Rapacity

“ And of all the things against which a prince should guard most carefully is the incurring the hatred and contempt of his subjects. Now, liberality will bring upon you either the one or the other; there is therefore more wisdom in submitting to be called parsimonious, which may bring you blame without hatred, than, by aiming to be called liberal, to incur unavoidably the reputation of rapacity, which will bring upon you infamy as well as hatred. ”

“ Hereto the abbess very austerely replying, Thou naughty wicked girl, why didst thou not cry, A rape, a rape! then should all of us have run to thy succour. Her answer was that the rape was committed in the dortour, where she durst not cry because it was a place of sempiternal silence. But, quoth the abbess, thou roguish wench, why didst not thou then make some sign to those that were in the next chamber beside thee? ”

“ This memory of the rape played over and over and the monotony exacerbated the thumping. As a living entity, one lived without a clue to the reason of it all. One rose in pain and moved as she was doing now, for how could even a creature of contemplation contemplate without movement away from the sedentary gaze of one specific thing? Did she really contemplate more than others, and were here contemplations more trenchant than others? She assumed so and that it was a mixture of her own genius and her obdurate wish to not be one of the herds. ”

“ These men who talked airily of rapine and of violence perpetrated against innocent people, who gloated over torture and misery which they loved to inflict, were held in the cold grip of superstitious fear, and their trembling lips uttered abject prayers for mercy to the God whom they outraged by every act of their infamous lives. ”

“ Circumstance, acting through the agency of certain dissolute courtiers, thrust into the king’s very bedroom the girl whom he loved and who belonged to a class from whom he had been taught to expect subservience of every kind. The tragic mischief of the rape follows almost as a necessary consequence. ”

“ Rape, rāp, n. the act of seizing and carrying away by force: carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent.—adj. Rape′ful, given to violence or lust. [M. E. rapen, to haste, a variant of rappen, to seize, confused with L. rapĕre, to snatch.]
Rape, rāp, n. a division of the county of Sussex, greater than the hundred. [Ice. hreppr, district.]
Rape, rāp, n. a plant nearly allied to the turnip, cultivated for its herbage and oil-producing seeds: cole-seed.—ns. Rape′-cake, cake made of the refuse, after the oil has been expressed from the rape-seed; Rape′-oil, oil obtained from rape-seed ”

“ In the diabolical ingenuity we had seen displayed, crime had reached its acme and the cup of human depravity seemed full. When we had regained in some measure our self-possession, we all advanced for a closer look at the murderous object dangling before us. ”

“ The words reiterated all around stabbed to the heart; the actions of the assailants tended to a worse end,—to awaken every passion of which the human breast is susceptible; fear, anger, pride, resentment, revenge, alternately take possession of the whole man. ”

“ It sounds, indeed, a little queer to translate literally, Rapine near akin to running hither and thither; but, as a matter of plain fact, it is true that, when in the confusion of the taking of a city, men run hither and thither, rapine is the result. ”

“ They will push their quarrels to extremities, and make them up in an hour, when the demon of rapine points to an object for common plunder. You see the same spirit in politics, ay, and even in religion. ”

“ Worsted in one quarter, they arose in another, employing with unscrupulous daring every means that cunning or audacity could bring within their power,—claiming the excuse of necessity for those acts of rapine and cruelty in the satisfaction of personal enmities, the warfare upon the women and children, and the thousand barbarous deeds which make the history of that time a continual record of horrors. ”

“ If he encountered an insolent person, he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, a poise of the body which expressed dauntless courage. ”

“ As soon as she beheld him—foaming and almost unintelligible in her rage—she screamed for succor—cried “murder” “rape,” “robbery,” and heaven knows what besides. A moment before, though she scratched and scuffled to the utmost, she had not employed her lungs. ”

“ Men have been thy victims: now take the due reward of all thy wickedness. What art thou, that I should have idolized and gazed with rapture on that form?—something even more treacherous and perverted than myself. ”

“ As to my attempted rape—see how I square up when she shows signs of annexing my illusion. We are really the whole time playing a game of grabs and dashes at each other’s fairy vestment of Imagination. ”

“ While under its spell, you seem to float in the air, to touch the wings of the angels, to be yourself part of the heavenly sphere you aspire to attain. Rapture itself is a mean enough word to define your emotions. And then you come back to earth with a sense of unspeakable deception and surprise. You feel hungry, and loathe yourself for the vulgar need. ”

“ More blood, more heads on stakes, more adoration, rapine, and murder. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on his collected languid manner, when he said one day, ‘This lot of ivory now is really mine. ”

“ I know this wretched girl far better than yourself. You shall hear the truth in respect to the poisoner Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter—yes, poisonous as she is beautiful. Listen, for even should you do violence to my gray hairs it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian woman has become a truth by the deep and deadly science of Rappaccini and in the person of the lovely Beatrice. ”

“ The long periods of time, the great expenditure of vital energy, and the exhaustless fund of brutality which are consumed by the fictitious villains of the eighteenth century in gratifying what would seem merely a passing inclination, astonish the reader of to-day. The crime of rape, rarely now introduced into fiction, and rarely figuring even in criminal courts, is a common incident in old novels, and as commonly, remains unpunished. ”

“ Tacitus writes: “To shout, to drink, to caper about, to feel their veins heated and swollen with wine, to hear and see around them the riot of the orgy, this was the first need of the barbarians. The heavy human brute gluts himself with sensations and with noise.” ”

“ Fasts, prayers, self-torture, abstinence from business, were, by the authority of the ecclesiastical code, declared to be the divinely appointed methods of expiating the guilt of rape, of fornication, of adultery, of robbery, of murder, and of every degree and species of crime. ”

“ The rapturous crisis came at last and laid us prostrate with soul-killing ecstasies. We each retained the dear object of our mutual caresses within our lips and our fingers remained within the delightful recesses that had so much contributed to the excessive raptures we had enjoyed. We lay for some time in this sweet languid enjoyment. ”

“ To dream that rape has been committed among your acquaintances, denotes that you will be shocked at the distress of some of your friends.
For a young woman to dream that she has been the victim of rape, foretells that she will have troubles, which will wound her pride, and her lover will be estranged. ”

“ How thankful we, who live in these latter days, should be that the female rape fiend has passed into the unreturning erstwhile with the horned unicorn and dreadful hippogriff, the minotaur and other monsters that once affrighted the fearful souls of men—that sensuous sirens do not so assail us and rip our coat-tails off in a foul attempt to wreck our virtue and fill our lives with fierce regret. ”

“ The crime of rape presumes a temporary, powerful excitation of sexual desire, induced by excess in alcohol, or by some other condition. It is highly improbable that a man morally intact would commit this most brutal crime. ”

“ But there are two sorts of madness, the one that which the revengeful Furies send privily from hell, as often as they let loose their snakes and put into men's breasts either the desire of war, or an insatiate thirst after gold, or some dishonest love, or parricide, or incest, or sacrilege, or the like plagues, or when they terrify some guilty soul with the conscience of his crimes ”

“ For thou hast not a groat to atone for a rape.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X.
The dean he was vex'd that his whores were so willing:
⁠He long'd for a girl that would struggle and squall;
He ravish'd her fairly, and sav'd a good shilling;
⁠But here was to pay the devil and all.
His trouble and sorrows now come in a heap,
And hang'd he must be for committing a rape.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠XI.
If maidens are ravish'd, it is their own choice:
⁠Why are they so wilful to struggle with men?
If they would but lie quiet, and stifle their voice,
⁠No devil nor dean could ravish them then. ”

“ We may rather suppose that in the case of one endowed with a congenital predisposition to the excitement of the sexual impulse by the sight of cruelty, the particular cruel act which will prove the determinant in a particular case, must depend upon the chance circumstances of the individual's life. ”

“ And as the rapine itself was warranted in the law of nature, by the want of security otherwise to maintain themselves, so the exercise of cruelty was forbidden by the same law of nature, unless fear suggested anything to the contrary. ”

“ It is said that he had arrived at that last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. ”

“ As religious men, who, when misguided, commit rape or murder, invariably repent, if there is any prospect of pardon; hanging may be supposed, in many cases, to prevent that great joy, which exists in Heaven—rather more than ninety-nine per cent.—over one sinner that repenteth. ”

“ Dame Carruthers and Sergeant Meryll DAME Rapture, rapture When love's votary, Flushed with capture, Seeks the notary, Joy and jollity Then is polity; Reigns frivolity! Rapture, rapture! Joy and jollity Then is polity; Reigns frivolity! Rapture, rapture! MERYLL Doleful, doleful! When humanity With its soul full Of satanity, Courting privity, Down declivity Seeks captivity! Doleful, doleful! Courting privity, Down declivity Seeks captivity! Doleful, doleful! DAME Joyful, joyful! When virginity Seeks, all coyful, Man's affinity ”

“ They know, that neither religion, nor conscience, not honesty, nor hardship, has any share in their present disaffection, which has its whole root in pride and avarice, and the lust of rapine and power ”

“ To continuously tend towards having more at the cheapest price-in many ways an expression of rape of other people's work and resources-means to exhaust not only the object, but also the subject. Rape, one of the most heinous crimes people commit, generalized in political and economic rape, projects sexuality and its powerful action even outside the biological realm of human life. ”

“ Children, too, are often the victims of other sexual acts, such as rape, which in a few instances only can be included in the category of sadism. In some cases force is employed only because the victim resists the act of violation, and here there is no question of sadism; but the rape is sadistic when the use of force is per se a sexual stimulus. ”

“ Hence, the sudden infatuation and rapid ruin which we sometimes witness,—the cases in which there seems but a single step between innocence and deep depravity. In truth there are many steps; but until they become precipitous, they are veiled from human sight. ”

“ Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many examples of human depravity; but I scarcely recollect any, where a ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners—or where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy. ”

“ The brutal ferocity of former ages is now lost, and the general mind is humanized. The savage breast is the native soil of revenge; a vice, of all others, peculiarly stamped with the character of hell. ”

“ Nothing is more natural and simple than rape among savage or barbarous tribes, who hold violence in esteem and [Pg 90] use it largely, and who, as we have previously seen, are almost always addicted to female infanticide. But has the widely-spread custom of rape the great importance in sociological theory that has been attributed to it? ”

“ Offences against the ritual rendered necessary by this mysterious dread, though more serious than offences against sexual reticence or the fear of causing disgust, are so obviously allied that they all reinforce one another and cannot easily be disentangled. ”

“ Lynch your negro, and before the smell of roast flesh is out of the air, several fresh cases of rape are reported.—But there is no visible connection between alleged cause and effect—it just happens so.—Yes, but if it does happen almost invariably, we cannot avoid the suspicion that a connection, even though invisible to the outward eye, there must be. ”

“ In fact, a lunatic asylum reveals to us, in the form of repulsive caricatures, all gradations and variations of a more or less degenerate feminine sexual life, coquetry, wearing all kinds of ornaments, jealous anger, erotic excitement, etc.
The sexual excitation of the insane often makes them soil themselves with urine and excrements, and heap insults on persons whom their diseased imagination suspects of sexual assaults or immodest acts toward themselves or others. They have a tendency to believe themselves betrothed or married to kings, emperors, Jesus Christ or God. ”

“ However you may ram it in—I refer to the rapier—I have a fear that something disastrous is about to happen to you in the so much more important part of your life that has nothing to do with the pen—bad news, ill health, sudden loss ”