bloodlettings

Updated: May 18, 2025

At nights shaken with the flare of torches and the clash of arms, at oaths and laughter and the tinkle of spurs on the worn steps, at threats and bloodlettings and all the good old ways, now dead, out of date, and less indebted to memory than imagination.

Dornford Yates - The Brother of Daphne

And Thomas Jefferson: how did this return to primordial chaos, brought about in no uncertain sense by his own premeditated act, affect him? Only a man quite lost to all promptings of the grace that saves and softens could look unmoved on the burnings and riotings, the cruel wastings and the bloodlettings, one would say.

Francis Lynde - The Quickening