Revenge

“ To gloat over you in your poorness, to gloat over you in your sickness, to remind you day by day of what you've done and how you gained nothin' by it, nothin' at all, nothin' at all—that's my revenge on you! ”

“ I will break his proud heart under the world's contempt--try not to stop me, Moreton, for I will have revenge. You think of nothing but money; but vengeance will be sweeter to me, than all the gold of earth. ”

“ But, 'tis reveng'd, and now my work is done. Yet, ere I fall, be it one part of vengeance To force thee to confess that I am just.— Thou seest a prince, whose father thou hast slain, Whose native country thou hast laid in blood, Whose sacred person (oh!) thou hast profan'd, Whose reign extinguish'd—what was left to me, So highly born? No kingdom, but revenge; No treasure, but thy tortures and thy groans. If men should ask who brought thee to thy end, Tell them, the Moor, and they will not despise thee. ”

“ For this purpose I will preserve my life: to execute this dear revenge, will I again behold the sun, and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes for ever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead; and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me. ”

“ If we can remove an Injury, we may, and ought; but Revenge is not the Weapon we are to use for that Purpose. Whatever fires our Revenge, is apt to cloud our Reason; Men therefore who meditate Revenge, seldom have Reason for their Guide; and he who forsakes Reason, is a bad Judge how far Revenge should be carried. If we mentally survey a revengeful Man, how melancholy is the View! ”

“ Then if thou hast A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge Thine own particular wrongs, and stop those maims Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it That my revengeful services may prove As benefits to thee; for I will fight Against my canker'd country with the spleen Of all the under fiends. ”

“ But I vowed revenge, and that, I take it, sustained me; revenge being, to my seeming, a noble passion, when it is not to spite those who have done an ill turn to ourselves, but to punish those who have oppressed the helpless. What aggravated me the more, was hearing that he was married; and had two fine children, who were dawdled about every day in his coach; while the child of my poor sister was shut up, immured, no body knew where, in an outlandish country. ”

“ They are all men of resentment, are these physiological distortions and worm-riddled objects, a whole quivering kingdom of burrowing revenge, indefatigable and insatiable in its outbursts against the happy, and equally so in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge: when will they really reach their final, fondest, most sublime triumph of revenge? ”

“ And when you found but that you could not take my hand and my name, you waylaid me at the railway station, when I was on my wedding tour, and you swore to be revenged. I laughed at you. I advised you to be anything rather than dramatic. I never imagined the possibility of your threatened revenge taking the form of your marriage. Well, my dear, you have your revenge, I admit; but in your blindness, you could not see that revenge itself might be met by retribution! One man kills another for revenge, and does not, in his blind fury, see the gallows looming in the distance. ”

“ A treacherous vengeance, a disgraceful vengeance—a vengeance from the back, a vengeance such as you take in your country? No, Signor Fabiani, neither dagger nor poison. Do I have to conceal myself? Do I have to hide in the corners of the street at night and make myself small when I want revenge? No, by my faith, I want the daylight! Do you hear, my lord?—the full noonday, the bright sun, the public square, the ax and the stake, the crowds in the street, the crowds at the windows, the crowds on the roofs! A hundred thousand witnesses! I want people to be afraid, do you hear, my lord? ”

“ Revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set right.—The fortunes of thy house shall totter,—thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it,—thy faith questioned,—thy works belied,—thy wit forgotten,—thy learning trampled on. ”

“ But a revenge that blasts and corrodes, one that leaves the victim living, sound in body and in limb, and yet consumed by an inextinguishable regret, burning with tortures from which he can never escape—a thing like that is the work, not of an apprentice, but of a master in crime. ”

“ Not a vulgar end like yours, but a revenge which shall be almost divine or diabolical, call it which you will, in its completeness. Perhaps it is a madness, perhaps it is an inspiration, perhaps it is a fate. ”

“ How many fall from Affluence to Want, from Splendor to a Goal, thro’ the Inveteracy of Revenge! Not all the Concessions of the opposite Party, not all the Tears of his Wife, nor the impending Ruin of his Children, can appease the Revengeful: Savage-like, he quits not his Hold till his Fury is glutted, till his Adversary is destroyed. Besides these, there are many other Species of Revenge, less obvious indeed, but perhaps not less criminal: there are Men whose Fury is less, but whose Malice is equal: Men with cooler Heads, but with inveterate Hearts. ”

“ Hell helped him in his malignant resolve, and the fell demon smiled when he whispered in his ear the sweet madness of revenge. Revenge for what? "Eleven years," said he, "I have labored in the kitchen of Incholese and performed his drudgery—eleven years I have been his messenger of good and evil. I have toiled and panted beneath my burdens of viands, rare and costly, and I have rested on my way with wine, and what I have devoured myself I have stolen—stolen and devoured in secret. I hate—hate—hate the world—and I will be—aye, will be revenged." ”

“ My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand; I have but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction. ”

“ He was quick to take an advantage, long-suffering, sly, nursing his revenge in silence like a vindictive slave, until at last the moment of retribution should be his; sufficiently truthful and brave to have grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand and brooding vengeance. ”

“ A man must love still, to punish, must he not? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind. The cruelest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our power to take it. ”

“ And in their ears tell them my dreadful name,
Revenge, which makes the foul offenders quake. 40
Tit. Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me,
To be a torment to mine enemies?
Tam. I am; therefore come down, and welcome me. ”

“ Revenge is the natural heritage of his race. Revenge is taught as a sacred duty in the common schools of France. Revenge keeps the fires aglow under the boilers of French patriotism. Revenge is the first thought to follow on the heels of private insult or personal injury. ”

“ IMOGEN.
Reveng’d?
How should I be reveng’d? If this be true,
(As I have such a heart that both mine ears
Must not in haste abuse) if it be true,
How should I be reveng’d?
IACHIMO.
Should he make me
Live like Diana’s priest betwixt cold sheets,
Whiles he is vaulting variable ramps,
In your despite, upon your purse? Revenge it. ”

“ What is revenge, but courage to call in Our honour's debts, and wisdom to convert Others' self-love into our own protection? ”

“ A multitude of swaying human beings, actuated by a maddened revenge, hurtling one against the other, stretching away, whilst those more closely drawn to its sides were in numbers joined in fiery chains, and in the embrace of their blazing bonds expired with the wildest shrieks of agony! ”

“ If cold white mortals censure this great deed, Warn them, they judge not of superior beings, Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue. ”

“ Revenge is a ruling passion, as the many rancorous fratricidal wars that have prevailed between kindred clans, even for a generation, prove. Retaliation and vengeance are, in fact, their great agents of moral control. ”

“ For, indeed, when I consider revenge, I find its angry method to be for the most part ineffectual, since it spends itself in biting the lips and gnashing the teeth, and in vain attacks, and in railings coupled with foolish threats, and eventually resembles children running races, who from feebleness ridiculously tumble down before they reach the goal they are hastening to. ”

“ Antonyms: REVENGE. Synonyms:
Revenge is the act of making return for an injury done to oneself by doing injury to another person. Retaliation and revenge are personal and often bitter. Retaliation may be partial; revenge is meant to be complete, and may be excessive. Vengeance, which once meant an indignant vindication of justice, now signifies the most furious and unsparing revenge. Revenge emphasizes more the personal injury in return for which it is inflicted, vengeance the ill desert of those upon whom it is inflicted. ”

“ Walter Scott expresses mankind's proneness to revenge in words as powerful as they are true: "Vengeance is the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell!" I shall now attempt a psychological explanation of revenge. All the suffering that nature, chance, or fate have assigned to us does not, ceteris paribus, pain us so much as suffering which is brought upon us by the arbitrary will of another. ”

“ Not a man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that he will have his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead instead of the wounded and captive cavalier! ”

“ Look into your own heart, and tell me whether, since you have cherished this passion, you have not felt all sense of right and wrong confused,—have not felt that whatever would before have seemed to you mean and base, appears now but just means to your heated end. Revenge is ever a hypocrite: rage, at least, strikes with the naked sword; but revenge, stealthy and patient, conceals the weapon of the assassin. ”

“ Even the insatiable thirst of revenge itself, directed as it was against one individual, could hardly have led thee to wrap the holy house of God, and the dwellings of the innocent and inoffensive burghers, in the same common ruin with the tenements belonging to those whom thou mayest suspect as being entitled to a share of thy vengeance. ”

“ He is lost in the vast chaos of humanity now, my dear, and you have not the frailest clue by which you might hope to find him. For Heaven’s sake, then, abandon all thought of an impossible revenge! Have you forgotten the words we heard in the Epistle a few weeks ago—‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord’? If the melodramatic revenge of the stage is not practicable in real life, we know at least, my dear—for you see we have it from very high authority—that wicked deeds do not go unpunished. ”

“ Every one who gives way to malicious anger usurps the place of God, and says to himself, "Vengeance is mine." But who ever got any lasting satisfaction out of revenge, when wrath has died away, and the injury he has suffered begins to look smaller? ”

“ Often it disguises itself as justice, the principle of the thing, in those who will not admit revenge as a motive; and the eclipsed and beaten take revenge in slander, innuendo and double-edged praise. ”

“ Remember him, the villain, righteous heaven, In thy great day of vengeance! Blast the traitor And his pernicious counsels; who, for wealth, For pow'r, the pride of greatness, or revenge, Would plunge his native land in civil wars! ”

“ If revenge be, as a certain divine, not greatly to his honour, calls it, the most luscious morsel the devil ever dropt into the mouth of a sinner, it must be allowed at least to cost us often extremely dear. ”

“ I tasted too what was called the sweet of revenge—but it was transient, it expired even with the object, that provoked it. ”

“ Query? is it not highly probable that the passion of revenge when at its height of savage success, produces an effect on the conqueror’s appetite, whetting it to ungovernable sharpness, and giving it a keener relish for the flesh of the victim than could ever be felt under the influence of other passions? ”

“ We do not question the probability or justness of such a motive, Signore; but revenge may have suddenly mounted to the height of ferocity in some wrangle: one accustomed to blood yields easily to his passions and his habits. ”

“ How the old stories of revenge stir and even uplift us, and yet how hateful is the idea of revenge in modern life! You remember being thrilled and stirred by the heroism of some old duel, whereas you could find no beauty or heroism in any duel at the present time. ”

“ Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head. ”

“ Yet, banded together as we are, ever so ready to sacrifice our lives, what single case of revenge for injury are you able to point to, though, if it were held right among us to repay evil by evil, a single night with a torch or two could achieve an ample vengeance? ”

“ Revenge, the attribute of gods; they stamp'd it, With their great image, on our natures. ”