toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

inquisition
in a sentence

show 114 more with this conextual meaning
  • To get their free chicken-fried steak, my parents had to endure the inquisition.†   (source)
  • She'd asked Wes about the shoes when they started to multiply, but after her first inquisition, she'd left the subject alone.†   (source)
  • The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history.†   (source)
  • In the spirit of mock inquisition, we called the subject the "victim."†   (source)
  • The Inquisition.†   (source)
  • Then why the inquisition?†   (source)
  • All the while I was trying to back away from their harsh inquisition.†   (source)
  • No one outside the highest circles of the New Vatican knew precisely what had happened, but there were whispers of excommunication and even of a hearing before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, dormant the four centuries since the confusion following the death of Earth.†   (source)
  • And their inquisition went on for maybe six hours.†   (source)
  • He would be Death, or Death 's errand-runner, a hollow-eyed technician from the plague era, from the era of inquisitions, endless wars, of bedlams and leprosariums.†   (source)
  • He asked him if he was able to keep a secret even if they put him in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, and Euclides told him yes, in fact he did not say no to anything, and he knew how to say yes with so much conviction that there was no way to doubt him.†   (source)
  • Of course, I didn't believe in life after death or the virgin birth or the Inquisition or the infallibility of that little monkey-faced Pope or anything, but I didn't have to let the priest see this, I could just concentrate on my sin, and he would help me repent.†   (source)
  • It felt like an inquisition.†   (source)
  • The Inquisition had its headquarters there, you know.†   (source)
  • Inquisition over?†   (source)
  • The principal launched his inevitable inquisition.†   (source)
  • He wore the scarlet robes that a knight who might have served during the Crusades, or possibly the Inquisition, would have worn.†   (source)
  • Let the inquisition rest tonight.†   (source)
  • At the end of autumn, when the family had calmed down about Father Restrepo, who was forced to mitigate his inquisitional behavior after the bishop had personally warned him to leave little Clara del Valle alone, and when they had all resigned themselves to the fact that Uncle Marcos was truly dead, Severo's political designs began to take shape.†   (source)
  • Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works.†   (source)
  • I'll tell you, inquisitions haven't worked out well for my people in the past.†   (source)
  • Even sixth graders studied the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • It's an inquisition.†   (source)
  • That is the real soul-sickness, the spear in the side, the drag by the neck through the mob-angry town, the Grand Inquisition, the embrace of the Maiden, the rip in the belly with the guts spilling out, the trip to the chamber with the deadly gas that ends in the oven so hygienically clean-only it's worse because you continue stupidly to live.†   (source)
  • After the brief, awkward confrontation with the American, Carlos had resumed his ice-cold inquisition, his burning savage self just below the frozen surface.†   (source)
  • Behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes were as large as those of a persistent interrogator in a dream of inquisition.†   (source)
  • I imagined her joining me every time I stopped to eat, hovering outside gas station bathrooms, her inexhaustible inquisitions waiting for me whenever my vehicle paused at a light.†   (source)
  • He left, because the lord of the Inquisition did not approve of his manner of thinking and suggested, at a court banquet, that he change it.†   (source)
  • During the Inquisition, anything was possible.†   (source)
  • Why don't you guys get a summer job with the Inquisition?†   (source)
  • Now came the hard bit—the vetting, the probing, the inquisition.†   (source)
  • " "Inquisition," said Isaac.†   (source)
  • When he had gone, she felt released from an inquisition.†   (source)
  • In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition.   (source)
    inquisition = an investigation to discover and suppress heresy against the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church
  • Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed them because they were unrepentant.   (source)
  • You proved that long ago …. the inquisition, the torture of the Knights Templar, the Crusades.†   (source)
  • No Hey, how's it going, just demon-eyed inquisition.†   (source)
  • Save it for your CIA inquisition.†   (source)
  • Jesus, what is this, the Inquisition?†   (source)
  • It looks as if the Alexis Inquisition might continue until they reach the school, but the bus comes to another sudden stop, making little Chase bump his chin on the seat back, and he begins to cry.†   (source)
  • I wanted to be a kid with a name that didn't draw so much attention, a name that didn't come with a built-in inquisition as to when and why I had moved to America and how was it that I spoke English without an accent and was I planning on going back and what did I think of America?†   (source)
  • "Leigh," Langdon said, turning, "during the Inquisition, the Church accused the Knights Templar of all kinds of heresies, right?"†   (source)
  • From the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to American politics—the name Jesus had been hijacked as an ally in all kinds of power struggles.†   (source)
  • At parties they start to ask leading questions that have the ring of inquisition; they are interested in my positions, my dogmas.†   (source)
  • A Star Chamber inquisition was in session; a troublemaker, or a man with doubts, was being eliminated in the name of a greater crime, in the remote possibility that he might have committed it.†   (source)
  • Except, of course, I'll have to deal with Mom's wrath, Scott's inquisition, Leigh's hurt [real or imagined], Heather's delight at my torment, a possible [make that highly probable] confrontation between all of the above and my father, the troll, and his miserable fairy, Linda Sue.†   (source)
  • And always with him is a White boy who urges the Reds to be ever more brutal, who teaches them the secret methods of torture that used to be practiced by the Papist Inquisitions in Spain and Italy.†   (source)
  • Sebastian d'Anconia threw the contents of his wine glass at the face of the lord of the Inquisition, and escaped before he could be seized.†   (source)
  • He recalled what Hades had said about this public square, where the Inquisition had burned hundreds of people alive.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Brown did not realize it at the time, but her inquisition ended before it started, and no amount of cajolery or intimidation on her part would wreak a confession or a betrayal from the brotherhood she now interrogated.†   (source)
  • There ought to be an Inquisition especially set up to burn her.†   (source)
  • It looked like a drawing of the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • As the familiar inquisition resumes, Tom becomes hard and impatient again.†   (source)
  • She had been denounced three times before the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • They were paying for the Inquisition now, all right.†   (source)
  • We went back to the dispensary for a new pair and cleared another inquisition; we only just cleared it.†   (source)
  • Their old one that they had before the new religion came from the far end of the Mediterranean, the one they have never abandoned but only suppressed and hidden to bring it out again in wars and inquisitions.†   (source)
  • The swaying and sonorous Doctor, whom I made to sit swinging his braces over a gas-fire, was to him nothing but an instrument of the inquisition.†   (source)
  • People were always asking for good sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast, even in countries where the Inquisition can read your very thoughts in your eyes.†   (source)
  • Similarly he had been reduced for a time to making investigations for the Inquisition, but when he had seen several of his victims led off in hoods he felt that he might be involving himself in an institution whose movements were not evenly predictable.†   (source)
  • Among her protégés was the cartographer De Blasiis (whose Maps of the New World was dedicated to the Marquesa de Montemayor amid the roars of the courtiers at Lima who read that she was the "admiration of her city and a rising sun in the West"); another was the scientist Azuarius whose treatise on the laws of hydraulics was suppressed by the Inquisition as being too exciting.†   (source)
  • Till the end she labored to satisfy the inquisition.†   (source)
  • Such creatures as the Siamese Twins—And in the vaults of the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • It sounds like something out of a history book — the Inquisition, or something.'†   (source)
  • She's made up her mind that I'm a devil, and—Reg'lar Inquisition.†   (source)
  • 'I warned them that the Sahibs will be angry and will make an inquisition and a report to the Rajah.†   (source)
  • Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their families mutely rule our city.†   (source)
  • " 'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian.†   (source)
  • The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • Bon Dieu! it is awful, that servants' inquisition!†   (source)
  • The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.†   (source)
  • As the inquisition proceeded one of his instructors repeated an impertinent remark of the boy's, and the Principal asked him whether he thought that a courteous speech to have made a woman.†   (source)
  • Yet he was anything but devout, was a traitor to life, who deserved to be brought before the Inquisition and the Fehme, to be put to the painful question—et cetera.†   (source)
  • When I have returned you will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our inquisition.†   (source)
  • If anything was to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holding inquisitions over me to see whether I'm good enough to be laid amongst 'em.'†   (source)
  • Spain was not a lack of form, but an excess of form, death as form, so to speak— not death as dissolution, but death as something austere, black, elegant, and bloody, the Inquisition, starched ruffs, Loyola, the Escorial.†   (source)
  • By nine o'clock the assembly which was gathered about Ted and Eunice in the living-room included Mr. and Mrs. George Babbitt, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Littlefield, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Escott, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson, and Tinka Babbitt, who was the only pleased member of the inquisition.†   (source)
  • People of Herr Settembrini's sort, the doubters and critics, had observed this fact and seen to it that the old naive form of justice was replaced by the Inquisition, which no longer depended on God's intervening on behalf of truth, but was aimed at obtaining the truth through the confession of the accused.†   (source)
  • Over the centuries, the Church's love of innovation had consisted of Inquisitions, whose task was to throttle all life-affirming ideas, to suffocate them in the smoke of the stake: but nowadays she was sending out her emissaries to announce that she was all (or upending things, that her goal was to replace freedom, education, and democracy with dictatorship of the mob and barbarism.†   (source)
  • As the Inquisition rarely allowed its victims to be seen with their limbs distorted and their flesh lacerated by torture, so madness is always concealed in its cell, from whence, should it depart, it is conveyed to some gloomy hospital, where the doctor has no thought for man or mind in the mutilated being the jailer delivers to him.†   (source)
  • And it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water fall on your head; yet the worst torture of the inquisition is produced by drop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after moment, with monotonous succession, on the same spot; and work, in itself not hard, becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying, unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of free-will to take from its tediousness.†   (source)
  • The Inquisition has never been able to prevent a vast number of anti-religious books from circulating in Spain.†   (source)
  • The ancient Surveyor—being little molested, I suppose, at that early day with business pertaining to his office—seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature.†   (source)
  • "But yourself, monsieur," said Athos, who began to be annoyed by this inquisition, "give me, I beg you, the proof that you have the right to question me."†   (source)
  • The guards lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison in the ancient palace of the Holy Inquisition and shut Him in it.†   (source)
  • It was because, of all the tortures which he had undergone in the course of this long inquisition to which destiny had doomed him, this was the most terrible.†   (source)
  • 'For now' (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) 'for the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men.†   (source)
  • On the reverse of that draft, so obtained, let them write these words of the great Paymaster, to whom they shall make up their account in a future day: _"When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble!†   (source)
  • The cook looked at the housemaid, the housemaid looked knowingly at the footman—the awful kitchen inquisition which sits in judgement in every house and knows everything—sat on Rebecca at that moment.†   (source)
  • My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God, and 'in the splendid auto da fe the wicked heretics were burnt.'†   (source)
  • —and in the grasp of the Inquisition!†   (source)
  • And the death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • And whenever Mr. Pestler came upon his healing inquisition, she received the doctor with such a sarcastic and scornful demeanour, as made the surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom he had the honour of attending professionally, could give herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom he never took a fee.†   (source)
  • And as every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dulness; and silence—which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism—above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.†   (source)
  • This inquisition has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion also to many calumnies.†   (source)
  • O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit!†   (source)
  • History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, imported them.†   (source)
  • Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation…†   (source)
  • OEDIPUS But was no search and inquisition made?†   (source)
  • When I was at Portugal, there was held at that time the court of justice of the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • I conjured him "to conceal from all persons what I had told him of the Houyhnhnms; because the least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the Inquisition."†   (source)
  • "My beautiful young lady," responded Candide, "when one is a lover, jealous and whipped by the Inquisition, one stops at nothing."†   (source)
  • Our own clergy were forbid to preach against popery, and bishops were ordered to supend those who did; and to do the business at once an illegal ecclesiastical commission was erected, little inferior to an inquisition, of which, probably, it was intended to be the ringleader.†   (source)
  • You have often Begun to tell me what I am: but stopp'd, And left me to a bootless inquisition, Concluding 'Stay; not yet.'†   (source)
  • Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither: If he be absent, bring his brother to me, I'll make him find him: do this suddenly; And let not search and inquisition quail To bring again these foolish runaways.†   (source)
  • We remained six days in Velez, at the end of which the renegade, having informed himself of all that was requisite for him to do, set out for the city of Granada to restore himself to the sacred bosom of the Church through the medium of the Holy Inquisition.†   (source)
  • 9:12 When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble.†   (source)
  • …is another Errour in their Civill Philosophy (which they never learned of Aristotle, nor Cicero, nor any other of the Heathen,) to extend the power of the Law, which is the Rule of Actions onely, to the very Thoughts, and Consciences of men, by Examination, and Inquisition of what they Hold, notwithstanding the Conformity of their Speech and Actions: By which, men are either punished for answering the truth of their thoughts, or constrained to answer an untruth for fear of punishment.†   (source)
  • I was for leaving my effects in her hands, intending to set out for Lisbon, and so the Brazils; but as in the Desolate Island I had some doubt about the Romish religion, so I knew there was little encouragement to settle there, unless I would apostatize from the orthodox faith, or live in continual fear of the Inquisition.†   (source)
  • The executioner of the Holy Inquisition was a sub-deacon, and knew how to burn people marvellously well, but he was not accustomed to hanging.†   (source)
  • A little man dressed in black, Familiar of the Inquisition, who sat by him, politely took up his word and said: "Apparently, then, sir, you do not believe in original sin; for if all is for the best there has then been neither Fall nor punishment."†   (source)
  • …and then delivers the civil magistrate over to Satan for doing justice; interdicts whole kingdoms, and shuts up the churches for want of paying a few ecclesiastical dues, and so puts a stop to religion for want of their money; that the court of Inquisition burnt two men for speaking dishonourably of the Blessed Virgin; and the missionaries of China tolerated the worshipping the devil by their new converts: that Italy was the theatre, where religion was the grand opera: and that the…†   (source)
  • Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."†   (source)
  • All things being ready for the voyage, my old partner told me there was an acquaintance of his, a Brazil planter, who having fallen under the displeasure of the church, & in fear of the Inquisition which obliged him to be concealed, would be glad of such an opportunity to make his escape, with his wife & two daughters; & if I would allot them a plantation in my island, he would give them a small stock to begin with, for that the officers had already seized his effects and estate, and…†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)