"Execrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Episcopalian bishops themselves. The Bishop and Committee recorded their opinion that the paper was contrived and adhered to for advancing some private interest against the unity and peace of the Church, and rather unfairly insinuated that Mr Spence was the more hardened therein by the late execrable murder of the Bishop of St. Andrews and the expectation of a Revolution to follow thereupon, and unanimously resolved that this unruly and unreasonable member be deposed. Mr Spence was quite prepared for this, and, "with some signs of choler in his countenance," handed ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... it not, and he chid the ram for being last, and spoke to it as if it understood him, and asked it whether it did not wish that its master had his eye again, which that abominable Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they had got him down with wine; and he willed the ram to tell him whereabouts in the cave his enemy lurked, that he might dash his brains and strew them about, to ease his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled in it. After a deal of ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, not only with respect to the leader but also with respect to doctrine, at the point of causing an execrable schism among the faithful. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... which is catholic, which in all ages has been, and ever will be, close and native to the heart of man,—parental anguish from filial ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though coffined in bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I ought to have added the Merchant of Venice; but here too the same remarks apply. It was an old tale; and substitute any other danger than that of the pound of flesh (the circumstance in which the improbability lies), yet all the situations and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... that cruel and unheard-of neglect of that enemy to his king and country, the author of this Act, that, when all business, the very life and being of a commercial state, was to be carried on by the use of stamps, that wicked and execrable minister never paid the least regard to the miseries of this extensive continent, but suffered the time for the taking place of the Act to elapse months before a single stamp was received. Though this was a high piece ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... the figure which thou must have made, clinging for dear life behind the old fellow's back—thy jaws chattering with fear, thy muscles cramped with anxiety. Thy execrable supper of broiled salmon, which was enough to ensure the nightmare's regular visits for a twelvemonth, may be termed a real affliction; but as for the storm of Thursday last (such, I observe, was the date), it roared, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... heare mee but one word further. Though neither for God nor man thou carest, but placeth thy whole felicitie in murder, yet of thy felicitie learne how to make a greater felicitie. Respite me a little from thy swords poynt, and set mee about some execrable enterprise, that may subuert the whole state of Christendome, and make all mens eares tingle that heare of it. Commaund me to cut all my kindreds throates, to burne men women and children in their beds in millions, by firing their Cities ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... interpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a subverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of the Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth century, became the "twice execrable" of Martin Luther; and was finally abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have excised two ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... and apprehend," said the voice of that execrable pettifogger, "the bodies of certain persons in my warrant named, charged of high treason under the 13th of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... quality, are made at Athens, Corinth, and Tripoliza, and are exported in moderate quantities to Russia. Algeria, too, is turning its attention to the production of sparkling wines, but solely for home consumption, and at the Paris Exhibition there was a sparkling wine from Uruguay, but of execrable quality. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... if made for use in a machine, and altogether the vehicle did not impress me as a comfortable one. Being without springs it gives the occupant the benefit of all jolting, and as the Chinese roads are execrable, I imagine one might feel after a hundred miles in such a conveyance very much as if emerging from an encounter with a ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... I will have you flayed alive a little if you do not leave off that execrable habit of sleeping ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... history ought not to be restricted to considerations of personal merit. Marcus Aurelius and his noble teachers have had no permanent influence on the world. Marcus Aurelius left behind him delightful books, an execrable son, and a decaying nation. Jesus remains an inexhaustible principle of moral regeneration for humanity. Philosophy does not suffice for the multitude. They must have sanctity. An Apollonius of Tyana, with his miraculous ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... see her. One-third of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states, to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious, idle and starving through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility. Sleep at the "Lion d'Or," at Montauban, an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... thought of giving her a surprise it was an agreeable one. His kindness and tenderness, and his joyous, peaceable air would have softened the most savage hearts. The Chevalier de la Merlus, and the whole execrable brood of Lespoisse saw therein nothing but an additional facility for taking his life, and possessing themselves of his wealth, still further increased ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... of Renaissance Italy, that almost at every turn, on her seaboard, in her cities, from her hill-tops, we are compelled to blend our admiration for the loveliest and purest works of art amid the choicest scenes of nature with memories of execrable crimes and lawless characters. Sometimes, as at Perugia, the nexus is but local. At others, one single figure, like that of Cellini, unites both points of view in a romance of unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath the vaults of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a bottle, tied significantly round with red tape, for his host was somewhat of a wag. On tasting it, Tom poured out a glass and drank it off, but the instant afterwards regretted his precipitancy, for he declared that he had never tasted anything so execrable. Just then his friend looked in upon him. 'Well, Somers, how did you like my wine?' he asked. 'I can't say that I ever wish to take another drop of it,' answered Tom. 'Well, I sent you exactly the wines you tasted at my house,' answered his visitor. 'You, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... country degenerated into a violent and revengeful sentiment, and took part in all the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was, in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable tribunal, the Inquisition. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... protests, imprecations, and accusations against Piso. The populace, which admired her for her fidelity and love for her husband, was even more deeply stirred, and on every hand the cry was raised that an exemplary punishment ought to be meted out to so execrable a crime. ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... mail swung back and forth across the continent and the oceans beyond, and in unnumbered cities and towns the letter-carriers came and went; but nothing they brought into Bienville or Royal Street bore tidings from that execrable editor in New York who in salaried ease sat "holding up" the manuscript once the impressionable Dora's, now the gentle Aline's. The holiday—"everything shut up"—had arrived. No carrier was abroad. Neither ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... never been able to do so; yet, from his inquiries, he was inclined to suspect—that was as far as he would commit himself, being a cautious man—that they spent the time in eating garlic and smoking execrable cigarettes. The guide-books tell you that Xiormonez possesses the eyebrows of Joseph of Arimathea, a cathedral of the greatest quaintness, and battlements untouched since their erection in the fourteenth century. And they strongly advise you to visit ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... letter, and with a start reverted to the date: 'September 27th, and this is October 27th! I haven't tasted food these three days, or had a pinch of tobacco, and this has been waiting for me—this—this—for a whole month! Explain, you execrable! or, as sure as the brother of the sun reigns over the Heavenly Empire, I will brain you with the poker. Shell out, you villain!—shell out, to your last halfpenny! 'Ard for a poor working man to be kep' out of his money, is it? Somebody in this infernal house has ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... even for a man so penetrating as De Witt to foresee to what depths of wickedness and infamy this execrable administration would descend. Yet, many signs of the great woe which was coming on Europe, the visit of the Duchess of Orleans to her brother, the unexplained mission of Buckingham to Paris, the sudden occupation of Lorraine by the French, made the Grand Pensionary uneasy, and his alarm ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... same character as that passed the day before, except that we were approaching the more lofty mountains. The road was tolerably good, but the bridges across the streams and sloughs execrable; we esteemed ourselves fortunate whenever we passed one without being compelled to stop. After a ride of three hours (nine miles), we reached the great Sugar-Fazenda {38} de Collegio, which in its arrangements is exactly like a large country ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... had a communication from Mr. JEREMY, written in the execrable English of which this calico-livered scoundrel is a consummate master, and informing me that, if I care to join the staff of the journal which Mr. J. directs, a princely salary shall be at my disposal. Mr. J. inquires what special branch of fiction it would suit me ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... be summoned, our astrologer addresses his first reproaches to the sun, stretching out his hands and using the strongest of invectives, after which, when he has worked himself into a towering rage against the orb of day, an execrable beating on the drums begins, accompanied by the howling of all the people present. The god of rain gets his share of insults, and is severely reprimanded for the casual way in which he carries on his business, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... depreciate his own verses as compared with Lewis', some of which he recited to Ballantyne, in 1799, speaking of their author, says Lockhart, "with rapture." But however fine an ear for rhythm Lewis may have had, his verse is for the most part execrable; and his jaunty, jiggling anapaests and pragmatic manner are ludicrously out of keeping with the horrors of his tale, increasing the air of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... were expected it is doubtful if the most inventive could have put into words. The general opinion expressed—out of Minky's hearing, of course, but to the accompaniment of deep libations of his most execrable whisky—was that, personally, that astute trader was, for some unaccountable reason, rapidly qualifying for the "bug-house," and that the only thing due from them was to display their loyalty to him ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Leo justice. His tyranny was merciful. I was soon expert in preparing his breakfast. I used to fetch him hot dishes from the shop. My own cooking was not good, and I made, so he said, the most execrable coffee, which led him to fling the contents of the pot at me one morning, ruining my shirt, trickling hot and wet down my body under my clothes, and giving me infinite trouble in cleaning his carpet. (As to his coffee, and the salad dressing he made, and his cooking generally, when he chose to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and loyalty, as it was called, was thought sufficient to compound for all wickedness, the Act was rescinded. But, upon the late happy Revolution, when the nation began to recover her senses, some horrid barbarities having been committed by that execrable crew, under the leading of one Robert Roy Macgregiour, yet living, the Parliament under King William and Queen Mary annulled the said Act rescissory, and revived the former ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... might have been a gainer if fate had kept Coleridge a little longer in the ranks than the four months of his actual service. As it was, however, his military experiences, unlike those of Gibbon, were of no subsequent advantage to him. He was, as he tells us, an execrable rider, a negligent groom of his horse, and, generally, a slack and slovenly trooper; but before drill and discipline had had time to make a smart soldier of him, he chanced to attract the attention of his captain by having written a Latin quotation on the white wall of the stables ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... that, monsieur! M. le Marquis had his chateau, as no doubt you know, on the outskirts of Lyons. A loyal high-born gentleman; was it likely, I ask you, that he would submit passively to the rule of those execrable revolutionaries who had murdered their King, outraged their Queen and Royal family, and, God help them! had already perpetrated every crime and every abomination for which of a truth there could be no ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Toulon by the uprising of the hostile party: in any case they were now dependent on charity; the Corsican revolt against the Convention was virtually successful, and it was said that in the island the name of Buonaparte was considered as little less execrable than that of Buttafuoco. What must he do to get a decisive share in the surging, rolling tumult about him? The visionary boy was transformed into the practical man. Frenchmen were fighting and winning glory everywhere, and among the men who were reaping laurels were some whom ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... midst of it a voice—a high, jolly, schoolboy voice—called out from the gateway demanding, in execrable Portuguese, to be shown Lady Vyell's tent. She dropped the raking-iron with a ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... body, and had given up service, on account of his age, during the late campaigns, still coveted after command in a distant war beyond the seas. And whilst Sylla was departed for the camp, to order the rest of his affairs there, he sat brooding at home, and at last hatched that execrable sedition, which wrought Rome more mischief than all her enemies together had done, as was indeed foreshown by the gods. For a flame broke forth of its own accord, from under the staves of the ensigns, and was ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... de St. Aulaire," he said, wearily. "We forgive you this unfortunate plaisanterie, since its execrable taste carries with it its own worst punishment. But be careful, sir, how you offend again!" With a last glance of warning, which, however, had lost its severity, the King turned away, followed by the Due de Broglie, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... princes. "But is not this enough? Ah, brave Jason, turn back before it is too late. It would grieve us to the heart, if you and your nine and forty brave companions should be eaten up, at fifty mouthfuls, by this execrable dragon." ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of St. Peter, as a work of art, is as execrable as possible. Part of the toe and foot is worn away and polished, not by the kisses, but by the wiping of the foot after the kisses by the next comer preparatory to kissing it; sometimes with the coat-sleeve by a beggar; with the corner of the cloak by the gentlemen; the shawl by the females; and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... against CHRIST'S standard and banner thus displayed, the tyrant Charles II erected his opposite standard for the utter destruction of CHRIST'S true servants and subjects. And having declared their lawful meetings for the worship of GOD, according to his word, execrable rendezvouses of rebellion; a convention of estates, anno 1678, was called and met, by which a large cess was imposed to maintain an additional army, for the suppression of the true religion and liberty, and securing tyranny and arbitrary government. On account of the imposition ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... difficulty; he believed also that many of his comrades, who were taken in that encounter by those Indians, were, as their cruel captain, torn in pieces and burnt alive. Thus ends the history, the life, and miserable death of that infernal wretch Lolonois, who full of horrid, execrable, and enormous deeds, and debtor to so much innocent blood, died by cruel and butcherly hands, such as his own were in the course of ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... very alluring mess, since a citizen of Sybaris having tasted it, declared it was no longer a matter of astonishment with him, why the Spartans were so fearless of death, since any one in his senses would much rather die, than exist on such execrable food.—Vide Athenaeum, lib. iv. c. 3. When Dionysius the tyrant had tasted the black broth, he exclaimed against it as miserable stuff; the cook replied—"It was no wonder, for the sauce was wanting." "What sauce?" says ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous, and execrable to all posterity. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... public springs of which so many thousands are to drink. The people therefore laughed at the parasites of Callias, whom, as Eupolis says, neither with fire nor brass nor steel could prevent from supping with him; but as for the favorites of those execrable tyrants Apollodorus, Phalaris, and Dionysius, they racked them, they flayed them alive, they roasted them at slow fires, looked on them as the very pests of society and disgraces of human nature; for to debauch a simple person ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in a like unexceptionable vein of writing. But to do so, and to stop with these, would misrepresent Montaigne. Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. His moral tone generally is low, and often it is execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not the worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness itself compared with Rabelais. But Rabelais is morality itself compared with Montaigne. Montaigne is corrupt and corrupting. This feature of his writings, we are necessarily forbidden to illustrate. In an ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... people of the quarter; their land of lethe. So near were the saloons and drinking gardens that from their open doorways there came a pungent odor of beer. Every place had instrumental music of some kind. Mandolins and guitars, in the hands of gentlemen of color, were the favorites. Pianos of execrable tone, played by youths with defective complexions, or by machinery, were a close second. Before one place, a crowd blocked the sidewalk; and there Ben stopped. A vaudeville performance was going on within—an invisible dialect comedian doing a German stunt to the accompaniment ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the Parisienne. If you leave general effects, and come to pull her dress to pieces, you find that the metal is only electro, to whatever rank of life she may belong. The general appearance may be pleasing, but in detail she is execrable. Not but that the materials of her dress are rich enough, so that my electro simile will hardly hold water; but money does not make the artist. Let us begin with the bonnet. Walk down Collins Street at the time of the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... journey, furnished with letters from Ormonde to several influential gentlemen in Galway. The roads at first were fairly good, but accustomed to the comfortable inns in England, Harry found the resting-places along the road execrable. He was amused of an evening by the eagerness with which the people came round and asked for news from Dublin. In all parts of England the little sheets which then did service as newspapers carried news of ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... road, gesticulating, talking to himself, cutting the air with his cane, and still thinking of the absurd bit of hieroglyphics. Would he hit upon some clue? Would he come home in better humor? While these thoughts were passing through my brain, I mechanically took up the execrable puzzle and tried every imaginable way of grouping the letters. I put them together by twos, by threes, fours, and fives—in vain. Nothing intelligible came out, except that the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... lurking at bottom of this liberality, and give them the less thanks for it. They do not easily forget the length of time they had been neglected, slighted, or unapplied to, unless by their itinerant traders, who cheat them in their dealings, or poison them with execrable spirits, under the names of brandy and rum. Whereas, on the contrary, the French are assiduously caressing and courting them. Their missionaries are dispersed up and down their several cantonments, where ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... lips and long chin, and bristly grey hair, and when I hear your abominable chuckling and laughing, and your confused talk, I rather turn away from you with disgust, and am even inclined to believe that you possess some execrable power for attracting me to you." "O God! God! God!" whined the old dame, a prey to unspeakable pain, "what fiendish spirit of darkness has put such fearful thoughts into your head? O Tonino, my darling Tonino, the woman who took such tender loving care of you when ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff. Almost every man carries a supply of coarse snuff in a little sheepskin wallet or dried bladder; at short intervals he rubs a pinch of this villainous stuff all over his teeth and gums and deposits a second pinch ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... playing his game, too. He was "freezing" to induce the quarry to move and give himself away, because, since the vole was motionless, he had no idea where the little fellow was, although he seemed to be looking straight at him—in that execrable way snakes have of seeming to look ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... at the desk when the colonel went in. He wrote his name on the book, and was served with an execrable dinner. He paid his bill of half a dollar to the taciturn proprietor, and sat down on the shady porch to smoke a cigar. The proprietor, having put the money in his pocket, came out and stepped into his buggy, which was still standing ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... fell asleep. It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet striking the bowlder just above my body. A band of Indians had trailed me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside above. The smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my feet than he was off his and rolling down the declivity. Then I ran in a stooping posture, dodging among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm of bullets ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... necessary to my comfort in the world, and I was pleased at the innocent humbug. It afforded me excellent creature comforts; and I was indebted to it for a constant welcome when I got to Paris—which is something to the traveller. We cling to an old hotel, after we have found the service bad, the cooking execrable, and the rooms dirty. It is an ancient house, and the people know us, and have a cheery word ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... lady is usually prodigiously careful of her little self: she regards men as her natural enemies. Poor innocent!—This absurdity is the fault of her education. They have made her believe that love is the most abominable, execrable, infernal thing in existence. They have taught her to lie and to dissimulate her most innocent emotions. But the time is not far distant when the natural impulses of her heart will break down the barriers that hypocrisy has placed around her. Woman was formed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... property. When this was done, however, employment was secured for the old gentleman on the police force, where his peculiar gift of ferocity could find more room for use. The coffee in the station-house, fortunately, was execrable, and this stirred him to a pitch which soon made him the ablest patrolman in his ward. He was then sent to clean up the three toughest districts in town, which he did with the utmost rigor in less than ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... you were in my case—if you'd given yourself away like me? Supposing you went and lost your little heart to some man-fiend who was, we'll say, about as bad a lot as I am, and who had the execrable taste not to care a rap for you,—wouldn't you feel ashamed of him ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... sympathize with the youth's horror at the sight of this obnoxious husband, "who seems to him," as M. Janin says in his preface, "a hero—what do I say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, la Franaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity can hardly be controlled. It seems as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... conspiracy, how dark, how treacherous, how impious soever it may be: a certain sign that there are some remains of religion left in the human mind, even after every moral sentiment hath abandoned it; and that the most execrable ruffian finds means to quiet the suggestions of his conscience, by some ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... that I think I've understood from you that your occupations have been—a—commercial? There's a danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste; fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have been—a—what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about you that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... officers was explained a little later. They had been searching for an interpreter, so that I might be put through another inquisition. This interpreter was about the most incompetent of his class that one could wish to meet. His English was execrable—far worse than Chinese pidgin—and he had an unhappy and disconcerting manner of intermingling German and English words, while either through a physical defect or from some other cause, he could ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... conversation, of so flowing and obliging an humanity and goodness to mankind, that, if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed Civil War than that single loss, it must be infamous and execrable to all posterity." Falkland has been made the hero of a romance by Lord Lytton. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... his mood; now preoccupied with one hero or god, now with another. The Tennyson in his twenties, who wrote the fairylike Lady of Shalott, was a very different man in mood and outlook from the Mid-Victorian Tennyson who wrote the execrable Merlin and Vivien; but both were possessed with the Arthurian legend. At thirty and at fifty you may easily take different views of the same men and incidents. The Iliad, I suggest, may be explained as the imperfect fusion of many poems and many moods and periods of life of a single ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... agreement between the Kenites and the Canaanites. He conceives also, that a justification of Jael's conduct might be found in the character of Sisera, pleading that we are not required to keep good faith, or to show lenity to those execrable persons who only avail themselves of our regard to these virtues, to violate them in their conduct to others, to falsify their promises, and carry blood and carnage wherever they go. Under this ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... trash, Of vile and deleterious verse— Volumes on volumes without end, Of ignominious poets, worse Than their own works. May gods be pliant, And grant me this: that poison—pest Light on 'em all, and on that client Who sent 'em you; and you in jest Transfer them, odious, and mephitic, And execrable. I suspect 'em Sent you by that grammarian critic, Sulla. If so, and you have lost No precious labour to collect 'em, 'Tis well indeed; and little cost To you, with malice aforethought, To send (and with intent to kill him, And on this blessed day, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the pages, and many of them perverting the sense, or killing the whole beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low, instead. These are the most execrable of all typographical ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... o'clock came only too quickly, and I betook myself on board the steamer Magdeburg, of sixty-horse power, to proceed to Hamburgh. Of the passage itself I can say nothing, except that a journey on a river through execrable scenery is one of the most miserable things that can well be imagined. When, in addition to this, the weather is bad, the ship dirty, and one is obliged to pass a night on board, the discomfort is increased. It was my lot to endure all this: the weather was bad, the ship was dirty, the distance ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... the ore. Coal by itself was used by the country smiths for forging whenever they could procure it for their smithy fires; and in the midland counties they had it brought to them, sometimes from great distances, slung in bags across horses' backs,—for the state of the roads was then so execrable as not to admit of its being led for any considerable distance in carts. At length we arrive at a period when coal seems to have come into general use, and when necessity led to its regular employment both in smelting the ore and in manufacturing the metal. And this brings us to ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... cicerone looked amazed at my bad taste, he assured me it was un vero Correggio (which by the way I can never believe), and that the duke had refused for it I know not how many thousand scudi. It would be difficult to say what was most execrable in this picture, the appalling nature of the subject, the depravity of mind evinced in its conception, or the horrible truth and skill with which it was delineated. I ought to add that it hung up in the family dining-room and in full view ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... of her history, was a mere den of execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious visitings of conscience', ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hot season the wildest parts of South Italy, strangely unprejudiced, heedless of bugs and brigands—a real danger in 1828: did he not find the large place Rossano actually blocked by them?—sleeping in stables and execrable inns, viewing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating everybody about everything and, in general, "satisfying his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... side when they thought that the vital mysteries of the Faith were threatened. The risings were only put down by the use of foreign mercenaries and by the most execrable cruelty, nor would even these means have sufficed had the rebels formed a clear plan, or had the purpose of Henry himself in matters of religion been definite and capable of definite attack. But the country, though ready to fight for Dogma, was not ready ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... knew neither the actual worthlessness of the South Sea Stock, nor the embarrassed circumstances of the defaulting masters, nor the peril of the persons committed to his care. The system which permitted the masters to speculate with money not their own was execrable, but the Lord Chancellor was not the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without ploughs? All those who give themselves up to this damnable culture shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of gold and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity." ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... may be doubted whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678 this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so during the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awful national judgment. Legislators proposed new punishments of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it being so memorable a sermon I took special notice of it; I came to my brother's house in Shoe lane, and told him; said I, Brother, I have been at Whitehall and have heard the most execrable business that ever was in the world by a minister of the Gospel, and told him the words, and I observed that Oliver Cromwell did laugh at that time ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... only been foreknown but foreordained is indisputable." Again, he says: "In connection with the foregoing statements concerning the crucifixion of the Saviour, let us single out the case of one of the individual actors in that awful tragedy, one whose part was the most perfidious and execrable, and see whether his crime was not before ordained, and he the individual predesignated as its perpetrator." He proceeds to the proof of this proposition. But, when it becomes necessary to meet the ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... Richmond our really rough work began. The roads would have been bad enough at any time, but the hard use by army trains in bad weather and the entire lack of repair had made them execrable. All the ordinary methods of keeping highways in order by local administration were suspended by the war, and the only work done upon them was what each wagon-master could do with his drivers to mend the worst places so that his train could get through. As we could ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... speaking bought the material for a silk dress from me to-day, and she undertook to make up the bill, but failed to do so. I am certain I should have had no difficulty in reckoning it when I was a mere child, eight years of age; and though she appeared to be so estimable young lady, her English was execrable and her slang phrases offensive to cultivated ears. I concluded if she had only been thoroughly taught in one of our common schools, she would have appeared to much ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... it is interesting to note the attitude of the pessimistic school of philosophy toward this unreasoned pessimism. It emphatically disclaims any interest in or connection with it, and describes all those who are afflicted with the malady as execrable fellows—to quote Hartmann—: "Klageweiber maennlichen und weiblichen Geschlechts, welche am meisten zur Discreditierung des Pessimismus beigetragen haben, die sich in ewigem Lamento ergehen, und entweder unaufhoerlich in Thraenen schwimmen, oder bitter wie Wermut und Essig, sich selbst und ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... accent) was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen presently discerned me to be an Englishman—no doubt from the fashion in which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English. The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice, politely accosted me in very good English; I remember I wished to God that I could speak French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for the first time ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... comical part be not upon such scornful matters as stir laughter only: but mixed with it, that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so well as we do? what ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... fellow citizens were left exposed to the fury of an ungovernable mob, made up of the base, the ignorant, and vile, the very dregs of society; and probably led on by slaveholders, who of all men are the most execrable; while boasting of liberty, he tramples on the dearest rights of men and in the greatest ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... intermixtures everywhere exist in civilised societies. Most of them are passable; many of them are execrable; a few of them are admirable; and here and there, one of them consists of that happy blending of individual characteristics which we all immediately recognise as genius—at least after somebody else has ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... yawn. "The same evenings at Metternich's, the same lounges for making purchases and visits on a morning, the same idleness and fatigue at night, the searching and arid climate, and the clouds of execrable fine dust"—all conspiring to tell the great of the earth that they can escape ennui no more than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a little from my subject, which was only to propose a wish that these execrable denominations were a little better suited to an English mouth, if it were only for the sake of the English lawyers; who, in trials upon appeals to the House of Lords, find so much difficulty in repeating the names, that, if the plaintiff or defendant were by, they would never be able to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... flowery verbiage, its theatrical appeals to gross sensations, wrought miracles and converted thousands. Their sickly Ciceronian style, their sentimental books of piety, 'the worse for being warm,' the execrable taste of their poetry, their flimsy philosophy and disingenuous history, infected the taste of Catholic Europe like a slow seductive poison, flattering and accelerating the diseases of mental decadence. Sound learning died down beneath the tyranny of the Inquisition, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the Persian Anacreon, HAFIZ, could he rise from his splendid sepulchre at Sheeraz (where he reposes with FERDOUSI and SADI, the Oriental Homer and Catullus), and behold his name assumed by one STOTT of DROMORE, the most impudent and execrable of literary poachers for ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... The ministers did zealously preach unto the people the great danger of such things, and the guilt such lay under that held them, stirring the people up to labour to find such persons out and to execute death upon them, making persons so execrable in the eyes of the people, whom they intimated should hold such things, yea some of them naming some of us in their pulpits, that the people that had not seen us thought us to be worse by far in any respect then those barbarous Indians are in the country.... Whereupon we heard a ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... be sold amongst the groups. "He is gone," said one of them, "this imbecile king, this perjured monarch. She is gone, this wretched queen, who, to the lasciviousness of Messalina, unites the insatiable thirst of blood that devoured Medea. Execrable woman, evil genius of France, thou wast the leader, the soul of this conspiracy." The people repeating these words, circulated from street to street these odious accusations, which fomented their hate, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... rage against their governors, or sink them into a despondency of the public welfare." I readily admit this apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think any man capable of entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather to claim our pity than excite our indignation; he finds himself out of power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hand, signifying, that I believed the report of an intention formed at the island of Celebes to cut off my ship, was false and malicious; saying, that he hoped I had a better opinion of the Dutch nation than to suppose them capable of suffering so execrable a fact to be perpetrated under their government. Mr Garrison then read me a certificate, which, by order of the council, had been drawn up for me to sign: As, whatever was my opinion, I did not think it advisable to sign such a certificate, especially as it appeared to be made a condition of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... fiend that dwells there, invested "in the dunnest smoke of hell." Not, however, that this is the policy of doubt and apprehension, the evading and repelling caution of men who suspect themselves to be wrong and dread being forced to meet the proof. For the subjects of this execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself secured them against knowing anything that could discompose their sense of certainty. No fell savage, or serpent, or monster, ever had a more ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... portrayed, utterly selfish, dissolute, heartless; and her lover, who is easily recognized as Musset himself, is described as having almost all of the heroic virtues." Both books were thoroughly French,—thoroughly execrable. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Can Compromises Continental Congress Counterfeit Logic Crime to Tell Him That He Is Free! Danger of Third-parties Declaration of Independence Declaring the African Slave Trade Piracy Dirge of One Who Has No Title to Himself Disunionists Dred Scott Equality Evasive with His Wife Execrable Commerce Father's Request for Money Free All the Slaves, and Send Them to Liberia Fugitive Slave Law General of Splendidly Successful Charges Government Was Made for the White People Henry Clay Hypocracy Improvements Inform a Negro of His Legal Rights Interested Faultfinders Just Leave Her Alone ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... "But that's not a book," someone said. So she chose another. This time it was a history, but I have forgotten the writer's name. Our trepidation increased as she went on. Not a word of it seemed to be true, and the style in which it was written was execrable. ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the train there. Some business called me to Mons last week. And you, I presume, like most tourists, are visiting a dozen cities in half as many days," said the duke, in his execrable English. They paused at the side of the Italian's conveyance, and Quentin mentally resolved that the dim light, as it played upon the face of the speaker, was showing to him the most repellent countenance he had ever ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Exchequer and Treasurer of the Navy, incited by no public advantage, impelled by no public necessity, in a strain of the most wanton perfidy which has ever stained the annals of mankind, have delivered over to plunder, imprisonment, exile, and death itself, according to the mercy of such execrable tyrants as Amir-ul-Omrah and Paul Benfield, the unhappy and deluded souls who, untaught by uniform example, were still weak enough to put their trust in English faith.[44] They have gone farther: they have thought proper to mock and outrage their misery by ordering them protection ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a nutmeg. This is the portion chewed with chunam and tobacco all over the East; and its use is so universal that one seldom meets a man, woman or child of any Oriental nation whose mouth is not filled, always and everywhere, with the execrable mixture. Pepper leaves are sprinkled with chunam (lime) and rolled up: a slice of betel-nut with a quid of tobacco is placed in the mouth first, and then the rolled-up leaf is bitten off, and all masticated together. When a visitor calls the betel-box is immediately passed to him; and as in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... fastidious, hard-hearted, illiberal, ill-natured, jealous, keen, loathsome, malevolent, nauseous, obstinate, passionate, quarrelsome, raging, saucy, tantalizing, uncomfortable, vexatious, abominable, bitter, captious, disagreeable, execrable, fierce, grating, gross, hasty, malicious, nefarious, obstreperous, peevish, restless, savage, tart, unpleasant, violent, waspish, worrying, acrimonious, blustering, careless, discontented, fretful, growling, hateful, inattentive, malignant, noisy, odious, perverse, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... committed. In a new months his administration had become universally odious. It had been swept away by an irresistible outbreak of popular fury; and its memory was still held in abhorrence by the whole city. The immediate cause of the downfall of this execrable government was said to have been an attempt made by Appius Claudius upon the chastity of a beautiful young girl of humble birth. The story ran that the Decemvir, unable to succeed by bribes and solicitations, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... play by Lamotte on the subject of Ines de Castro, which was first produced 6 April, 1723. Voltaire found the first four acts execrable and laughed consumedly. The fifth was so tender and true that he melted into tears. In Italian we have, from the pen of Bertoletti, Inez de ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insiduous recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary defence. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... opinion it seems somewhat difficult to comprehend; and no one, unacquainted with the ecclesiastical history of those ages, could imagine the height of zeal and violence with which it was then inculcated. The decree of the Lateran council calls the Monothelites impious, execrable, wicked, abominable, and even diabolical, and curses and anathematizes them to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... more than a man of letters. He is a prophet of the age to come, when the execrable superstitions of narrow minds shall no longer darken the sunlight, and the infamous compulsion of human manners, human intellects, human tastes, into the petty mould of oppressive public ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... reprinted six times. The eighth edition, which contains the last improvements made by the author, was published in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the engraver had early been called in, and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delight on execrable copperplates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword into Apollyon or writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland and in some of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his native country. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... either she might keep me back or go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... death punishment for crimes other than murder. Writing at later dates upon this subject, Joseph John Gurney says: "I cannot say that my spirit greatly revolts against life for life, though capital punishment for anything short of this appears to me to be execrable." And, again, "I cannot in conscience take any step towards destroying the life of a fellow-creature whose crime against society affects my property only. I am in possession, like other men, of the feelings of common humanity, and to aid and abet in ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... have left him Robert Hall, instead of those execrable Typhons! But would that medicine have suited his case, or must grim Experience write sterner ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they shall inherit a black eye (Lawson). Shakespeare was ever rough on poets—but stay! Consider that this great world of Rome and all the men and women in it were created by a "jingling fool" and a master of bad—not to say execrable—rhymes, and his name was William Shakespeare. You need to sit down and ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... biscuit-toss of the vessel displaying it, it was discovered, to my chagrin, that she was not the brigantine, but a large barque, the skipper of which appeared to be greatly frightened at our sudden appearance near him; for he hailed us, in execrable French, that he was armed, and that if we did not sheer off forthwith he would fire into us. I replied, in English, that he need not be afraid of us, as we were British, like himself, and then inquired whether he had seen a large ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... overwhelming longing for oblivion was all she felt when she awoke. The hours of her life that she passed in possession of her faculties, contemplating herself, examining her conscience, looking on at her own shame, seemed to her so execrable! She preferred to kill them. There was nothing in the world but sleep to make her forget everything—the congested sleep of intoxication, which lulls its victim with the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... mysterious X.Y.Z. who will—for so small a recompense as thirty postage-stamps—impart the secret of an elegant and pleasing employment, whereby seven-pound-ten a-week may be made by any individual, male or female;—under every flimsy disguise with which the swindler hides his execrable form, Captain Paget plied his cruel trade, and still contrived to find fresh dupes. Of course there were occasions when the pigeons were slow to flutter into the fascinating snare, and when the vulture had a bad time of it; and it was a common thing for the Captain to sink from the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reason, was irrepressible. This he did with an air of matured conviction and with the impact of conscious moral authority, but in terms as strikingly eccentric as the thoughts were lofty and inspiring, and in execrable French, the declaimer being known as minus habens in his studies and utterly incapable. All this was the very make-up of folly; and Brother Hecker was no doubt thought a fool. But how holy a fool he was his ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military doctor whom I ever met. As a rule, they are not an attractive set. Almost invariably Constantinopolitans, they jabber execrable French fluently enough, and affect European manners in a way which is truly disgusting: add to this a natural disregard of cleanliness, and an obtrusive familiarity, and nothing more is wanted to complete the picture. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Manorbier or recognise it as the birthplace of Gerald of Wales. He remembered his youth, when he translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse translations. "Nice man"—"civil man"—"clever man . . . has been everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, he had the supreme good fortune to meet Captain Bosvile for the first time for thirty years, and not being recognised, said, "I am the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... learned about women the farther out of mental reach they seemed to go. Why on earth did she want this execrable daub? "You may have it; but all the same, I'm going to call an oculist and have him examine ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... depend on human will—and considers them as non-existent: the ailments of the body, pangs, sufferings, misfortunes, and humiliations are not evils, they are things indifferent. On the contrary, crimes and errors are such evils that they are equally execrable, and the wise man should reproach himself as severely for the slightest fault as for the greatest crime—a paradoxical doctrine which has aroused the warmth of even respectful opponents of ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Clark. "There is no woman in the world worth the misery this one has put on you. It is a thing execrable, unspeakable!" ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... however, that whilst the taste of the whole "Story" is execrable, the facts upon which it is ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... up with all those sterile and wanton party movements which discredit our days, uttering over and over again hollow phrases in condemnation of all that is noble and sacred, appealing to the most execrable passions of ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... on the other hand, armed with her "lines," confided her position to the master-mason, her father, and his wife. Burns and his brother were then in a fair way to ruin themselves in their farm; the poet was an execrable match for any well-to-do country lass; and perhaps old Armour had an inkling of a previous attachment on his daughter's part. At least, he was not so much incensed by her slip from virtue as by the marriage which had been designed ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... manifestations of whose stately being were constantly passing her windows, appeared to take the slightest interest in her. Strictly speaking, Mrs. Taylor was of this set, yet apart from it. Hers was the exclusive intellectual and aesthetic set, this the exclusive fashionable set—both alike execrable and foreign to the traditions of Benham. As Selma had discovered the one and declared war against it, so she promised herself to confound the other when the period of her mourning was over, and she was free to appear again in society. Once more she congratulated herself ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... around inspecting and find it out. My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little more in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... difficult to assimilate the German girls to American customs. They are not apt to learn, and great patience is required in teaching them. The virtues of order and cleanliness seem to be not only rare in them, but exceedingly difficult to graft upon them. Their cooking, especially, is generally execrable. But once properly trained, they make the best of servants. They are generally contented, almost always cheerful and good tempered, and have little of that irritating pertness and 'independence' so characteristic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored locality in the earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry what should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated—it was from the private stores of a Brazilian nobleman with ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... yourself to that execrable man, Williamson; the man who but the other day murdered such a number of Moravian Indians, knowing them to be friends; knowing that he ran no risk in murdering a people who would not fight, and whose only business ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... could not be brot about by the Industry of years in reasoning on the necessity of it for the Common Safety. Since the memorable 19th of April one Event has brot another on, till Boston sees her Deliverance from those more than savage Troops upon which the execrable Tyrant so much relyed for the Completion of his horrid Conspiracys and America has furnishd her self with more than seventy Battalions for her Defence. The burning of Norfolk & the Hostilities committed in North ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... the present day. In the sittings of the Etats Generaux, the President, Miron, complained bitterly of the excesses of the nobility, the contempt for justice, the open violences, the gambling, the extravagance, the constant duels, the "execrable oaths with which they thought it proper to ornament their usual discourse." It was from this general ignorance and corruption that the Marquise de Rambouillet withdrew in disgust, and established in her ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... the edge of a great slab of rock to watch the baggage over the nek. It was a typical South African nek. An execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped islets, and weave the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... the wily Boer bagged as the result of such a lovely death trap? Not a man. Half-a-dozen horses were shot, and I daresay some cattle. My rolled overcoat also had a rip suspiciously like a bullet mark. Once again Boer wiliness had been rendered ineffectual owing to execrable marksmanship. It seems like ingratitude to thus criticise their shooting, but it cannot ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... detestable delight in doing evil. These defences could not consist in rational measures dictated by a knowledge of the laws of physical nature, since they had no notion of such laws; nor in prayers and propitiatory offerings, since one of the demons' most execrable qualities was, as we have seen, that they "knew not beneficence" and "heard not prayer and supplication." Then, if they cannot be coaxed, they must be compelled. This seems a very presumptuous assumption, but it is strictly in accordance with human instinct. It has been very truly said[AD] ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... l'inconvenable.[2] Tu me coupe la parole d'une facon execrable— Le vice, OENONE, sais-tu ce que c'est que le vice? Que la rose n'est pas rose avant qu'elle pourrisse? Esprit terre-a-terre, ame bornee d'epicier, Non, tu ne les connais pas, les delices du fumier. Tu ne sais pas trouver tes etoiles dans l'egout, ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... of their struggles. The swamp, the river, the alligator, the man-hunter, and worse than all, the blood-hound, had been met and successfully overcome or evaded; and after three long weeks of travel from the execrable and inhuman people, who had held them as prisoners of war, and treated them worse than dogs, they now found themselves within twenty miles ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens |
