Sentences with phrase «crushed by circumstance»

Not exact matches

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings; that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal («the secret brand»); that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

At school, I started to feel crushed by the weight of the circumstances piling up against my students, not believing that anything I could do would make a difference.

You start feeling less like a kick - ass karate - fueled vigilante of justice and more like the loser sitting on a couch you actually are as Batman fumbles about with targets and let's his car get crushed by the Riddler's traps again and again and again, sometimes through circumstances you couldn't foresee without trial and error.