vex

• To vex is to antagonize, and the opposite of that would be to comfort. —  Answerbag: Latest Questions in Question Categories
• If demons can vex, they must feel like us. —  The Phantom Ship
• Instead there were new and anxious thoughts to vex, and so another half hour he tossed and tumbled, and when at last he seemed dropping to the borderland, perhaps, of dreams, he thought he must be ailing again and in need of new bandages or cooling drink or something, for the muffled footfalls, betrayed by creaking pine rather than by other sound, told him drowsily that the attendant or somebody, cautioned not to disturb him, was moving slowly across the room. —  An Apache Princess A Tale of the Indian Frontier
• Every privateer, under pretence that he suspects an enemy's goods to be part of a cargo, may search, vex, and capture a vessel; and if in any corner of the dominions of the belligerent power, a single judge can be found inclined, if not determined, to condemn, at all events, before his tribunal, all vessels so captured will be brought there, and the same pretence which caused the capture will justify a condemnation. —  American Eloquence, Volume 1 Studies In American Political History (1896)
• For that withdrawing of our thoughts which he recommends when he calls us off from contemplating our misfortunes is an imaginary action; for it is not in our power to dissemble or to forget those evils which lie heavy on us; they tear, vex, and sting us--they burn us up, and leave no breathing time. —  Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth

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