And now it is the time; from Hell's abyss Come thirsting Tantalus, come Sisyphus Heaving the
cruel stone, come Tityus With vulture, and with wheel Ixion come, And come the sisters of the ceaseless toil; And all into this breast transfer their pains, And (if such tribute to despair be due) Chant in their deepest tones a doleful dirge Over a corse unworthy of a shroud.
She felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel--cruel to write so,
cruel not to marry her.
Just then I was absorbed in them only as a medium of escape, and so, as my gaze ran quickly, time and again, over their vast expanse in search of some cranny or crevice, I came suddenly to loathe them as the prisoner must loathe the
cruel and impregnable walls of his dungeon.
Now I realized the cause of the rage that had been writ so large upon the features of Matai Shang and the
cruel pleasure that I had seen upon the face of Phaidor.
This fault the Lacedaemonians did not fall into, for they made their children fierce by painful labour, as chiefly useful to inspire them with courage: though, as we have already often said, this is neither the only thing nor the principal thing necessary to attend to; and even with respect to this they may not thus attain their end; for we do not find either in other animals, or other nations, that courage necessarily attends the most
cruel, but rather the milder, and those who have the dispositions of lions: for there are many people who are eager both to kill men and to devour human flesh, as the Achaeans and Heniochi in Pontus, and many others in Asia, some of whom are as bad, others worse than these, who indeed live by tyranny, but are men of no courage.
Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being a
cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not giving a slave enough to eat.
This was too
cruel, too unexpected a Blow to our Gentle Sensibility--we could not support it--we could only faint.
To you, to whom I have done this hard and
cruel thing, the only reparation I can make is to say, 'I know it, I feel it!' The reparation is pitifully small!"
"To the chambers of O-Mai the
Cruel I traced them," squeaked I-Gos.