The coward wretch whose hand and heart
Can bear to torture aught below.
Is ever first to quail and start
From slightest pain or equal foe. [ Eliza Cook ]

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. [ Dryden ]

That's the greatest torture souls feel in hell.
In hell, that they must live, and cannot die. [ John Webster ]

That anxious torture may I never feel,
Which doubtful, watches over a wandering heart.
O, who that bitter torment can reveal.
Or tell the pining anguish of that smart! [ Byron ]

For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions,
Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. [ Lowell ]

The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. [ Calvin ]

There is no torture that a woman would not suffer to enhance her beauty. [ Montaigne ]

The quivering flesh, though torture-torn, may live, but souls, once deeply wounded, heal no more. [ Ebenezer Elliott ]

What we have pleases us if we do not compare it with what others have; he never will be happy to whom a happier is a torture. [ Seneca ]

A man who can, in cold blood, hunt and torture a poor, innocent animal, cannot feel much compassion for the distress of his own species. [ Frederick the Great ]

Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer. [ Feltham ]