“
(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
”
”
Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)
“
Suddenly his expression turned to alarm. He sprinted toward us. For a moment I had an absurd vision of myself on the cover of one of Gran’s old romance novels, where the damsel wilts into the
arms of one half-dressed beefy guy while another stands by,casting her longing looks. Oh, the horrible choices a girl must make! I wished I’d had a moment to clean up. I was still covered in dried river muck, twine, and grass, like I’d been tarred and feathered. Then Anubis pushed past me and gripped Walt’s shoulders.
Well…that was unexpected.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Serpent's Shadow (The Kane Chronicles, #3))
“
For some crime committed by my ancestors in the dark and forgotten days, I came into the world already tarred and feathered. With shyness. It hurts terribly -- every bit as much as hot tar choking every pore -- and I wish I could be rid of it. But it hurts a lot less than having someone try and peel the shyness off. That's like being flayed alive.
”
”
Geraldine McCaughrean (The White Darkness)
“
Whatever happens, we've got your back, girlfriend! Unless, of course, the crowd gets mad and decides to tar and feather us. Then, I'll be leaving you in the dust!
”
”
Rachel Renée Russell (Tales from a Not-So-Glam TV Star (Dork Diaries, #7))
“
Shortly before she left for New York, she received an unwelcome present from South Carolina—a painting depicting Lincoln “with a rope around his neck, his feet chained and his body adorned with tar and feathers.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
Part of love is preparing for death... Afterwards comes the madness. And then the loneliness... [People say] you'll come out of it... And you do come out of it, that's true. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil slick; you are tarred and feathered for life.
”
”
Julian Barnes (Levels of Life)
“
The idea of you lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind - as long as it's day-time and you're not behind him.
”
”
Mark Twain
“
If an Englishman asks you ‘how are you?’, they only expect two possible answers: ‘not bad’ and ‘not too bad’. The former means ‘I am doing great’, the latter that you are about to commit suicide or have some terminal disease. With anything else, you risk being tarred and feathered. Also, if your answer is ‘excellent’ they take it as sarcasm.
”
”
Angela Kiss (How to Be an Alien in England: A Guide to the English)
“
Literary censorship should not be necessary within the parameters of the law because it's simply a reflection of prevailing social prejudices!
Writing should challenge and change prevailing ideas - churning the guts and ruffling feathers of friends, family and society. Antagonizing is a product of open writing. Expecting less is resignation and stagnation that slides the art into the status-quo.
Writing needs the wider view that shows the causality of our prevailing social prejudice - and shakes at its foundation.
Writers spare us no less and please leave your praise and oppugn to Christopher Hitchens.
”
”
Jack Tar
“
And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
”
”
Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)
“
I remember back a number of years, talkin about fairs, they had a old boy come through would shoot live pigeons with ye. Him with a rifle and you with a shotgun. Or anything else. He must of had a truckload of pigeons. Had a boy out in the middle of a field with a crateful and he’d holler and the boy’d let one slip and he’d raise his rifle and blam, he’d dust it. Misters, he could strictly make the feathers fly. We’d never seen the like of shootin. They was a bunch of us pretty hotshot birdhunters lost our money out there fore we got it figured out. What he was doin, this boy was loadin the old pigeons up the ass with them little firecrackers. They’d take off like they was home free and get up about so high and blam, it’d blow their asses out. He’d just shoot directly he seen the feathers fly. You couldn’t tell it. Or I take that back, somebody did finally. I don’t remember who it was. Reached and grabbed the rifle out of the old boy’s hand fore he could shoot and the old pigeon just went blam anyways. They like to tarred and feathered him over it.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Child of God)
“
This was something new. Or something old. I didn’t think of what it might be until after I had let Aubrey go back to the clinic to bed down next to her child. Bankole had given him something to help him sleep. He did the same for her, so I won’t be able to ask her anything more until she wakes up later this morning. I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether these people, with their crosses, had some connection with my current least favorite presidential candidate, Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret. It sounds like the sort of thing his people might do—a revival of something nasty out of the past. Did the Ku Klux Klan wear crosses—as well as burn them? The Nazis wore the swastika, which is a kind of cross, but I don’t think they wore it on their chests. There were crosses all over the place during the Inquisition and before that, during the Crusades. So now we have another group that uses crosses and slaughters people. Jarret’s people could be behind it. Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them. Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity. Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Who ever felt canary yellow and light blue are a suitable color should be tarred and feathered.
”
”
Rae Z. Ryans (Chivalry and Malevolence (Book 1))
“
A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution; it persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance and Other Essays)
“
The idea of you lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind—as long as it’s day-time and you’re not behind him.
“Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men, in the day-time, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people—whereas you’re just as brave, and no braver. Why don’t your juries hang murderers? Because they’re afraid the man’s friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark—and it’s just what they would do.
“So they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn’t bring a man with you; that’s one mistake, and the other is that you didn’t come in the dark, and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man—Buck Harkness, there—and if you hadn’t had him to start you, you’d a taken it out in blowing.
“You didn’t want to come. The average man don’t like trouble and danger. You don’t like trouble and danger. But if only half a man—like Buck Harkness, there—shouts ‘Lynch him, lynch him!’ you’re afraid to back down—afraid you’ll be found out to be what you are—cowards—and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man’s coat tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you’re going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it, is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do, is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching’s going to be done, it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they’ll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave—and take your half-a-man with you...
”
”
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
“
Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity. Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He’s had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Fly away,” sang little lark to the crow,
“There is no home for you
Among the broken promises and empty hearts. We drew
the life we never mourned, away with fading dark.
Your wings are fashioned from the cold, mindless lies
of feathers tarred with pitch!
”
”
Phen Weston (Under the Rose)
“
We have, it seems, a few people who think Jarret may be just what the country needs—apart from his religious nonsense. The thing is, you can’t separate Jarret from the “religious nonsense.” You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They’re a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package. Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
truck…Black soliders returning from American’s wars abroad were tarred and feathered…Black soldiers returning from America’s wars in uniform were castrated and lynched…Brave Black soldiers had their medals of honor retracted and denied So Truman passed a law not for Black people…we have always been better than the country we served…but to tell the whites who thought it more important to be white than united…that Black people are an integral if not essential part of this nation…And we are to be accepted…and honored…for the historic good wishes and sacrifices we offered America…Not only fifty years ago
”
”
Nikki Giovanni (Blues: For All the Changes: New Poems)
“
Antislavery literature was illegal in this part of the nation. Abolitionists and sympathizers who came down to Georgia and Florida were run off, flogged and abused by mobs, tarred and feathered. Methodists and their inanities had no place in the bosom of King Cotton. The planters did not abide contagion.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
It may seem bad, Geoffrey, but you’ll come out of it. I’m not taking your grief lightly; it’s just that I’ve seen enough of life to know that you’ll come out of it.’ The words you’ve said yourself while scribbling a prescription (No, Mrs Blank, you could take them all and they wouldn’t kill you). And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
”
”
Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)
“
BROWN DIDN’T WAIT LONG to take up arms in the battle he’d come to join. A few weeks before his arrival, the territory’s proslavery legislature—“elected” amid rampant fraud—put into force some of the most extreme laws in antebellum America. Anyone who expressed antislavery views was guilty of a felony, punishable by two years’ hard labor. Aiding a fugitive slave brought ten years’ imprisonment; inciting blacks to rebel brought death. As if this weren’t draconian enough, a proslavery editor warned: “We will continue to tar and feather, drown, lynch and hang every white-livered abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil.
”
”
Tony Horwitz (Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War)
“
When she dies, you are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death. You feel confirmed in your love when she dies. You got it right. This is part of it all.
Afterward comes the madness. And then the loneliness: not the spectacular solitude you had anticipated, not the interesting martyrdom of widowhood, but just loneliness. You expect something almost geological-- vertigo in a shelving canyon -- but it's not like that; it's just misery as regular as a job. What do we doctors say? I'm deeply sorry, Mrs Blank; there will of course be a period of mourning but rest assured you will come out of it; two of these each evening, I would suggest; perhaps a new interst, Mrs Blank; can maintenance, formation dancing?; don't worry, six months will see you back on the roundabout; come and see me again any time; oh nurse, when she calls, just give her this repeat will you, no I don't need to see her, well it's not her that's dead is it, look on the bright side. What did she say her name was?
And then it happens to you. There's no glory in it. Mourning is full of time; nothing but time.... you should eat stuffed sow's heart. I might yet have to fall back on this remedy. I've tried drink, but what does that do? Drink makes you drunk, that's all it's ever been able to do. Work, they say, cures everything. It doesn't; often, it doesn't even induce tiredness: the nearest you get to it is a neurotic lethargy. And there is always time. Have some more time. Take your time. Extra time. Time on your hands.
Other people think you want to talk. 'Do you want to talk about Ellen?' they ask, hinting that they won't be embarrassed if you break down. Sometimes you talk, sometimes you don't; it makes little difference. The word aren't the right ones; or rather, the right words don't exist. 'Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.' You talk, and you find the language of bereavement foolishly inadequate. You seem to be talking about other people's griefs. I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her. There is a limited choice of prayers on offer: gabble the syllables.
And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But your don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
”
”
Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)
“
Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents)
“
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own and malice finds all her work in vain. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Compensation: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series)
“
On our third day at Gooden-Baden, as I lay abed waiting for my morning tea tray to arrive, Edward went for a soak in the medicinal tar pits. He never came back. All they found was his Bavarian hunting hat, floating on the surface of the tar, with those jaunty feathers sticking up and a sweet little sprig of edelweiss pinned to the hatband. A sticky trail of bubbles and a ruined hat. That was what was left of my husband. The hat was new, too; he had only just purchased it in the gift shop. . . .” The widow was overcome by emotion and had to pause. “Poor hat,” said Beowulf with feeling, perhaps missing the deeper meaning of the widow’s tears.
”
”
Maryrose Wood (The Unseen Guest (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, #3))
“
Now let me tell you something.
I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously.
I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten.
I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.
I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes.
I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things.
But—
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever-surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.
”
”
Gerald Durrell
“
News people—the media elite—had been a terrible scourge during his childhood. But they had gradually lost power with the advent of bidirectional, reputation-endorsed public commentary via Web links shortly after the turn of the millennium. People who published on the Web—especially people who wanted the title of "reporter"—had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Failure was brutally and swiftly punished with electronic tar and digital feathers. Despite a rocky start, honesty had taken over as the currency of the Web—a devastating if subtle blow to manipulators of public opinion. Weakened by the Web, the media elite had died alongside their political bedfellows [...}
”
”
Marc Stiegler (Earthweb)
“
Are you going to help me up?”
Adaira unwound her matted braid and laughed again. “Do you think I was born yesterday?”
She gave him a terrible idea. He almost smiled.
“Then will you at least take my harp? It’s going to warp now, after all this time in the water.” He held up his instrument, and Adaira studied it. Jack concealed his glee as she reached forward to take hold of his harp.
As soon as her fingers closed over the frame, he pulled. Adaira let out a shriek as she tumbled into the sea, just over his head. He couldn’t resist it; a broad grin spread across his face as Adaira spluttered to the surface.
“You will soon pay for that,” she said, wiping water from her eyes. “Old menace.”
“I have no doubt,” he replied in a droll tone. “What will it be, heiress? Tar and feathers? The stocks? My firstborn son?”
She stared at him a moment, pearls of water on her long lashes. The sea lapped at their shoulders, and Jack could feel her fingers brush his as they both waded in the roll of the waves.
“I can think of something far worse.” But she smiled as she said it, and he had never seen such a smile on her face before. Or maybe he had once, long ago when they were children.
She was making him remember those old days. Days spent in the sea and caves. Nights spent roaming the wild places, the thistle patches and glens and the rocks on the coast. She was making him remember what it felt like to belong on isle. To belong to the east.
She wanted him to stay and play for their clan, and Jack was beginning to think that maybe he should seize that opportunity, even if it stole his health, song by song.
Just for a year. A full passing of seasons. Long enough to see her rise as laird.
He drew a tendril of golden algae from her hair and begrudgingly acknowledged it then.
He disliked her a little less than yesterday.
And that could only bring him trouble.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1))
“
Because I have eyes to see, as well, and if you continue to carry on so brazenly, others will be forced out of their blindness. You will end up tarred and feathered, or worse.
”
”
Mark Beauregard (The Whale: A Love Story)
“
Not because the police do – that would open us up to the “wanna-be cop” tar-and-feathering – but for the same reasons police do.
”
”
Massad Ayoob (Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense)
“
Eyebrows and hair singed off, Hector is barely recognizable under a lathering of day-glow orange. He appears to have been tarred-and-feathered with orange tar and oatmeal feathers.
”
”
Ray Palla (H: Infidels of Oil)
“
Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them. Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity. Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He’s had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents)
“
Jarret's people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness' sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of "heathen houses of devil-worship," he has a simple answer: "Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again." He's had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler
“
they were sober, church-going people, the sort who formed the Ku Klux Klan, and punished fornications and adulteries by tarring and feathering and riding on a rail.
”
”
Upton Sinclair (Oil!)
“
Outsiders... projected their fear of race mixing onto the Latter-Day Saints almost from the beginning. Some Missouri residents... complained that the Saints had 'opened an asylum for rogues and vagabonds and free blacks,' while others were concerned that the Saints promoted black 'ascendancy over whites.'... Four days after Phelp's 'extra' appeared in print, a crowd of Jackson County residents stormed his printing office and destroyed all remaining copies of the extra as well as the original July issue of the Star. They scattered Phelp's type and the press itself and demolished his office and home. They seized Bishop Edward Partridge and Charles Allen and hauled them to the town square, where they tarred and feathered them... It marked the beginning of the Latter-Day Saint expulsion from Jackson County. Before the end of the year, some 1,200 Latter-Day Saints would be driven from their homes, charged, at least in part, with being too inclusive.
”
”
W. Paul Reeve (Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood)
“
Should we save them, Jim?"
The boy was so innocent.
"Huck, I reckon if'n we save 'em, dey gonna turn me in. What you think?"
The boy studied on that for a spell. "I reckon you're right. But what will them folks do to them?"
"I don't know, Huck. Maybe dey jest pay a fine. Maybe dey get tarred and feathered. I don't know."
"That seems right awful."
"I s'pose it do. But dey was stealin' from dem folk. Tellin' lies lak dey was. He weren't neber no pirate."
"Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?"
"Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares 'em."
The river put its full pull on us and we watched the men grow smaller.
"I reckon I do that, too," the boy said.
"What say?"
"I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don't think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them."
"Thank you, Huck.
”
”
Percival Everett (James)
“
does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents)
“
One thing Mr Chaudhuri has overlooked in his remarkable thesis on Hinduism: no religious community in India would take this tarring and feathering of all that they hold sacred save the Hindus.
”
”
Khushwant Singh (More Malicious Gossip)
“
Programming assignments in school are devised to move you in a beeline from beginning to end. You'd probably want to tar and feather a teacher who gave you a programming assignment, then changed the assignment as soon as you finished the design, and then changed it again just as you were about to turn in the completed program. But that very process is an everyday reality in professional programming.
”
”
Steve McConnell (Code Complete)
“
It was difficult not to be intimidated by a crowd, especially at a time when it had attained such skill in the gentle art of tarring and feathering.
”
”
Robert Middlekauff (The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789)
“
You've tugged on your bonnet strings five times in this conversation already. Why wear one, if it's so uncomfortable? Have you any reason for it, other than that it is what everyone else does?"
"I brown terribly in the sunlight. I'll develop freckles."
"Oh no,. That sounds awful." He spoke with exaggerated solicitude, but he leaned down from his horse until his nose was a bare foot from hers. "Freckles. And what do those dastardly spots portend? Are freckled people thrown in prison? Pilloried? Covered in tar and sprinkled with tiny little down feathers?
”
”
Courtney Milan (Unveiled (Turner, #1))
“
Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, "simpler" time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stopping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country…
…
Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of "heathen houses of devil-worship," he has a simple answer: "Join us! Our doors are open to nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Even in the opening years of the nineteenth century, just as workers refined their strike tactics, coercion was needed to enforce unity and to persuade owners of the legitimacy of the laborers’ demands. That coercion frequently took the form of rioting—whether it was tarring and feathering a recalcitrant shoemaker in Baltimore, or brawling with strikebreakers on New York docks. Force was often garnered to meet force, and riots and violence represent the signposts of American labor history from the 1830s to the twentieth century…much of the history of American labor is written in blood as riots.136
”
”
Shon Meckfessel (Nonviolence Ain't What It Used To Be: Unarmed Insurrection and the Rhetoric of Resistance)
“
After becoming president, Washington personally led a national army into western Pennsylvania to suppress a rebellion against the new federal tax on whiskey. Invoking the spirit of 1776, the “whiskey rebels” had tarred and feathered a federal tax collector, then held protest meetings where they threatened revolution. Washington was furious. In response, he marched with the army to Pennsylvania—the only time in American history a president has served as commander-in-chief in the field. In a subsequent message to Congress, he showed precious little sympathy for insurrectionary “Second Amendment remedies”: [T]o yield to the treasonable fury of so small a portion of the United States, would be to violate the fundamental principle of our constitution, which enjoins that the will of the majority shall prevail. . . . [S]ucceeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done; it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate the ill-conduct of the insurgents, that their malevolence was not pointed merely to a particular law; but that a spirit, inimical to all order, has actuated many of the offenders.
”
”
Garrett Epps (Wrong and Dangerous: Ten Right Wing Myths about Our Constitution)
“
I am tarred and feathered with Time.
”
”
Ogden Nash
“
the woke mob is just behaving the way any mob does. First it tars and feathers the enemy; then when the enemy’s supporters reveal themselves, it tars and feathers them too.
”
”
Vivek Ramaswamy (Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam)
“
A Minnesota pastor was tarred and feathered because people overheard him praying in German with a dying woman.
”
”
Adam Hochschild (American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis)
“
Slacker had come into the language as a term of frequent use. Bundles of Hearst newspapers had been burned in Times Square because Hearst was slow in swinging to the Allied cause but in a few weeks he had swung, and American flags were printed all over his daily sheets. So-called pro-Germans were being tarred and feathered by mobs in the West. Frank Little of the I.W.W. executive board had been lynched by business men in Butte, Montana. And new and appalling tales of cruelty to conscientious objectors were coming out of the prisons where they were confined.
”
”
Art Young
“
meanest and most restless nigger, strip him of his clothes in front of the remaining male niggers, the female, and the nigger infant, tar and feather him, tie each leg to a different horse faced in opposite directions, set him a fire and beat both horses to pull him apart in front of the remaining nigger. The next step is to take a bull whip and beat the remaining nigger male to the point of death, in front of the female and the
”
”
Willie Lynch (The Willie Lynch Letter And The Making of A Slave)
“
The Last Labrador Duck Thirteen days to Christmas. The boy’s little sister is loudly hungry, his mother silently, bent at the apron strings. The boy goes to the river wide with ice. He slips; his father’s gun knocks his knee. The hawthorns are scratchy lines as indecipherable to him as newspapers. He stops. There’s a block of grubby snow on the sleek ice. Brown and white, a noose of black. The ice creaks as the boy creeps close. The bird doesn’t stir. Its eyes look closed. Until now, he’s never wondered if birds sleep. The bill is orange at the base, the tip black as a bruised toe. He tugs a glove off with his teeth and raises the gun. He loaded the right shot and it goes straight through. He’s saved his mother a job. The wings aren’t even unfolded. He’s never seen black feet on a duck. Before he puts his glove back on, he touches the bill; it feels so soft, as if the bird is touching him back. He swings the grub home, gavels it on the table his mother just scrubbed. She smiles and he leaves her to it. He’ll go tell Bob on Maple. At supper, it’s awful. Bitter as bark. He’d spit it out if they weren’t so hungry. He coughs, a tiny feather drowned in his throat. That makes his sister giggle. His mother and his father laugh, until a knock at the door quiets them. A man, his hair oiled flat. Not scrawny, yet he’s come for their scraps. The boy’s mother hands him the garbage pail. The man takes out the duck’s head and neck. He’s brought a newspaper to wrap the decapitation in. The man can read, the boy can tell. Labrador duck, the man reckons. That flattened, tar-dipped bill. Rare as a unicorn. Don’t worry, says the boy. It tastes revolting. I’ll leave the next one I see alone.
”
”
Joanna Lilley (Endlings)
“
Many whites who were suspected of loyalties to the British were hounded, tarred and feathered, sent into exile—but they were not hanged on the mere suspicion of what they might do in the future. Something else was going on here, something with a distinctly racial twist. Jeremiah personified the worst fears of white patriots: what if black men, acting as their own agents, sided against them?
”
”
Ray Raphael (A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence)
“
At home, the militias helped enforce revolutionary values and standards. Although militiamen hardly struck fear in the hearts of redcoated soldiers, their impact upon local Tories was far more profound: they wielded tar and feathers, an awesome power indeed. They forced reluctant citizens to declare allegiance to the cause, either by signing oaths or through military service. They intimidated merchants who appeared to be profiting from the war. They functioned, in essence, like a paramilitary government.
”
”
Ray Raphael (A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence)
“
This was a real revolution: the people did seize power, but they exercised that power at the expense of others—loyalists, pacifists, merchants, Indians, slaves—who, although certainly people, were not perceived to be a part of the whole. This was, after all, a war. It would not be the last time Americans sacrificed notions of liberty and equality in the name of the general good. Frontier vigilantism, night-riding in the South, the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, red-baiting in the 1950s—these extreme manifestations of majoritarian rule did not violate our beginnings but reflected them. However crude, they echoed the tarring and feathering, the forced administration of loyalty oaths, and the general subjugation of unpopular minorities which characterized the American Revolution.
”
”
Ray Raphael (A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence)
“
It’s respectable to tar and feather criminals, to advocate locking them up and throwing away the key. It’s not racist to be against crime, even though the archetypal criminal in the media and the public imagination almost always wears Willie Horton’s face.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He’s had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson "doubted his authority to order the soldiers to fire upon the populace." [A] These boys had shown several times in the vicinity of this same so-called Liberty Hall of what acts they were capable, and there was not one of them but that looked forward to the time when it should be possible to do something more than simply vent his displeasure in words. They had been among the throng who, in open defiance of the law, had made prisoner of Giles Hendricks; tarred and feathered, and then carried him in a cart through the principal streets of the city to the Liberty
”
”
James Otis (Under the Liberty Tree A Story of The 'Boston Massacre')
“
Kevin Swift… where am I? What are you doing here?” “You’re awake.” Polydora’s lips twisted into a displeased frown. “Of course, I am awake. Now answer my questions.” Kevin sat down. He slowly lowered himself to the ground and crossed his legs. Polydora’s eyes watched him like a hawk. “I’m not exactly sure where to start,” Kevin said after a moment. “The place where you and I are currently staying is called New Genbu, and I’m here because Monstrang and Kuroneko asked me to try and convince Orin, one of the Four Saints, to join forces with them.” “I understand your situation. Yes, that makes sense. However, I still don’t know what I’m doing here. The last thing I remember is…” Polydora trailed off, her eyes widening as she looked at something behind Kevin. “You! You are one of the fiends who was chasing me!” Cien was unruffled by the woman’s anger. “I was. However, I am not anymore. Try not to blow your top off, old hag.” “O-old hag?!” Polydora shrieked. “I’m only twenty-two years old.” “Really?” Cien sounded surprised, but Kevin thought he saw vindictive joy gleaming in the inu’s eyes. “You certainly don’t look that young. I guess that’s what happens to women who don’t know their place.” Kevin winced. He’d noticed it before, but male inu tended to be chauvinistic, and it seemed this particular inu wasn’t going to act in a way that might have suggested otherwise. “My place?” Polydora’s glare could’ve melted steel, but Cien looked unconcerned. “And what place is that?” “In the kitchen, of course.” Oh, boy. Kevin felt sweat gather on his forehead. This isn’t going to turn out well. “In the kitchen?” Polydora was beyond angry. The look on her face, which had taken on the vibrant red hue of rage, made her appear like she was ready to murder someone. “You foul, sexist, heathen! If I hadn’t lost my weapons in our first engagement, I would kill you where you stand—where you lay!” “So, the yama uba needs her weapons to kill, does she?” Cien’s grin was the utter definition of superiority. “I guess that’s what it means to be a race of nothing but women. You need weapons to be strong.” “That does it! I think this despicable mutt needs a lesson in manners!” “Bring it on, hag! I’ll beat you to a pulp!” Before Cien or Polydora could do much more than stand up, Kevin acted. Cien was taken down with a swift kick to the stomach, while Polydora tripped when Kevin kicked the back of her foot. She fell onto her bottom with a harsh “Oof!” “That’s enough out of the both you,” Kevin said calmly. “Polydora, I understand that you’re angry, but I need him to tell me what he knows about the Yamata Alliance, or do you not want to rescue Phoebe?” Polydora, who’d been about to shout at him, snapped her mouth closed. Kevin nodded. “And you.” He pointed at Cien. “Insult one of my friends again, and I will be sure to humiliate you so thoroughly your pride will be in tatters by the time I’m done.” Cien hesitated, but then he jutted out his chin in defiance. “Just try it. There’s nothing you can do to me that you haven’t already done.” Kevin’s creepy smile made Cien lean back. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. You forget that I’m the mate to a kitsune. Pranking is in their blood, you know? Keep insulting my friend and I’ll drug you, strip you naked, cover you in tar and feathers, attach you to the back of a car, and have it drag you through a heavily populated city. Don’t push me.” Needless to say, Cien shut up.
”
”
Brandon Varnell (A Fox's Mission (American Kitsune, #11))
“
The mass of mankind cannot be governed by Law. More of despotic discretion, and less of Law, is what the world wants. We take our leave by saying, 'THERE IS TOO MUCH OF LAW AND TOO LITTLE OF GOVERNMENT IN THIS WORLD.'
Physical force, not moral suasion, governs the world. The negro sees the driver's lash, becomes accustomed to obedient, cheerful industry, and is not aware that the lash is the force that impels him. The free citizen fulfills, "con amore," his round of social, political and domestic duties, and never dreams that the Law, with its fines and jails, penitentiaries and halters, or Public Opinion, with its ostracism, its mobs, and its tar and feathers, help to keep him revolving in his orbit. Yet, remove these physical forces, and how many good citizens would shoot, like fiery comets, from their spheres, and disturb society with their eccentricities and their crimes.
Government is the life of a nation, and as no one can foresee the various future circumstances of social, any more than of individual life, it is absurd to define on paper, at the birth of either the nation or individual, what they shall do and what not do. Broad construction of constitutions is as good as no constitution, for it leaves the nation to adapt itself to circumstances; but strict construction will destroy any nation, for action is necessary to national conservation, and constitution-makers cannot foresee what action will be necessary. If individual or social life were passed in mere passivity, constitutions might answer. Not in a changing and active world. Louisiana, Florida and Texas would have been denied to the South under strict construction, and she would have been ruined. A constitution, strictly construed, is absolutely inconsistent with permanent national existence.
”
”
George Fitzhugh (Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters)
“
language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Colleges are just like people. They have personalities, too. Some are laid-back and some are intense; some are friendly and some are reserved; some are spirited and some are blasé; some are conservative and some are liberal. These personalities have extraordinary staying power. Benjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania in 1740 to further the “useful arts” and, today, Penn still reflects his career-oriented approach to education.
It is easy to underestimate just how wide the differences in personality can be. There are some colleges that resemble 1960s communes; there are others where smoking, drinking, and even dancing are banned. You’ll find football, fraternities, and homecoming weekends at some colleges; at others, the students scoff at the mere mention of such frivolities. At some colleges, homosexuality is a chic alternative lifestyle that many students try out because it is cool or “politically correct”; at many others, gays and lesbians are practically tarred and feathered if they come out of the closet.
”
”
Fiske Guide To Colleges (Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005)
“
The great cavern that opened on the abyss was as black as pitch, black as tar, blacker than the feathers of a crow. Light entered as a trespasser, unwanted and unwelcome, and soon was gone again; cookfires, candles, and rushes burned for a little while, then guttered out again, their brief lives at an end.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
“
Cyrus’s eyes flew open. “The enemy is getting away!” he exclaimed. “We need to stop them!” “He’s conscious!” Alexander exclaimed. “The redcoats have fled from their positions on the Delaware!” Cyrus went on. “Let’s rout them and end the British scourge once and for all!” “He’s conscious, all right,” Erica said sadly. “Unfortunately, his mind’s in the wrong century.” Cyrus glared at all of us. “Don’t just sit there!” he shouted. “Go tell General Washington I need more troops! The fate of the Continental Army hangs in the balance!” “Take it easy, Cyrus,” Catherine said. “You’ve had a nasty bonk on the noggin.” Cyrus’s eyes went wide at the sound of her accent. “She’s British!” he shouted to us. “There’s a spy in our midst! Seize her and I’ll have her tarred and feathered!” He lunged for her, but his legs went out on him and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious again. Catherine looked to Alexander, concerned. “I haven’t seen Cyrus much in the past few years, but I’m assuming that’s an atypical episode?” “Yes,” Alexander agreed. “Although once, when I was quite young, he got a bad concussion and thought he was a member of the Mongol Horde for a week.” He knelt down, hooked his hands under Cyrus’s arms, and hoisted him into the bed. Cyrus started singing “Yankee Doodle” in his sleep.
”
”
Stuart Gibbs (Spy School British Invasion)
“
Scrambling to defend himself, Joseph tried to remove his coat, but his arms got tangled in the sleeves. William struck hard, again and again, aggravating an injury Joseph had received when he was tarred and feathered. By the time some of the men wrestled William away, Joseph lay on the floor, barely able to move.36 A few days later, as he recovered from the fight, Joseph received a message
”
”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Standard of Truth: 1815–1846 (Saints, #1))
“
As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1))
“
There was an uprising in western Pennsylvania against the whiskey tax my husband had levied to pay the country’s war debt. Tax collectors had been tarred and feathered. Whiskey rebels had blown up the stills of their neighbors who paid the tax. They’d kidnapped a federal marshal. They’d even threatened to build a guillotine. Here. In America. President
”
”
Stephanie Dray (My Dear Hamilton)