grimace of ferocity was fixed and horrible, so that even in the quiet work of scene-shifting Louis' stiffish, female grace seemed full of latent cruelty, whilst Ciccio's more muscular slouch made her feel she would not trust him for one single moment. Awful things ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence |
