"Grotesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Anybody that has ever seen a grove of olives knows that their beauty is not such as strikes the eye. If it was not for the blue sky overhead, that rays down glorifying light, they would not be much to look at or talk about. The tree has a gnarled, grotesque trunk which divides into insignificant branches, bearing leaves mean in shape, harsh in texture, with a silvery underside. It gives but a quivering shade and has no massiveness, nor symmetry. Ay! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... silent, for the strange echoings of our voices had an unearthly, terrible effect upon our nerves; and more than once I started at the grotesque shadow of myself upon the wall. The roar of the great waterfall came humming through the rift above our heads, while below the waters hissed, and bubbled, and lapped against the rocks in a curious, whispering, awe-inspiring fashion; and then moved by the same ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... all done with. As for friendship, it was impossible, grotesque. Let him go home, appease Letty, and mend his life. He constantly realised now, with the same surprise, as on the night before his confession, the emergence within himself, independent as it were of his ordinary will, and parallel with the voice of passion or grief, of some ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a man. It is a question, however, whether the day of the woman's magazine, as we have known it, is not passing. Already the day has gone for the woman's magazine built on the old lines which now seem so grotesque and feeble in the light of modern growth. The interests of women and of men are being brought closer with the years, and it will not be long before they will entirely merge. This means a constantly diminishing necessity for the distinctly ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... his face grotesque beyond the fantasies of mad dreams, one cheek all bushy as if with a swollen flame, the other denuded and sunken, with the untouched long moustache on that side asserting itself, lonely and fierce. And while he stared thunderstruck, with the gaping scissors on his fingers, I shouted my discovery ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the devil was made to appear with horns, hoof, and tail, to figure with grotesque malignity throughout the play, and to be reconsigned at the close to his dark abode by the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... traffic; it had all at once assumed the aspect of dramatic complication. It had only been necessary for us to stop on our lounging stroll along the stone wharves, diverting our gaze for a moment from the grotesque assortment of old houses that, before now, had looked down on so many naval engagements, and innocently to ask a brief question of a nautical gentleman, picturesquely attired in a blue shirt and a scarlet beret, for the quays immediately to swarm with jerseys and red caps. Each beret was the owner ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... over Tommy for several hours, making such a noise as set Lady Eleanor's peacocks screaming till they could scream no more. The boy was at first rather terrified, but as his helpers became more vehement and their antics more grotesque, he lost his fright and was intensely amused. Finally the whole congregation rose and, headed by the preacher, rushed out of the house with wild cries that the evil spirit had left Tommy and that they would hunt it out of the village. None ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... sight of this coast, had indeed skirted it closely all the way, yet my memory of its more prominent landmarks was extremely vague. I had made no effort to impress them on my mind. Therefore at first I could identify nothing, but finally, out of the grotesque, shifting shadows, dimly appearing against the slightly lighter sky beyond, there suddenly arose, clearly defined, the gaunt limbs of a dead tree, bearing a faint resemblance to a gigantic cross. I recalled that Sam had chanced to point this out ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... to her brother's arm, for though she knew everything was to be as weird and grotesque as possible, yet it was delightful to feel ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... on many occasions on the point of taking his own life, but was observed so closely and guarded so well by his companion Mariotto that he lived to be an old man—finished the course of his life at the age of sixty-four, leaving behind him the name of a good and even rarely excellent master of grotesque-painting in our own times, wherein every succeeding craftsman has always imitated his manner, not only in Florence, but also in ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... anything. Myers approaches the subject with no such a priori requirement. If he finds any positive indication of "spirits," he records it, whatever it may be, and is willing to fit his conception to the facts, however grotesque the latter may appear, rather than to blot out the facts to suit his conception. But, as was long ago said by our collaborator, Mr. Canning Schiller, in words more effective than any I can write, if any conception ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... comes apace, With wondrous speed to take his place; Costly, yet so grotesque his gear, All start amazed as he draws near. Crosswise the guards before his face, Entrance to bar, their halberds hold— Yet there he is, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... narrow, upright frame, placed close to the wall, and holding a stout wooden panel. In the centre of this, at the height of a man's chest, was a stuffed leathern pad, on which was painted a grotesque face, evidently intended for that of a negro, and above it was a dial bearing numbers that ranged from 1 to 300. The single pointer on this dial indicated the number 173, a figure at ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... the velvet jacket, the cascading necktie, the throat-revealing collar, and the overlong hair which the conventions of the theatre have established as the livery of the artist. The details of this grotesque foppery presented themselves to Annette only vaguely; it was at the man himself as he straddled in the middle of the polished floor, staring at her, that she gazed with a startled attention a face like the feeble and idiot countenance of ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... raised at the outset by the protest of the Dutch governor, could not long be postponed. It was suddenly precipitated on the arrival of Governor Rising, in 1654, by his capture of Fort Casimir, which the Dutch had built for the practical assertion of their claim. It seems a somewhat grotesque act of piety on the part of the Swedes, when, having celebrated the festival of Trinity Sunday by whipping their fellow-Christians out of the fort, they commemorated the good work by naming it the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... we are also learning to appreciate the sublimity and divinity of the natural. The universe and organic life are no less wonderful and awe-inspiring because, distinguishing some of the natural laws that govern their evolution, we have abandoned the grotesque theories held by primitive men. Similarly we do not to-day demand, as did our forefathers, a supernatural origin for our sacred books before we are ready to revere and obey their commands. With greater insight we now can heartily sing, "God moves in a natural way his wonders to perform." Our ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... The philosopher who goes to the bottom of things will remark that all the elements of her fantastic melodrama had been furnished her while waking. Master Byles Gridley's penetrating and stinging caution was the text, and the grotesque carvings and the portraits furnished the "properties" with which her own mind had ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and grotesque appearing birds attain a length of about 48 inches. The plumage varies from white to a deep rosy red. It requires several years for them to attain the perfect adult plumage, and unlike most birds, they are in the best of plumage during the winter, the colors becoming faded as the nesting ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... perhaps, we may safely say that not one of the kinds known would be considered unworthy of cultivation except by those who despise Cactuses of whatever kind. Their flowers are conspicuous both in size and brilliancy of colour; and in the curious, grotesque, and even beautifully symmetrical shapes of their stems, one finds attractions of no ordinary kind. The stem of E. Visnaga shown at Fig. 48 may be taken as an instance of this—apart from the cluster of star-like, bright yellow flowers seen nestling upon the top of their spine-protected ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... a hand shade the uppermost part of the lamp. Then there was a pause, and then a figure came across the porch, a short figure casting grotesque shadows, a bit stiff, a bit unsteady, like the rings of light that went out in circling waves behind it. It was Uncle Buzz. He came and stood on the topmost rotting step. He bowed. With one hand holding the wavering lamp, the other ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... return to the Veda, and compare these crude and somewhat grotesque legends with the language of the ancient Aryan poets. In the hymns of the Rig-Veda the separating and keeping apart of Heaven and Earth is several times alluded to, and here too it is represented as the work of the most valiant gods. In ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... only fit for the bath-room; while the men, lounging about in pyjamas, go barefoot with the utmost sangfroid. The sarong, as worn by the slender and graceful Malay, appears a modest and appropriate garb, but the grotesque effect of native attire on the broad-built Dutchwoman affords conclusive proof that neither personal vanity nor a sense of humour pertain to her stolid personality. Dutch Puritanism certainly undergoes startling transformations under the tropical skies, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... began to dance. Were there ever feet less suited to dancing? That they should dance was the acme of tragedy. Stockings fell down in creases about the ankles. Women commenced to jig their Boche babies in their arms; consumptive men and ancients waved their sauce-pans and grotesque bundles of umbrellas. The sight was damnable. It was a burlesque. It pierced the heart. What right had the Boche to leave these people so comic after he had squeezed the life-blood ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... and was really alarmed at the grotesque yet ghastly expression of that striped and sodden face, with the straight black hair, and the head lolling and rolling on the shoulder. Without a word, he took Hazlet by one arm, while Suton held the other, and D'Acres carried the legs, and as quickly as they ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... lofty Teneriffe, Palma, Ferro, Provence, or at the Celtiberian shores, With gazing pleasure and astonishment, At Paradise (seat of our ancient sire) He thinks himself arrived: the purple grapes, In largest clusters pendent, grace the vines Innumerous: in fields grotesque and wild, They with implicit curls the oak entwine, And load with fruit divine his spreading boughs: Sight most delicious! not an irksome thought, Or of left native isle, or absent friends, Or dearest wife, or tender sucking babe, His kindly ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... dragged, off, she didn't know which, didn't care as long as she was off. The ground seemed to come up to meet her. Why didn't things stand still? Even the unsuspicious "Dolly" appeared to be performing grotesque antics. Mary took a step, just one. It was not necessary for her to take more to realize that she was very stiff. "Heavens!" She slowly gathered up her coat and hat, and limped painfully out of the Academy. Now she could realize that ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... such. Hence the witty and intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of some particular time; they are like some old portraits which can still amuse and please by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian—the saints and the virgins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... some few of the patrons of the games had already taken their departure, the doors opened oftener and oftener, letting the geometrical shaft of the yellow light flare out across the waters, and the grotesque shadows of those who departed stood out against the night and waters as the men shivered in the wind and bent to feel their way into ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... forget they ever had parents. It is quite the natural and proper thing, born as they were born,—it would never do for them to have any over-filial regard for us. Imagine Humphry weeping for my death, or yours! What a grotesque idea! And as for Rupert and Cyprian,—it is devoutly to be hoped that when we die, our funerals may be well over before the great cricket matches of the year come on, as otherwise they will curse us for ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the hidden condition of a nation, which has been bathed in Christian ideas, whether it be a young vigorous race, or an old and degenerate; and it will manifest itself socially and historically in those characteristics, sometimes grotesque, sometimes hideous, sometimes despicable, of which we have so many instances, medieval and modern, both in this hemisphere and in the western. It is, I say, the necessary result of the intercommunion of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... portraits. This preoccupation with serious thoughts and sad images might easily have resulted, as it did, for instance, in the gloomy villages of the Rhine, or in the overcrowded parts of medieval Paris, as it still does in many a village of the Alps, in something merely morbid or grotesque, in the Danse Macabre of many French and German painters, or the grim inventions of Durer. From such a result the Florentine masters of the fifteenth century were saved by the nobility of their Italian culture, and still more by their tender pity for the thing itself. They must ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins—of happiness and unhappiness. That respectability and evening parties where one has to dress, and wretched slums at the back of Gray's Inn—something solid, immovable, and grotesque—is at the back of it, Jacob thought probable. But then there was the British Empire which was beginning to puzzle him; nor was he altogether in favour of giving Home Rule to Ireland. What did the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... supersession by a young and as yet almost unknown musician. True, he was not a very distinguished man himself. He had composed a large amount of music, chiefly sacred, including thirty-nine masses and twelve "Oratorios for Good Friday," besides some grotesque pieces intended as burlesques of the musical life of Vienna. Not one of his works has any real musical value; but, as is usually the case with the talent which stops short of genius, he thought a great deal of himself, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... does not know that there is any better way than hers. She does not see that her child is mortified and harmed when she says to her, in the presence of strangers, "How do you suppose you look with your mouth open like that?" "Do you want me to show you how you are sitting?"—and then a grotesque imitation of her stooping shoulders. "Will you sit still for one minute?" "Do take your hands off my dress." "Was there ever such an awkward child?" When the child replies fretfully and disagreeably, she does not see that it is only an exact reflection of her own voice and manners. ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... gallery, in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him back from worlds he desired ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... about an equal proportion of males and females, many of them being men and their wives; but they are all bound by their laws not to cohabit together. Their religious observances are wholly confined to singing and dancing of the most grotesque kind, and this repeated so constantly as to occupy much time; yet these people become rich and powerful wherever they settle themselves. Whatever they manufacture, whatever their farms produce, is always in the highest repute, and brings ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... instinct for reality, the same confident recognition of the superficial cheapness and commonness of the stuff she handles; but in her stories she also attests the right to be named with them for the gift of penetrating to the heart of life. No one with the love of the grotesque which is the American portion of the human tastes or passions, can fail of his joy in the play of the obvious traits and motives of her Hebrew comedy, but he will fail of something precious if he does not sound ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... their general purpose, and fall away. This simile applies to the majority of people. Not only poetry and romance, but history also, gives us instances wherein men and women differ and break away from accepted types, some in absurd or grotesque ways, others through the sheer force of gifted selfishness, and others still in natural, noble development of ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... greyness of the night sight and smell lost their keenness, and familiar objects assumed unnatural forms, grotesque ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... humour in the contrast or by the pity invoked by its victims. What makes the genius is just the fact that he looks out upon life, that he feels, that he uses his eyes, in his own way; also, that he invents his own methods of expression. Beardsley saw the satire of life, he loved the grotesque which has so gone out of date in our matter-of-fact day that we almost forget what it means, and no doubt disease gave a morbid twist to his vision and imagination. But, above all, he was young, splendidly young: young when he began work, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was fond of disguising their sense to the eye, though not to the ear. Thus Lady Snuphanuph, looks a grotesque, but somewhat plausible name—snuff-enough—a further indication of the manners and customs. So with Lord Mutanhed, i.e. "Muttonhead." Mallard, Serjeant Snubbin's Clerk, I have suspected, may have been some Mr. Duck—whom "Boz" had known—in ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... the boys were enemies, holding no communication. For a time letters full of boyish bravado and boastful narratives of the new and larger experience—grotesque descriptions of their widening lives and the new worlds they had conquered—passed between them; but these gradually became less frequent, and with William's removal to another and greater city ceased altogether. But ever through it all ran the song of the mocking-bird, and when the dreamer opened ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... wrought in the edifice were mournful and grotesque. What was now the Hall, had evidently been the atrium; the round shield, with its pointed boss, the spear, sword, and small curved saex of the early Teuton, were suspended from the columns on which once had been ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the angels into his folk-tales, and does so without the least idea of treating them disrespectfully. He makes them talk in his own language because he has no other language; and if the talk seems a little grotesque and irreverent, it is due to the low level of the narrator's literary culture, and not to any intention, on his part, of treating God and the angels with levity. The whole aim of the story is a moral and religious one. The narrator ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... fascination. Reducing their new theory to practise, the Greek artists turned their attention to perfecting the details of the art they had borrowed. To works originally repellant from their very crudeness, they supplied finish and perfection of the parts. The ideal was still before them; the grotesque monsters might fascinate the beholder, but, however skilfully executed, however perfected in finish, the impression produced was but transitory, and failed to satisfy the craving of the soul Beauty was found to be the only abiding source of ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... the people joined hands and danced around it. The whole day was given up to merriment, every one dressed in holiday clothes, doors and windows were adorned with green boughs and flowers, the bells rang, processions of people in grotesque dresses were arranged, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Babylonian art and literature what Greece had done for Egyptian, whose dominant idea was that of working for eternity a . Hellas and Iran instinctively chose as their characteristic the idea of Beauty, rejecting all that was exaggerated and grotesque; and they made the sphere of Art and Fancy as real as the world of Nature and Fact. The innovation was hailed by the Hebrews. The so-called Books of Moses deliberately and ostentatiously ignored the future state of rewards and punishments, the other world which ruled the life of the Egyptian ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... offence to the eye; big texts seemed to squirm, like semi-paralysed eels, over the chancel arch and round the East window. The latter, off which Jimmy could hardly take his eyes, was a veritable triumph of the Victorian tradition. Its colouring was gruesome, its design grotesque; and yet it was a source of great pride to the congregation as a whole, having been put in to the memory of a banker who had left nearly a million. They no more dreamed of doubting its artistic merits than they did of questioning the religion ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... seek assistance, and left the dark room with the dead man lying in the pool of yellow light, and the parrot perched on the body, muttering to itself. It was a strange mingling of the horrible and grotesque, and the whole scene was hit off in the phrase applied to it by Vandeloup. It was, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... attacked by the said Divs, giants or demons, who imprison them in cages hung to the highest trees, and here the captives are visited by their friends who feed them with the sweetest of scents. I have already contrasted them with the green-coated pygmies to which the grotesque fancy of Northern Europe has reduced them. Banu in Pers. a princess, a lady, and is still much used, e.g. Banu-i-Harim, the Dame of the Serraglio, whom foreigners call "Queen of Persia," and Aram-Banu"the calm Princess," a nickname. A Greek story ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... question that came to him was why could not a steam locomotive propel cars filled with people as well as cars filled with coal. Accordingly he set to work and had several coach bodies mounted on trucks, installing a lever brake at the front of each one beside the coachman's box. In front of the grotesque procession he placed a steam locomotive and when he had fastened the coaches together he had the first passenger train ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... vernacular name was Francis Dujon. He lived much in England, as librarian to Howard, Earl of Arundel. He bequeathed to the Bodleian his Anglo-Saxon and Northern collections. Among these is a beautiful Latin Psalter (Jun. 27) of the tenth century, with grotesque initials and interlinear Saxon. This book has been called "Codex Vossianus," because Junius obtained it from his relative, Isaac Voss. Among these also is the unique Cdmon, a MS. of about A.D. 1000, which had been given to Junius by Archbishop Usher, and of which the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... not exactly name my bottle," he went on to say, "but it stood for the person to me. It was a sort of physical manifestation—rather a grotesque one, perhaps—of a spiritual presence which had not really left me since a ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Day's cocoa, the lanterns were all lit now, and the effect, on fans and pictures and on brilliant bits of color, were grotesque and almost bizarre. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... thoughts would roll across her heart like a crushing weight, and she knew that no thirst for tea, no hunger for flour-bread, no shivering in thin garments, would ever drive her to part with it. For the grotesque, carven thing was the very birthright of her boy. Every figure, hewn with infinite patience by his sire's, his grandsire's, his great-grandsire's, hands meant the very history from which sprang the source ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... in one respect, grace, form, expression; but he has everywhere sense and meaning, perfect costume and propriety. His personages always belong to the class and time represented, and are strictly versed in the business in hand. His grotesque compositions in particular, his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least, as far as style is concerned) even to those of Rubens. They are taken more immediately out of fabulous history. Rubens' Satyrs and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... discoursing in a deep, sonorous voice to the assembly—descanting, with seeming fluency, upon a picture which he held in his hand, his tawny, gipsy-like face only half shown by the flame of a flaring naphtha lamp, and his features rendered grotesque by the play of lights and shadows. The party from the park, however, had very little opportunity for seeing what manner of man he was; for no sooner did he catch sight of Mr. Jardine's tail hat over the circle ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... grotesque combinations, the things of to-day and the things of endless yesterdays, as Esther slept in the narrow little bed next to Dutch Debby, who squeezed herself into the wall, pretending to revel in exuberant spaciousness. It was long before she could get to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Scattered through the groves, which were free from underbrush, and whose surface was carpeted with the tufted grass, were seen the huts of the mountaineers in every variety of the picturesque, and even of the grotesque. Some were formed of the well tanned robes of the buffalo; some of boughs, twigs and bark; some of massive logs. Before all these huts, fires were burning at all times of the day, and food was being cooked and devoured by these ever-hungry men. Haunches of venison, prairie chickens, and trout from ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... and his own death; treating him very much, in fact, as English royalty, during the last generation, treated another Irish bard whose song was even more sweet, and his notions of Irish history even more grotesque, than those of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... speakers, and what hearers! What would I not give to have been there, had I not learned it all from the bright eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day make a Table-talk of it!—Peter Pindar was rich in anecdote and grotesque humour, and profound in technical knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross and overbearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question)—Coleridge ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... by light and shade, and of course powerfully assisted by the creative state of the eye under this nervous apprehensiveness, I continued to shape into images of Agnes forms without end, that upon nearer approach presented the most grotesque contrasts to her impressive appearance. But I had ceased even to comprehend the ludicrous; my agitation was now so overruling and engrossing that I lost even my intellectual sense of it; and now first I understood ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... drawings hung against the walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves, and in elegant glass cupboards, there were a thousand knick-knacks; small vases, statuettes, groups in Dresden china, and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... in their nightshirts, and of common soldiers driven to repair their own clothes and preposterously at work on women's tasks. She adored the clergy for their pious humours, the bench for its delicious attempts at dignity, the bar for its grotesque travesties of passionate conviction—lies with their wigs on—the world political for its intrigues dressed up in patriotism. A Lord Chancellor in full state seemed to her the most delightfully ridiculous phenomenon in a delightfully ridiculous universe. And she had once been obliged to make a convulsive ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... For she like Ethne was overtaxed that night. That calm pale face of hers hid the quick passions of the South, and she had been racked by them to the limits of endurance. There had been something grotesque, something rather horrible, in that outbreak and confession by Durrance, after Ethne had fled from the room. He was speaking out his heart to an empty chair. She herself had stood without the window with a bitter longing that he had spoken so to her and ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the evening, however, was the minstrel show. On a raised wooden platform sat the performers with blackened hands and faces. They wore grotesque garb and each one fingered a guitar, ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... there came into view, moving slowly, Ned and Koku. Their portable lights were glowing, and then, in order to see them better, Tom turned out the exterior searchlights. This made the two forms, in their rather grotesque dress, stand out in bold relief amid the swirling green waters ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... equivalent of Echo Caon, and is equal or superior in everything except color. The brilliant red of the Echo cliffs is wanting. The towers and walls of Castle Caon are yellowish-gray. But their forms are incomparably various and grotesque—in some instances sublime. The valley of Green River at this point is a cheerless sage-brush desert, as it is further north. To be sure, this uninviting stream, a couple of hundred miles further south, having united with the Grande, and formed the Rio ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... unrelenting struggle for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize. She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by gestures. The veins stood out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the fairer reader, this grotesque personage had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to consider their especial monopoly,—he was married, and had one child. What is more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... though they feel deeply the wrongs which they have suffered from it, and speak of them occasionally with solemnity and earnestness. Still the feeling is so absurd and ludicrous in itself, and is exhibited in so many grotesque positions, even when oppressive, that the sufferer cannot help laughing at it. Mr. Jordon has held his present office since 1832. He has had an extensive opportunity, both as a justice of the police court, and as a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... brought him in a forest-leaf, and the ancient and half-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in the slightest the grotesque hideousness of her. When he had eaten weakly for a space, he closed his eyes in order not to see her, although again and again she poked them open to peer at the blue of them. Then had come the sound. Nearer, much nearer, he knew ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... could not interpret, but the tone the whole village could, and she blushed, crowding paters on aves, until her voice sometimes became as distinct as Saint-Castin's in resolute opposition. It was so grotesque that it made her laugh. Yet to a woman the most formidable quality in ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... gives it its importance. The doctrine of race, and of sympathies springing from race, must have taken very firm hold indeed of men's minds before it could be carried out in a shape which we are tempted to call so grotesque as this. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... Dante's adoration of Beatrice—a parallel that Comte himself was the first to hit upon. It is no doubt the worst kind of cynicism to make a mock in a realistic vein of any personality that has set in motion the idealising thaumaturgy of the affections. Yet we cannot help feeling that it is a grotesque and unseemly anachronism to apply in grave prose, addressed to the whole world, those terms of saint and angel which are touching and in their place amid the trouble and passion of the great mystic poet. Only an energetic and beautiful ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... fuller prominence, the carpet-bag revealed further details of its overburdened proportions. At one end a flannel shirt cuff protruded in limp dejection; at the other an ancient collar, with the grotesque attachment known as a "dickey," asserted its presence. No wonder the manager frowned his annoyance. "The Safe" was in low enough repute among its patrons at that moment without any burlesque ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... anything beautiful, appropriate, or tender. A lion, ill done, and yet to some degree impressive, lies complacently above a menagerie keeper, and near this is a tomb of some imagination, with reliefs of the life of Christ. In one place a grotesque horse, with a head disproportionately vast, is to be seen. Perhaps among all these monuments the one to Mrs. Blake is the most pleasing. It is a simply and quaintly executed kneeling figure, with a certain quiet and pathetic ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... their places in the trenches. But first they were given a little talk by one of the officers, who explained the necessity of donning gas masks at the first alarm. Other instructions were given, and then, when it was seen that every man had everything he needed, from the first-aid kit to the grotesque-looking gas mask, the trip to the first-line trenches ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... chimneys of the Lodge might be distinguished in grotesque masses, changeless and unvarying, against the ever-shifting darkness of the sky. A pale star sometimes looked out as if by stealth, but was obscured almost ere its brightness could be developed. The wind, as it rushed by, broke into short and irregular ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... voice broke off in a gust of weeping, and his face frankly surrendered itself to the distortions of a crying child's countenance, wide-mouthed and tragically grotesque in its ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... freedom of this curious piece of Turkish construction, where, among storks and ibises gravely perched on one stilt, you examine the relics of Roman history, preserved by its very destroyers, according to the grotesque providence that watches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... contrivance for opening and shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and bites every body it can lay hold of, and does not release them except on payment of a fine. It is generally accompanied by some men dressed up in a grotesque manner, who, on reaching a house, sing some extempore verses requesting admittance, and are in turn answered by those within, until one party or the other is at a loss for a reply. The Welsh are undoubtedly a poetical people, and these verses often display a good ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... phenomena through their primary causes because a knowledge of man's nature is the radical cure for his ills. The greatest obstacle man has to contend against is his emotional nature. Not that it is inherently degraded or sinful—the grotesque superstition some religious moralists have maintained; but man's emotional nature masters, more often than not, man's rational nature, and leads man astray. When the emotions are unrestrained and undirected by knowledge and intelligence, they violently attach themselves to ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... not what they sought. It was affecting to see the deep silent sorrow of the Indian women and of the children, who knew no other mother, and clung fondly to their bosems from whence they were not torn without bitter shrieks. I shall never forget the grotesque figures and wild looks of these young savages; nor the trembling haste with which their mothers arrayed them in the new clothes they had brought for them, as hoping with the Indian dress they would throw off their ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that if by chance a carriage lost its place in the line it was impossible to recover it, and it was immediately obliged to leave the street, and re-enter by one of the extremities. Besides the warfare carried on below, the balconies on each side were crowded with people in gay or grotesque dresses, who had sacks of bon-bons before them, from which they showered vollies upon those beneath, or aimed across the street at each other: some of them filled their handkerchiefs, and then dexterously loosening ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... is adorned with statues, and extends along the shore to the Tomb of Virgil, and the mole. It is crowded every evening with Neapolitans in equipages, some elegant, and some grotesque. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... children ascribed to him were Oengus, Bodb Dearg, Danu, Brigit, and perhaps Ogma. The euhemerists made him die of Cethlenn's venom, long after the battle of Mag-tured in which he encountered her.[282] Irish mythology is remarkably free from obscene and grotesque myths, but some of these cluster round Dagda. We hear of the Gargantuan meal provided for him in sport by the Fomorians, and of which he ate so much that "not easy was it for him to move and unseemly was his apparel," as well as his conduct with a Fomorian ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... display that he freed himself from responsibility? Did he hope to turn aside the blow which threatened Jesus by conceding something to the hatred of the Jews,[1] and by substituting for the tragic denouement a grotesque termination, to make it appear that the affair merited no other issue? If such were his idea, it was unsuccessful. The tumult increased, and became an open riot. The cry "Crucify him! crucify him!" resounded from all sides. The priests becoming increasingly urgent, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, Doctor Luke is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... well named, for it was a great resource. There were illustrations of all kinds, from Lord Fordham's careful watercolours, and Mrs. Brownlow's graceful figures or etchings, to the doctor's clever caricatures and grotesque outlines, and the contributions were equally miscellaneous. There were descriptions of scenery, fragmentary notes of history and science, records more or less veracious or absurd of personal adventures, and conversations, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at everywhere as an absurd reactionary he was held in the highest Buda-Pest circles to be a perilous innovator. He actually spoke about conciliating the Austro-Hungarian Slavs: not so Count Tisza. "What is happening in Austria," exclaimed the grim Calvinist a few months before, "are strange, grotesque displays of the ridiculous symptoms of the presumptuous mentality of people ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... which concluded the trial," says Hazlitt, "lasted seventy-two hours. It might naturally be supposed that silence, restraint, a sort of religious awe, would have pervaded the scene. On the contrary, everything bore the marks of gaiety, dissipation, and the most grotesque confusion. The farther end of the hall was converted into boxes, where ladies, in a studied deshabille, swallowed ices, oranges, liqueurs, and received the salutations of the members who went and came, as on ordinary occasions. Here the doorkeepers on ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ends, that reigned from centre to circumference through the stables at Laxton! I, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey their earlier condition; he to me could report their immediate changes. I won him easily to an interest in my own Irish experiences, so fresh, and in parts so grotesque, wilder also by much in Connaught than in Lord Massey's county of Limerick; whilst he (without affecting any delight in the hunting systems of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire) yet took pleasure in explaining to me those characteristic features of the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... direction were not to be obtained without very special inducement. At "calling" moose he was acknowledged to have no rival. When he laid his grimly-humourous lips to the long tube of birch-bark, which is the "caller's" instrument of illusion, there would come from it a strange sound, great and grotesque, harsh yet appealing, rude yet subtle, and mysterious as if the uncomprehended wilderness had itself found voice. Old hunters, wise in all woodcraft, had been deceived by the sound—and much more easily the impetuous bull, waiting, high-antlered and eager, for the love-call of his ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... opened and, as I turned, I found myself looking into the wrathful eyes of a stunted little man with an enormous head. Any one who has once seen Zalnitch can never forget him. His wizened, misshapen body is a grotesque caricature of a man's, which, surmounted by his huge head with its bushy hair, makes him look for all the world like some scientist's experiment. In the doorway to Zalnitch's private office stood Schreiber, a heavy-jowled, unsmiling mastiff ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... heretofore could only be wrought upon through the medium of the senses? Was then the zeal so pure, which glowed in the bosoms of the stormy fanatics, who with axe and hatchet overthrew without discrimination the ornaments of churches and the grotesque creations of superstition,[11] and before whose gloomy looks the most delicate works of art, from which the grandeur of innocence and the blessedness of love beamed down upon ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... chamber filled with soldiers in great buff jerkins,—those were pleasures not to be always found at will, and were to be made the most of when met with. Such pleasures, moreover, savouring of the unforeseen, the adventurous, and the grotesque, solely determined Mademoiselle's conduct in the outset. But on the second Fronde breaking out, when the struggle of the Parliament with royalty had become a quarrel between princes and ministers, Mademoiselle felt that the honour of her ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to be seriously damaged. And I was to be murdered. And then you were to get the concern cheap from my executors, and to float me dead since you could not float me living. What folly, Ravengar! What stupendous folly! Even if the fanciful and grotesque scheme had succeeded as far as my death, it could not have succeeded ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... walked between the two boys, he presented an appearance that was almost grotesque. He was without his hat, which had floated down the stream and had not been recovered. His hair was plastered down on both cadaverous cheeks, his shirtfront was a mass of pulp, and his wet clothes clinging closely to him brought into full relief every bony angle of his figure. One ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... statuettes of the Assyrians possess even less artistic merit than their statues. They are chiefly images of gods or genii, and have most commonly something grotesque in their appearance. Among the most usual are figures which represent either Mylitta (Bettis), or Ishtar. They are made in a fine terra cotta, which has turned of a pale red in baking, and are colored with a cretaceous coating, so as greatly to resemble Greek pottery. Another ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... petrol lamp shone full on Droulde's earnest, dark countenance as he looked Juliette's infamous accuser full in the face, but the tallow candles, flickering weirdly on the President's desk, threw Tinville's short, spare figure and large, unkempt head into curious grotesque silhouette. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Hugh on the drive, rapturous at seeing them again, rather absorbed in his new dog. But Brock, then fourteen, was in the house alone, quiet, his fresh, dear face red with tears, and a black necktie of his father's, too large for him, tied under his collar. Of all the memories of her boys, that grotesque black tie was the most poignant and most precious. It said much. It said: "I also, O, my mother, am of my people. I have a right to their sorrows as well as to their joys, and if you do not give me my place in trouble, I shall do what I can ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... other's masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the limericks of a few years before. The guests grouped themselves at little tables, and some, with shears and pages cut from old natural histories, geographies or poultry and live stock journals, created grotesque illustrations for the verses descriptive of the hippopotamustang and the kangarooster and other strange beasts which Catherine and Alice concocted during the afternoon. Others labored over historical combinations and the deeds of Bathrobespierre were sung in limpid ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... forward and with a steady hand readjusted the shade of a lamp which was in danger of burning. Lady Caroom leaned back in her chair with an indrawn sobbing breath. The action at such a moment seemed grotesque. His own coolness, whilst with steady fingers he probed away amongst the wounded places of his ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... these preliminary attempts, crude and imperfect, to speak with force and truth, or to sing with measure and grace. There is no reason why they should be remembered, except by professed inquirers into the antiquities of our literature; they were usually clumsy and awkward, sometimes grotesque, often affected, always hopelessly wanting in the finish, breadth, moderation, and order which alone can give permanence to writing. They were the necessary exercises by which Englishmen were recovering the suspended art of Chaucer, and learning to write; and exercises, though indispensably ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the sun began to peep through the angles of the wooden gable fronts, projecting nearly midway across the street, streaming athwart the frosty air, and giving a beautifully variegated and picturesque appearance to the grotesque ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... So-and-So?" Memory could supply no duplicate to this picture. It was like but one other face in the world, the one from which it had been faithfully copied. It was originally meant for a handsome face, but the features were exaggerated until they became grotesque and coarse in the extreme, and the thick, bushy, iron-grey hair and whiskers, and clay-coloured complexion, put the finishing strokes to a portrait, which might be considered the very ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... five and still dark, when those nude, shaggy men with heads ablaze with smoky, flickering lamps, began to move around. They looked grotesque—unearthly—denizens of some underground pit. They were good-humoured and full ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... walls were set with carvings and perforated work. Here hung bars of musical bells; there stood great jars and vases; everywhere were fantastic furnishings of silks and costly metals. Feathery green bamboos grew in dragon pots. In the corners stood grotesque figures in armor. ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... preposterously working once more, playing the part of a cog on the wheel. Another day, it seemed, of that grotesque nonsense, even after the world's Greatest Pitcher had sat not twenty feet from him the night before, eating raspberry ice. But events could not long endure that strain. Before the day was over Breede would undoubtedly "fire" him, with two or three badly ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... figure stood before them, his seamed and weather-beaten face set in stern lines. But there was a glint of laughter in his eyes as he noticed the grotesque and sometimes tortuous positions of some of the boys as they braced themselves in what they considered ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... rendered difficult by inaptitude and incompetence. I wanted to jump up and cry to him: "Get out of the way, man, and let me do it for you! I can do it while you are wiping hairs from your pen on your sleeve." I was sorry for him because he was ridiculous—and even more grotesque than ridiculous. I felt, quite acutely, that it was a shame that he could not be for ever the central figure of a field of mud, kicking a ball into long and grandiose parabolas higher than gasometers, or breaking an occasional leg, surrounded by the violent ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... water-colors, and drawings hung upon the walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves, and in elegant glass cupboards, there were a thousand knickknacks: small vases, statuettes, groups in Dresden china, grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their precious ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... involuntary prominence by being democratic amid aristocratic surroundings. Others, on the contrary, but with the same result, continue to live the life to which they were born, even when placed amid surroundings that make their actions all but grotesque. An example of this latter class was Scotty Baker, whose ranch, as the wild goose flies, was thirteen miles west of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... one of the wildest men; his fate, which was tragical, is now to most readers rather of a ghastly grotesque than of a lamentable and pitiable character. Few know, or have ever considered, in how wild an element poor Peter was born and nursed; what a time he has had, since his fifteenth year especially, when Cousin of Zerbst and he were married. Perhaps the wildest and maddest any human ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the wheels, and he became more and more irate. The high price of whisky was one source of complaint—it appeared, according to one of them, that it was all going to France, which caused a shortage for those at home. Then the military situation. . . . Impossible, grotesque. . . . Somebody ought to be hanged for having allowed such a thing to happen. After four years to be forced back—inexcusable. What was wanted was somebody with a business brain to run the Army. . . . In the meantime their money was being wasted, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a spring back fifty feet from the entrance where a shaft of sunlight struck the rock through some obscure slit in the rock, had no thrill for him. But the floor was of fine, white sand, and the ceiling was knobby and grotesque, and he was quite willing to sit there beside the spring and eat two sandwiches and talk foolishness with Honey, using that part of his mind which was not busy with the complexities of winning money on the speed of his horses when three horses represented his entire ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... expect all the brothers of the Order of St. John to be at my service when I call upon them to protect German ways and German customs." The Kaiser's crusading appeals are not hypocritical or consciously insincere: they are simply many centuries out of date—a grotesque medley of medieval romanticism and royal megalomania. What was possible for the warrior knights in North-East Germany five or six centuries ago is a tragic absurdity and an outrageous crime to-day among a spirited and sensitive people like the Poles—still ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. Across the light huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... was quite deserted; not a trace of natives, nor any track that could betray the existence of man. The stream was fringed with tall bushes, or glided along sloping banks, so that nothing obstructed the view of the low range of hills which closed the eastern end of the valley. With their grotesque shapes, and their outlines lost in a deceptive haze, they brought to mind giant animals, worthy of antediluvian times. They might have been a herd of enormous whales, suddenly turned to stone. These disrupted masses proclaimed their essentially volcanic character. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to examine, in high delight, the new and strange objects which surrounded her. Meanwhile her mother and I stood together, looking at each other by the light of the lamp, with an assumed composure which hid our true faces like a mask. In that horrible situation, the grotesque and the terrible, always together in this strange life of ours, came together now. On either side of us, the one sound that broke the sinister and threatening silence was the lumpish snoring of ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... it is most beautiful as well. You are, in effect, at the bottom of the ocean—or rather, at the bottom of many oceans in one. No light comes to you except through the grottos about you—grottos haunted by weird forms of the deep, from graceful to grotesque, from almost colorless to gaudy-hued. To your dilated pupils the light itself has the weird glow of unreality. It is all like the wonders of the Arabian Nights made tangible or like a strange spectacular dream. If one were in a great diving-bell at the bottom of the veritable ocean he could hardly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... history of Cesare Borgia, with intent to do just and honest work, must find it impossible to tell a plain and straightforward tale—to present him not as a villain of melodrama, not a monster, ludicrous, grotesque, impossible, but as human being, a cold, relentless egotist, it is true, using men for his own ends, terrible and even treacherous in his reprisals, swift as a panther and as cruel where his anger was aroused, yet with certain elements of greatness: ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Council, and often under British convoy.[269] The fact was noteworthy, as bearing upon the contention of the United States Government soon after, that the Non-Intercourse Law was adequate security for the action of American merchant vessels; a grotesque absurdity, in view of the embargo experiences. That it is not consonant with national self-esteem to accept foreign assistance to carry out national laws is undeniable; but it is a step further to expect another nation to accept, as assured, the efficiency of an authority ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... condition compels between the sculptural decoration of the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,—mighty statues with robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous goblins ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin |
