"Abhorrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were so renowned, for it was still the custom of the knights of either nation to mingle in these courteous and chivalrous contests during the intervals of war. When they learnt, however, that he was come to demand the tribute so abhorrent to the ears of the fiery monarch, they observed that it well required a warrior of his apparent nerve to execute ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... severely than himself, since in them there was no such reaction. I have no doubt that he himself would have spoken even plainer language, though to me his language is perfectly transparent, if he had not been restrained by a superstitious notion of his own, that the true escape from the pestilent and abhorrent brutalities which he detected around him in "real" life is found in "the ideal" form of thought and language. Ardent and romantic, he was eager to discover beauty "beneath" every natural aspect. Of all men living, I am the one most bound to be aware of the inconsistency; but you will see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the standards Mohammedan and there on the profession of Faith Islamitan, proclaiming the Unity, they shrieked "Woe!" and "Ruin!" and besought succour of the Patriarchs of the Monasteries. Then fell they to calling upon John and Mary and the Cross abhorrent and stayed their hands from slaughter, whilst King Afridun went up to consult King Hardub of Greece, for the two Kings stood one at the head of each wing, right and left. Now there was with them also a famous cavalier, Lawiya highs, who commanded ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and he had not valiantly grappled with it, he had fled from it; sought refuge in vague daydreams, hollow compromises, in opium, in theosophic metaphysics. Harsh pain, danger, necessity, slavish harnessed toil, were of all things abhorrent to him. And so the empyrean element, lying smothered under the terrene, and yet inextinguishable there, made sad writhings. For pain, danger, difficulty, steady slaving toil, and other highly disagreeable behests of destiny, shall in nowise be shirked by any brightest mortal that will approve ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... hawk-like face. There could be no mistake. She was looking into the face that made the portrait of the Iron Count so abhorrent to her: the leathery head of a cadaver with eyes that lived. A portrait of Voltaire, the likeness of a satyr, a suggestion of Satan—all rushed up from memory's storehouse to hold her attention rapt in contemplation of this ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... with the English. A better beaver market, and plenty of brandy. It goes hard with them that we are frugal with our muskets, while the English keep the Iroquois well armed. Longuant says, and justly, that it is difficult to kill men with clubs. On the other hand they like us, and find the English abhorrent. So they have virtually agreed to leave the casting vote with you. They will come after sundown and demand that the prisoner be given them for torture. If you agree, they will feel that you have declared your position against ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... to take Mrs. Scobel and Captain Winstanley in her roomy carriage. Mr. Scobel was not going to the ball. All such entertainments were an abhorrence to him; but this particular ball, being given in Lent, was more especially abhorrent. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... view prevail generally. We artists are merely one of bourgeoisie's luxuries in paying for which they will outbid each other. If you were right, how would an opera like Walkuere be possible which deals with things the exposure of which is absolutely abhorrent to the public. Yet when I sing the part of Siegmund, the most solicitous mothers will not hesitate to bring in their thirteen or fourteen year old daughters. And indeed, as I am standing on the stage, I know for certain that not one person in the audience any longer pays ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... and cold. She tried to walk faster to warm her blood, and discovered that she was exhausted, tired to the marrow of her bones. Her feet dragged on the pavement, her arms hung heavily by her side, but she dared not stop a moment lest some other man with abhorrent eyes should approach her. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... lessons. She rejoices over her system: it is honest, kind, generous,—it will serve the future, and is not unprofitable at present. It is different from that pursued by those who would, through the instrumentality of bad laws, enforce ignorance. Nay, to her there is something abhorrent in using the Word of God as an excuse for the existence of slavery. Her system is practicable, enlightening first, and then enforcing that which gives encouragement to the inert faculties of our nature. Punishments were scarcely known upon her plantation; the lash never used. Old and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... dignity was not hereditary like a private possession, but was a gift of the people, which they could as lawfully transfer from one to another, as originally confer. The participation of women in the administration of the government was declared to be abhorrent to the ideas of the founders of the French monarchy.[1353] In another work appearing not long after, the principle was enunciated that an unbounded obedience is due to the Almighty alone, while obedience to human magistrates is in its very nature subject to limitations and exceptions. The supreme ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... least interest in the dispute, and he brazens it out in a very unblushing manner. I am more particularly struck with the meanness here exhibited, from having just been reading Lord Chatham's correspondence, in which his noble and lofty character, so abhorrent of everything like trickery, shabbiness, and underhand dealing, shines forth with peculiar lustre. It is animating and refreshing to turn to the contemplation of this really great and noble mind, even more remarkable I think for dignity of sentiment ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was always ready to be the soldier, but never the accomplice. He did not betray the king, and always ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... principle, everything that made up the greatness and littleness of the France of the end of last century, everything which will make up the greatness and littleness of France, the glories and weaknesses which the world must love, to the end of time; all these things were abhorrent to Alfieri; and Alfieri, when once he disliked a person or a thing, justly or unjustly, could only increase but never diminish his dislike. Let us look at this matter, which is instructive to all persons whose nobility of character runs to injustice, a little closer; it will help ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... mediator. To them all mankind were the sons of God. That the Rabbis borrowed this God-idea and the expression "Our Father which is in Heaven" from Christianity is untenable, for, as Herford (Pharisaism, 120 et seq.) points out, such borrowing would have been abhorrent to them. This expression was undoubtedly current long before and during the time of Jesus, and it represented a conception of the divine acceptable to both the Rabbis and Jesus. The Rabbis had no quarrel with Christianity on this score, but did not admit the "sonship" ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... which they discovered and conquered, that the Indians, in their idol worship, were favoured by the demons with a direct intercourse, and that their priests inculcated doctrines and rites the foulest and most abhorrent to Christian ears. The great snake-god of Mexico, and other idols worshipped with human sacrifices and bathed in the gore of their prisoners, gave but too much probability to this accusation; and if the images themselves were not actually tenanted ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... boulder and crawled down to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I spied, at two gunshots' distance or less, a milestone with a splash of white upon it—a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce the price upon the head of Champdivers? "At least I will see how they describe him"—this I told myself; but that which tugged at my feet was the baser fascination of fright. I had thought my spine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know, at all events, that out of a female population of many millions in this country, so far only ten women, possibly fifteen, have been found to raise their voices—raised so often and so loudly on other questions—to protest against the barbarous and abhorrent fashion of wearing slain birds as ornaments. The degrading business of supplying the demand for this kind of feminine adornment must doubtless continue to flourish in our midst, commerce not being compatible with morality, but the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the chief witness has been removed by death; while at the same time the nature of the punishment leads the jury unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof than in cases where the consequences are less abhorrent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. Moreover, homicide cases as a rule are better defended than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the result. These considerations apply to all trials for homicide, notorious or otherwise, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence—his bed. One visitor had come; at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money—that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... two conspirators for the British Raj and his white friends, paced back and forth, his hands behind his back, his head bent. He was a Christian; he was not only a Christian, he was a Hindu, and the shedding of blood was doubly abhorrent to ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... extent at least, their singular frankness. To use the decorous phrase of the text-book, "They multiply by fission." Your amoeba or vorticella, as the case may be, splits in two. Then there are two amoebae or vorticellae. In this way the necessity of the family, that middle-class institution so abhorrent to the artistic mind, is avoided. In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, which should appeal to the scholastic mind, and the simple protozoon has none of that fitful fever of falling in love, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... on, Ziska, its controlling spirit, grew steadily more abhorrent of privilege and distinction, more bitterly fanatical. The ancient church, royalty, nobility, all excited his wrath. He was republican, socialist, almost anarchist in his views. His idea of perfection lay in a fraternity composed of the children of God, while he trusted to the strokes of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... great deal to crush me, because I know, in the first place, that my own intentions were correct, that I feel in my heart a deep reverence for religion, that impiety is very abhorrent to me; and in the second, I place firm reliance on the judgment of some who have encouraged me. You and Mr. Lewes are quite as good authorities, in my estimation, as Mr. Dilke or the editor of the Spectator, and I would not under any circumstances, or ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus" (by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and told she must obey the rules of the house and it was useless to protest. "If we could help you," she was asked, "would you like to come to us?" The child hesitated—the very name "Christian" was abhorrent to her—but after a moment's doubt she nodded, and then slipped away. Our worker never saw her again. The conversation must have been noticed by the child's escort, and reported. She was sent off to another town, and all attempts to trace ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... cabin steps that I usually passed up and down on, but this time avoided. Circumstantial evidence came up in abundance to make the case perfectly clear to the authorities. There are few who will care to hear more about a subject so abhorrent to all, and I care less to write about it. I would not have said this much, but for the enterprise of a rising department clerk, who, seeing the importance of telling to the world what he knew, ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... request Edith was silent for a few moments. The man himself grew more abhorrent to her, if possible, every moment; but her desire to find out what his purposes were, and her hope of making use of him still, in spite of present appearances, made her think that it might be best ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... insensate frenzied part, Ah, why should I such scenes outlive Scenes so abhorrent to my heart! 'Tis thine to pity ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... what was the head and front of her offending, she begged the Countess to explain that she was a woman of peace, that war was abhorrent to her and all of her persuasion, and finally she quite won the Austrian's heart by telling him that she had no admiration for that upstart Bonaparte family (Miss Cassandra is nothing if not aristocratic); that for her part she liked old-established dynasties, like the Hapsburgs, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... so abhorrent to the conscience, so contrary to the well nigh universal belief, and so fruitful of evil, certainly can not be true. Small wonder is it that students are fast becoming infidels and atheists, and we shudder as we think of the coming generation. A great responsibility rests upon ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... deal to do with the Rhine; not that Caesar had a good deal to do with Nero's mother. I explain this because I should be sorry to convey any false impression concerning either the lady or Caesar. Scandal is a thing abhorrent ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... abhorrent outbursts of passion would ensue between those two strange creatures, savage ardor followed by savage satiety, frantic storms of lust, caresses that were impregnated with the fierce brutality of wine, kisses that seemed to seek the blood beneath the skin, like the tongue of a wild ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... only disappointed. The very habit of a life of reserve must have brought some sense of disappointment in the result. She did not mind being told that she must lie in the dust; the abnegation was not abhorrent; she knew that love in itself sometimes demanded humiliation. But she felt sad and discouraged. She had seemed to have conquered a kingdom. Without exactly being proud of them, she had felt her religious experiences to be very remarkable, and now she saw that they only pointed to a very ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the term righteous indignation; the other, the word anger. The moral judgment passed upon an act depends upon the concept under which men manage to bring it. What is approved by the tribal ethics may be abhorrent to ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... be said of his ancestry and family connections. Contempt for lowly beginnings, abhorrent as it is to any honest mind, would to Lincoln's mind have probably been inconceivable, but he lacked that interest in ancestry which is generally marked in his countrymen, and from talk of his nearer progenitors he ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... and Englishmen to whom a gold mine, a chance federal theory, a colonial accent, or a map, is more of an inheritance than the delicate feminine profile of Nelson or the hitherto unbroken traditions of our political scheme. To such men arms are either abhorrent, or, what is worse, a very cowardly (and thank God! unsuccessful) method of acquiring or defending their very base enjoyments. Let us forget them. It is only as nationalists, and only in an intense sympathy with the highly individual ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... for opposing anything and everything which would tend to indicate the possibility of intelligent life existing upon any other planet than the earth; although it is difficult to understand why such a possibility should be so abhorrent. It is a view that does not commend itself to me, but I need not ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... as necessary to liberty, belonged only to a small proportion of the population of Italy. It was the liberty of a small privileged class for which he was anxious. That a Sicilian should be free under a Roman Proconsul, as a Roman citizen was entitled to be, was abhorrent to his doctrine. The idea of cosmopolitan freedom—an idea which exists with us, but is not common to very many even now—had not as yet been born: that care for freedom which springs from a desire to do to others ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... harping on Cuthbertson's inconsistency). Well, you know, this is unexpected: now it's really very unexpected. I should never have thought it from hearing you talk, Jo. Why, you said the whole modern movement was abhorrent to you because your life had been passed in witnessing scenes of suffering nobly endured and sacrifice willingly rendered by womanly women and manly men and deuce knows what else. Is it at the Ibsen club that you see ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... powers moved for me, That all the hosts of hell me welcome give, And claim me comrade in their revelry? Abhorrent things, I am not yours, I live, I know I live because I think on death! I live, dead things, to revel among tombs, A ghoul, henceforth I feast on buried joys, My soul the burial-place, where lie, beneath A fearful night of cries and hellish spumes, My lovely youth ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the publication of ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... that her marriage would be the only means by which her father might be relieved of the haunting knowledge of her lost peace of mind. Had she given one thought to Louis, the possibility of the act would have been abhorrent to her. One picture she kept constantly before ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... girdle, destroy, annihilate, give back to the forest what human courage and self-denial had wrested from it, was to them in their souls abhorrent. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... Jerusalem Bishopric. In May, 1843, I made it known, as has been seen, to the friend by whose advice I wished, as far as possible, to be guided. To mention it on set purpose to any one, unless indeed I was asking advice, I should have felt to be a crime. If there is anything that was abhorrent to me, it was the scattering doubts, and unsettling consciences without necessity. A strong presentiment that my existing opinions would ultimately give way, and that the grounds of them were unsound, was not a sufficient warrant for disclosing the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... arranged! His sufferings sanctify him, but mine make me abhorrent and laughable! We must face the immutable. We've destroyed a ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... men to be forms of love, since partners can love each other from inmosts and so form themselves into loves; nor can it see that adultery destroys this form and with it the Lord's image; and what is abhorrent, that the adulterer mingles his life with that of the husband in the wife, for a man's life is ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... distinguished not itself From the insensate mail, its fellow warrior? And have I brought home with me Victory, And with her, hand in hand, firm-footed Peace, 160 Her countenance twice lighted up with glory, As if I had charmed a goddess down from Heaven? But these will flee abhorrent from the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... manners attract attention and excite curiosity. I am extremely desirous to keep her history secret, but I already find it difficult to answer questions without resorting to falsehood, which is a practice exceedingly abhorrent to me, and a very bad education for her. After this meeting with Mr. Fitzgerald, I cannot take her to any public place without a constant feeling of uneasiness. The fact is, I am so unused to intrigues and mysteries, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... enjoyment of the moment. Do not be alarmed: Lucien will never go so far as a crime, he has not the strength of character; but he would take the fruits of a crime, he would share the benefit but not the risk—a thing that seems abhorrent to the whole world, even to scoundrels. Oh, he would despise himself, he would repent; but bring him once more to the test, and he would fail again; for he is weak of will, he cannot resist the allurements of pleasure, nor forego the least ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy. Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent. You would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world. You feel that you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve, on whose regard you can place dependence, or whose counsel, in any difficulty, you could rely on. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... combine in a commonwealth, but on account of their separate origin the process of union was slow. The source of most of their trouble in their infancy was the grasping policy of Massachusetts. Next to heretics in the bosom of the commonwealth heretic neighbors were especially abhorrent. When in 1640 the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven addressed a joint letter to the general court of Massachusetts, and the citizens of Aquidneck ventured to join in it, Massachusetts arrogantly excluded the representation ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long continued ill treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife and the children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature. Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Ghosts and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our idea of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one single act, and with the great majority slaughtered ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that no unconverted brain can see the least of sense in this doctrine; that it is abhorrent to all who have not been the recipients of a "new heart;" that only the perfectly good can justify the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that I had given a proof of very noble devotion in rushing back for an old man into that black water. Ough! He shuddered. He had given himself up—por Dios! He hinted that, at his age, he could not have cared much for life; but then, drowning in the sea was a death abhorrent to an old Christian. You died brutally—without absolution, and unable, even, to think of your sins. He had had his mouth filled with horrid, bitter sand, too. Tfui! He gave me a thousand thanks. But these English were wonderful in their ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action. Don't rail! Leave off.... I don't know how it is, but there are moments when you are abhorrent ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... there shall be no exclusion from my lecture on account of occupation or condition. That is a thing that I can in no wise countenance, even in America; it is far more abhorrent to me even than money-making, though they are each a part and parcel of ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... I turn my eyes around me they fall abhorrent on the faces, they read indignant the designs, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... like an Indian summer ere I entered the Neversink, so abhorrent was this sumptuary law that I altogether abandoned the luxury rather than enslave it to a time and a place. Herein did I not right, Ancient and Honourable Old Guard of Smokers ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... suppose that all races are capable, under proper guidance, of being fitted into the complex scheme of our modern civilization, and the policy of artificially excluding them from its benefits is as unjustifiable scientifically as it is ethically abhorrent."[69] What is, then, this so-called "instinctive" modern prejudice against ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... was, after all, only a sort of coquetry with trimness, is the true key to the mystery of the vision of the lady who appeared to Joe. Let us say that she suppressed everything that went beyond grace; that the hint of floridity was abhorrent to her. "Trim" is as clumsy as "slender"; she had escaped from the trimness of girlhood as wholly as she had gone through its coltishness. "Exquisite." Let us go back to Joe's own blurred first thought of her ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... he could not bring himself to encourage it then. The idea of "looking after dead men's shoes" was abhorrent to his mind, especially when the man whose death he contemplated had been so trusted to him as had been Sir Louis Scatcherd. He could not speak of the event, even to the squire, as being possible. So he kept his peace from day to day, and gave no counsel ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... dreadful punishment to be inflicted, or cruel deed of any kind to be performed, Caligula took great pleasure in assigning the duty to Chaerea, knowing how abhorrent to his nature it must be. At one time a senator of great distinction named Propedius, was accused of treason by one of his enemies. His treason consisted, as the accuser alledged, of having spoken injurious words against the emperor. Propedius denied that he had ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... there were times when all the loveliness of that island seemed but a hideous place of exile, an abhorrent monotony which surrounded her—grasped her—clung to her—hemmed her in, as if it were an evil spirit, having life and the power to torture her. She thought of those whom she loved, she pondered upon ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... his enemies. She did the same good service to her favorite, Gonsalvo de Cordova; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt by both, as the last of their good fortune. [33] Artifice and duplicity were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain, it is certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harboring any petty distrust, or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and exaction of public justice, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... come by the right of inheritance; a right by dispute, lest they teach their inferiors the same refractory lesson. But to bend with voluntary subjection, to long obey a power raised by themselves, would be a sacrifice abhorrent to their pride. After having displayed their efficiency in making a king, they would prove their independence by striving to pull him down the moment he made ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... slow procession in the moonlight night to Tibbie's new home, between lines of hoarse and eager onlookers. An attempt was made by an itinerant musician to head the company with his fiddle; but instrumental music, even in the streets, was abhorrent to sound Auld Lichts, and the minister had spoken privately to Willie Todd on the subject. As a consequence, Peter was driven from the ranks. The last thing I saw that night, as we filed, bare-headed and solemn, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... good deal for twenty pounds a day, but I felt none the less that Lord Linchmere was acting rather scurvily towards me. He wished to convert me into a passive tool, like the blackthorn in his hand. With his sensitive disposition I could imagine, however, that scandal would be abhorrent to him, and I realized that he would not take me into his confidence until no other course was open to him. I must trust to my own eyes and ears to solve the mystery, but I had every confidence that I should not ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious chevilles—marchait et respirait, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... agreed Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, "and there is no spectacle so abhorrent to every sense as a narrow-minded man who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is awfully good-looking,—I will say that for him; and if you don't explain me to Lady Baird, I will write to Mr. Beresford ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the period show that the outcry against the concentration of capital was furious. Men believed that it threatened society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than it had ever endured. They believed that the great corporations were preparing for them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever been imposed on the race, servitude not to men but to soulless machines incapable of any motive ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... she had appeared in Alceste! (She sang in concert occasionally until 1870 or later.) Thereafter she divided her time principally between Baden and Paris and became the great friend of Turgeniev. His very delightful letters to her have been published. Idleness was abhorrent to this fine woman and in her middle and old age she gave lessons, while singers, composers, and conductors alike came to her for help and advice. She died in 1910 at the age of 89. Her less celebrated brother, Manuel Garcia (less celebrated as a singer; as a teacher he is given the credit for ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the faith of Jesus might peaceably divide with it the world. But surely to acquiesce in a system which reduces the people to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of philanthropy. With the believer, who holds the Gospel to be "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,"[o] such a notion is on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... in a little while that whatever love had inspired her that night she had besought him to rescue her from a life that looked hateful to her young eyes, the passion that influenced her then was utterly dead, abhorrent to her. Better, a thousand times better, that it should be so. He could not make that eager, impetuous girl, whose voice trembled with emotion, whose kisses answered his, whose soft arms clung to his neck, out of this pale, attenuated, bloodless woman. Perhaps it was heroic to give all ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a man of very different stamp from his predecessors. The quarrels, intrigues, and self-seeking that had been so disastrous a feature during the tenure of office of Child, Waite, and Gayer were abhorrent to him. He was a zealous servant of the Company, whose interests he did his best to promote with the inadequate means at his disposal. In coming up the coast he had touched at the places where the Company had factories, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... posturings and incense-fumes of Roman pietism, and even at the learned discourse which dissolved the myth of his own life and death? Why, then, over-strenuously take a side? Why not regard all phases of belief or no-belief with equal and serene regard? Such a mood of amiable indifferentism is abhorrent to Browning's feelings. The hem of Christ's robe passes wholly at this point from the hand of the seer of visions in his poem. One best way of worship there needs must be; ours may indeed not be the absolutely best, but it is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... were not," to the delight and admiration of the Irish staff. For pure extravagance, for pure pagan delight in extravagance, the Irishman and woman are hard to beat. The very warmth and generosity of their nature makes it abhorrent to them to stint in any direction, which is one reason, out of many, for the prevailing poverty ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... though the soil had been left imperfect and rough after some cataclysm; it reminded me of those bad lands in the west of America, where the desert has no form, and where the crumbling and ashy look of things is more abhorrent than their mere desolation. As ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the sake of their "godly friends in England," and to not afford a pretext for the "rebellious course" of their fellow-colonists in Virginia and the West Indies, who claimed the same independence of Parliament that the Government of Massachusetts claimed, but upon the ground which was abhorrent to the Congregational Puritans of Massachusetts—namely, that ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the same question of the second daughter. The second daughter, Regan, says that her sister has correctly expressed her own feelings, only not strongly enough. She, Regan, loves her father so much that everything is abhorrent to her except his love. The king rewards this daughter, also, and then asks his youngest, the favorite, in whom, according to his expression, are "interess'd the vines of France and the milk of Burgundy," that is, whose hand is being claimed by the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy,—he ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking. Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music? It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung; is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for contemplation may be seen, so they ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... some villainous-looking countenances in my time, but none more abhorrent of aspect than was that of Pablo Garcia, as, distorted with rage, he started on seeing Lilla resting half supported by me. The handsome regularity of his features seemed then to have the effect of making the distortion more striking. There was an angry frown, too, upon ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... grace of the movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor, nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him, he started up as if to plant himself in their way, then checked himself, and when ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... the world should be crushed in the bosom of a young girl? and how could it be crushed so effectually as by marrying her to an old man, one whom she respected, but who was otherwise distasteful to her—one who, as a husband, would at first be abhorrent to her? As Madame Staubach thought of heaven then, a girl who loved and was allowed to indulge her love could hardly go to heaven. "Let it be so," she said to Peter Steinmarc after a few days of weak vacillation,—"let it be so. I think that it will be good for her." Then Peter Steinmarc swore ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... to suppose that the possession of what benefits and satisfies one part of our being can make allowable either discourse like Mr. Murphy's and the Rev. W. Cattle's, or poetry like the hymns we all hear, or places of worship like the chapels we all see,—this it is abhorrent to the nature of Hellenism to concede. And to be, like our honoured and justly honoured Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one side of his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to Archimedes have been impossible. It is evident to what a many-sided perfecting of man's powers ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... a while back, of a small doorway in the inner wall of the staircase. It was just opposite this door that I found myself cowering, trying to close my ears against the abhorrent screams which filled the stairway and the empty corridor above with their echoes. To crawl out of sight—had you lived through those three weeks in Panama you would understand why this was the only thought in my head, and why my knees shook so that I actually crawled on them to the little door, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... joined the Protestant cause, continue still to bear the same name, but not one which at that time retained the designation of Catholic, has since become Protestant: and at Geneva, where Calvin taught, and where his doctrines are still professed, opinions which were not less abhorrent to him than the worst of the errors of popery, are openly maintained. Those who now preach the vital truths of the Reformation, are the few not ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... jolly rambling old town, to our billet in a suburban villa on the Rebais road. The Division was marching past in the very best of spirits. We, who were very tired, endeavoured to make ourselves comfortable—we were then blanketless—on the abhorrent surface of a ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... time, with coolness that would have been heroic had it not been impudent. The recitation was half over, when the girl who sat next below me "made a long arm" behind my back, and abstracted one of the abhorrent slips without the knowledge of the owner. She perceived the loss as the questions were again nearing her, gave one frightened glance at the floor on all sides of her, colored violently; made a desperate rally of memory and courage when the question ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... After that abhorrent home of indolence, which its children never left except to do a little fortune-telling and mule and donkey trading, eked out with theft in the country round, any show of honest industry looked wholesome ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... the verge of saying that J. Elfreda would have shown more wisdom by keeping silent, but suddenly checked herself. She had no right to criticize J. Elfreda's motives. To her the bare idea of telling tales was abhorrent, while this girl gloried in the fact that she had exposed those ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... construed unfavorably to them. They to whom what they call the cant of the Puritan is an offence, themselves have established and practise a distinct anti-Puritan cant with which we are all familiar. The very people who find it abhorrent and intolerable that they were such censors of the private life of their contemporaries, do not scruple to bring to bear on their private life a search-light that leaves no accessible nook of it unexplored, and regarding any unpretty trait espied by that unsparing inquest the rule of judgment persistently ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... law-maker happened to be the first object and reflection of the law made; for as liberty of all things is the most welcome to a people, so is there nothing more abhorrent from their nature than ingratitude. We, accusing the Roman people of this crime against some of their greatest benefactors, as Camillus, heap mistake upon mistake; for being not so competent judges of what belongs to liberty as they were, we take upon us to be ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... theme on which he most liked to dwell. Whiteley was perhaps the greatest oddity on the face of the earth; but of a heart sound, and benevolent beyond the generality of mankind. Violently passionate, and in his passions vulgar, rude, boisterous, and so abhorrent of hypocrisy, that he laboured to make himself appear as bad as possible. He was a native of Ireland; and it has often been said of him that in eccentricity and benevolence he was a full match for any man of that country. He would ridicule ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... now an irritation at the physical discomfort it entailed. He soon began to perspire freely, too freely; nevertheless, there was no glow to his body; he could think only of easy-chairs and warm stoves. He wondered what ailed him. Nothing could be more abhorrent than this, he told himself. Health was a valuable thing, no doubt, and he agreed that no price was too high to pay for it—no price, perhaps, except dull, uninteresting exercise of this sort. He was upon the point of turning back ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... understate the facts. It was a great belt of saffron encircling his whole soul. That she, Wilhelmina Bennett, who had gone through the world seeking a Galahad, should finish her career as the wife of a man who hid under beds simply because people shot at him with elephant guns was abhorrent to her. Why, Samuel Marlowe would have perished rather than do such a thing. You might say what you liked about Samuel Marlowe—and, of course, his habit of playing practical jokes put him beyond the pale—but nobody could question his courage. Look at the way he had dived overboard ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... most exhausting to which a human being can apply himself. Just consider the situation. Here is your man of letters, tender-hearted as Cowper, who would not count upon his list of friends the man who tramples heedlessly upon a worm; as light of sleep and abhorrent of noise as Beattie, who denounces chanticleer for his lusty proclamation of morning to his own and the neighbouring farmyards in terms that would be unmeasured if applied to Nero; as alive to blame as Byron, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... obstinacy of character which shall make the student's friends find it less trouble to let him have his own way than to bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies or universities are covertly, but essentially, radical institutions and abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. Their sin is the true radical sin of being in too great a hurry, and of believing in short cuts too soon. But it must be remembered that this proposition, like every other, wants tempering with a slight infusion ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... essential principle of which is that every man shall have an equal chance of getting to the top, it is a matter of course that that top stratum will be constantly changing. The idea of anything in the nature of an hereditary privileged class is abhorrent to the mind of every good American. If he had to have an official Aristocracy, he would insist on a brand new one with each generation; or more likely that it should be re-elected every four years. We are not now discussing the advantages ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... however, that it was no abhorrent toil to which Christ reluctantly consented. But in this case, as always with Him, the words of prophecy were true, 'I delight to do Thy will.' The schism between law and choice had no existence for Him; and when He says that He must bring the wandering sheep into the fold, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Goetz did not end with its abortive life. But for Goetz Schiller's early productions would have been differently inspired; and to Goetz also was due much of the inspiration of the subsequent German Romantic School, though many of its developments were abhorrent to Goethe's nature both in youth and maturity. It emancipated the drama from conventional shackles, but it did more: it extended the range of national thought, sentiment, and emotion, and for good and evil introduced new elements ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... author of The Lover's Melancholy, Love's Sacrifice, Perkin Warbeck, and The Broken Heart. He was a pathetic delineator of love, especially of unhappy love. Some of his plots are unnatural, and abhorrent ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... though she approached her hand to something nauseous and abhorrent, Ann reached out and withdrew one of the torn sheets of paper and stared at it. It was covered with repeated copyings of a single name—sometimes the whole name, sometimes only one or other of the initial letters to it. And the name which some one was taking such pains to learn to write was ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Paraguayans are Christians, and that is the lowest degree of all. The priests they see on the other side of the river are Yankilwana (neither man nor woman); and a Yankilwana, in his distinctive garb, could never tread this Indian soil. So abhorrent to them is the name of Christian, that the missionaries have been compelled to use another word to describe their converts, and they are called "Followers of Jesus." All the members of some large expeditions have been massacred just because they were Christians. Surely this is convincing corroboration ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... reflected from sea or sky. This was the man who had unhesitatingly attacked Vellacott, had dared to pit his small strength, more of nerve than of muscle, against the young Englishman's hardened sinews. Violence in itself was most abhorrent to him; it had no part in his nature; and consequently, by the strange tenets of Ignatius Loyola's disciples, he was condemned to a course of it. Any objectionable duty, such as this removal of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... 1787. Behind Jefferson and Madison were rallying all the colonial-minded voters, to whom government was at best an evil and to whom, under any circumstances, strong authority and elaborate finance were utterly abhorrent. Around Hamilton gathered the men whose interests lay in building up a genuine, powerful, national government—the merchants, shipowners, moneyed men and creditors generally in the northern States—and, of course, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... matter, Mr Evans, I have altogether a divided sympathy. I dislike the man utterly. I don't care who knows it. No one knows it better than he himself. The idea of his coming here over that young lady's head was from the first abhorrent to me. When I saw him, and heard him, and found out what he was,—such a poor, cringing, cowardly wretch,—my feeling was of course exacerbated. It was terrible to me that the old squire, whom I had always respected, should have brought such a man among us. But that was the old squire's doing. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... Chevalier developed a warmer interest in the sweet and pure young girl at the faubourg lodgings. Always his visits brought a little delicious heart-flutter to Henriette, though not unmixed with mourning o'er lost sister. And as a result of these idyllic meetings, ambitious plans appeared to him abhorrent. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... wrinkled skin, his jungle of grey beard, his thick grey hair, matted and shiny, covering his ears and falling about his shoulders, he was scarcely an attractive-looking person. Besides, he had lost an eye; and its empty socket irresistibly drew your gaze—an abhorrent vacuum. His clothes would be the odds and ends of students' offcasts, in the last stages of disintegration. He had a chronic stoop; always aimed his surviving eye obliquely at you, from a bent ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland |
