"Repellent" Quotes from Famous Books
... those men who seem marked by destiny rather than by nature, fateful, sombre, almost repellent in manner, born to inspire a vague fear at first sight, and foreordained to strange misfortune or to extraordinary success, one of those human beings from whom all men shrink instinctively, and before whom they easily lose their fluency of speech and confidence ... — In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... traveling for amusement. The other wore a military uniform and decorations, and was spoken of as "the General." A bold bullying manner, a fat sodden face, little leering eyes, and greasy-looking hands, made this man so repellent to me that I privately longed to kick him. Romayne had evidently been announced, before our arrival, as a landed gentleman with a large income. Men and women vied in servile attentions to him. When we went into the dining-room, the fascinating ... — The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... such a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude Real burst coarsely in—all evil grovelling and repellent ... — Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... their faces, or pointed as if to drive his words into their hearts. His speech was a torrent of epigram, sarcasm, invective. He was bitter; if you knew nothing about the man or his cause, you would find this repellent and shocking. You had to know what his life had been—an unceasing conflict with oppression; he had got his Socialist education in jail, where he had been sent for trying to organize the wage-slaves of a gigantic corporation. His rage was the rage of a tender-hearted ... — Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... front of me stood a huge and extraordinarily repellent-looking negro. A glance at him almost made one shudder, but before I had finished my first sentence he raised his right arm straight above him and shouted, in a deep and wonderfully rich bass voice, "Hallelujah to the Lamb!" From that point on he punctuated my speech every few moments with good, ... — The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... the literature of the imagination composed for them, a radiant literature made of numberless romaunts, songs, and love-tales. They had no taste for the doleful tunes of the Anglo-Saxon poet; his sadness was repellent to them, his despairs they abhorred; they turned the page and shut the book with great alacrity. They were happy men; everything went well with them; they wanted a literature ... — A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... which this belief in immortality is not found deeply rooted, positive, unquestioning. The belief is implanted in man by the wish; it answers one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings of human nature. For, in proportion as life is pleasant and precious, death is hideous and repellent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to be, is intolerable to the mind; indeed, the senses revolt against it, the mind refuses to grasp and admit it. Yet death is very real, and it is inevitable; and all human beings that come into the world have to learn to face the thought ... — Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... could hardly have been more repellent to him, but he got out an acceptance somehow. She nodded lightly to him and passed on, and he went downstairs, his head in a whirl. Where had the crude pretty child of yester-year departed to—impulsive, conceited, readily ... — Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time—all the time—the handsome, repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the hollow ... — The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... open, his tongue swelled, his whole countenance became convulsed with the most unparalleled, and for that reason indescribable, expression of agony, whilst the yellowness of his complexion deepened to a livid, lurid black, that was so inconceivably repellent and hellish that I sprang away from the bed—appalled. There was then a gasping, rasping noise, and a voice that, despite its unnatural hollowness, I identified as that of Ralph, broke forth: 'I have been wanting to speak to you for ages, but something, I cannot explain, has always prevented ... — Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... was still in the garden; the husband and Helen had left her there to finish her meal while they went to engage rooms. Margaret found this woman repellent. She had felt, when shaking her hand, an overpowering shame. She remembered the motive of her call at Wickham Place, and smelt again odours from the abyss—odours the more disturbing because they were involuntary. For there was no malice in Jacky. There she sat, ... — Howards End • E. M. Forster
... tendency to dwell upon the sufficiency of external acts rather than the necessity of inward disposition. At the same time, in the Psalter and prophecy inward purity is recognised.[20] Further, the character of Jehovah is sometimes presented in a repellent aspect; as in the threatenings of the second commandment; the treatment of the children of Achan and the Sons of Korah; the seeming injustice of God, implied in the complaint of Moses, and the protests of Abraham and David. But again there are not wanting more kindly features of the Divine Being; ... — Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... is to be no roseate fiction, no gainful pretense, but a living reality. The United States of the future will be no constrained alliance of discordant and mutually repellent commonwealths, but a true exemplification of 'many in one'—many stars blended in one common flag—many States combined in one homogeneous Nation. Our Union will be one of bodies not merely, but of souls. The merchant of Boston or New-York will visit Richmond or Louisville ... — The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... brass instruments were out of tune; the rag-tag crowd surged about, some jeering, some cheering,—everything in the environment was repellent, but in the midst shone that pale ... — Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... anger now that used to irritate—and amuse him? It is all gone. This is hardly Tita, this girl, cold, repellent; it is an absurd thought, but it seems to ... — The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... thinking the appearance of the headless statue uncanny, popped a stray antique occiput (of which a goodly number, more or less mutilated, are constantly brought to light by the peasants) upon Lollianus' vacant shoulders. Anything more comical and at the same time more repellent than this hybrid statue it would be impossible to imagine, yet Lollianus of the unknown head remains a favourite with the people of Pozzuoli. Leaving the Largo del Municipio, with its weird senator and its dusty palms, ... — The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of Epictetus, as originally published by Arrian, contained eight books, of which only four have come down to us. They are in many respects the most valuable expression of his views. There is something slightly repellent in the stern concision, the "imperious brevity," of the Manual. In the Manual, says M. Martha,[66] "the reason of the Stoic proclaims its laws with an impassibility which is little human; it imposes silence on all the passions, even the most respectable; it glories in waging against ... — Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... extreme figure of speech she had used, were repellent to Mr. Withers over and above his amazement at her words. As he had not been observing her, he was totally unprepared for ... — A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Thus I cannot repeat exactly all that he said, for I was only listening with half an ear. But the substance of it all was this: I was to pose as the friend of M. Fernand Rochez, and engage the attention of Mlle. Goldberg senior the while he paid his court to the lovely Leah. It was not a repellent task altogether, because M. Rochez's suggestion opened a vista of pleasant parties at open-air cafes, with foaming tankards of beer, on warm afternoons the while the young people sipped sirops and fed on love. My newly found ... — Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... face it was!—what a thing of distorted passion and pain! What an agony was expressed in every line of the features!—agony in which the traces of a divine beauty lingered only to render the whole countenance more repellent and terrific! A kind of sentient solemnity, mingled with wrath and terror, glared from the painted eyes,—the lips, slightly parted in a cruel upward curve, seemed about to utter a shriek of menace,—the hair, drooping in black, thick clusters low on the brow, ... — Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... I advocated as one of its chief aims the recasting into modern form and in literary English of the old Irish legends, preserving the atmosphere of the original tales as much as possible, but clearing them from repetitions, redundant expressions, idioms interesting in Irish but repellent in English, and, above all, from absurdities, such as the sensational fancy of the later editors and bards added to the ... — The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... stretch of the repellent cactus, whose great gnarled branches locked and intertwined themselves in a verdureless mass of thorns and spikes which well might have daunted even an Indian. The hedge was many feet in width and higher ... — Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... night;—these, and three domestic women, who cook and sew and run for us, make all my household. Here I sit and read and write, with very little system, and, as far as regards composition, with the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle. ... — Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... this discursion because, for a period, the paths of the two composers were parallel. Tschaikovsky did not admire Moussorgsky, spoke slightingly of his abilities, though he conceded that with all his roughness he had power of a repellent order. Turgenieff did not understand him. The opera La Khovanchtchina, notwithstanding the preponderance of the chorus—in Russia choral singing is the foundation of musical culture—I found more "operatic" than Boris ... — Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... result is that Dutch churches are more than chilling. In the simplest English village church one receives some impression of the friendliness of religion; but in Holland—of course I speak as a stranger and a foreigner—religion seems to be a cold if not a repellent thing. ... — A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... false opinions would be the only palladium of progress; or that a doctrinaire State, composed of perfectly virtuous and deferential people, would arrest development and stifle origiality, by its ungenial if mild tyranny. Mercier's is no exception to the rule that ideal societies are always repellent; and there are probably few who would not rather be set down in Athens in the days of the "vile" Aristophanes, whose works Mercier condemned to the flames, than in ... — The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... analyzing the book, it may be claimed for this "Francesca da Rimini," that it reflects the age in which the tragedy occurred. Much artistic construction is shown in the contrast of the Polenta and Malatesta families, and, repellent as he is at times, D'Annunzio has moments of great poetic fervour; his fire swings forth in many of Francesca's speeches, that alternate with the languor ... — Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... not slam the door of heaven in anybody's face; it stands wide open. But there is a mystic barrier, unseen, but most real, more repellent than cherub and flaming sword, which makes it impossible for any foot to cross that threshold except the foot of the man whose heart and nature have been made Christlike, and fitted for heaven ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... at last into silence. They sat in the dim, yellow-gray dusk and stared gloomily at the stove, growing each moment more repellent to one another. They met one another's eyes at intervals with surprise and horror. The world without seemed utterly lost. Wailing voices sobbed in the pipe and at the windows. Sudden agonized shrieks came out of the blur of sound. The hours drew out to enormous ... — The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... retreating narrow forehead. In that face, with its intense eyes, there was the possibility of rare charm and fascination, and beauty of a very unusual kind; but at the present moment, as she looked carelessly and almost sullenly at her visitor, there was something repellent. ... — The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... one of the men of the century. There was a genial charm in Browning, emphasized, in this earlier time, with a bewildering vivacity and an affluence of courtesy. In his mature phase he was still courteous and agreeable when he chose to be so, but was also occasionally supercilious and repellent, and assiduously cultivated smart society. I once asked him, in 1879, why he made his poetry so often obscure, and he replied, frankly, that he did so because he couldn't help it; the inability to put his thoughts in clear phrases had always been a grief ... — Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... undoubtedly moving, and as they stood and watched, a strange figure slowly detached itself from the shadows and crept towards them. It was clad in native garments and shuffled along in a bent attitude as if deformed. Stella stiffened as she stood. There was something unspeakably repellent to her in its ... — The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... tufts of coarse grass and weeds, and the poor horses were hard put to get enough, even though they grazed all night. The country, which was more broken and seamed with gullies and rivers of sand, Sha Ho, had taken on a hard, sunbaked, repellent look, brightened only by splendid crimson and blue thistles. The wells were farther apart, and sometimes they were dry, and there were anxious hours when we were not sure of water for ourselves, still less for the horses. One well near a salt lake was rather brackish. ... — A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... make her mistress at Halford Castle? Ought she not to feel flattered in having a noble lord for a lover? The thought did not stir her blood. Why was she averse to receiving his attentions? What was there about him that made the thought repellent? Was he not a gentleman? Was he not polite? Did he not show proper respect not only to herself but to everybody? Why not make an effort to overcome her repugnance to him? Would any other girl in Boston or anywhere else hesitate a moment over such an opportunity as had come to ... — Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... enough in his declarations, his determinations, and his promises. The Diva had shown herself a Diva at every point. She had wept, she had smiled, she had been scornful, she had been suppliant, she had been repellent, she had been loving! And in every mood she had seemed to the fascinated eyes of the Marchese more lovely than in that which preceded it. Finally, she had conquered. Instead of coming away from her, never to see her again, he came ... — A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... fruit, and that every human being should mate and produce offspring. The plant that fails in any of its functions is usually blighted in some way, and the woman who fails of life's full experiences seems to show some repellent peculiarity. But she need not, once she sets a watch upon herself; she has a conscious soul and mind, and can control such tendencies ... — A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a great colourist unless he is a great deal more. A great colourist is no better than a great wordist unless the colour is well applied to a subject which at any rate is not repellent. ... — The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... that he had been bowled over by shell-shock, like many thousands more of equally splendid specimens of young manhood. Any other conclusion to account for the strange condition of a young man like him seemed unworthy and repellent. ... — The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... to the achievement which they found they had accomplished was tempered by the reflections inspired by the sublime desolation of that stern and silent coast and the menace of its unbroken solitude. Beyond to the eastward was the interminable defiance of the unexplored coast—black, cold, and repellent. Below them lay the Arctic Ocean, buried beneath frozen chaos. No words can describe the confusion of this sea of ice—the hopeless asperity of it, the weariness of its torn and tortured surface. Only at the remote horizon did distance ... — Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because women are more delicately made, and ... — In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of the awakening which would await the girl-wife on the very morrow of her wedding-day mayhap, was terribly repellent to Clyffurde's straightforward, loyal nature, and bitter was the contention within his soul as he found himself at the cross-roads of a divided duty. Every instinct of chivalry towards the woman loudly demanded that he should warn her—now—at once—before ... — The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and morally repellent was the very recent statement by Major-General von Disfurth, in an article contributed by him to the Hamburger Nachrichten, which so completely illustrates Bernhardiism in its last extreme of avowed brutality that it justifies ... — The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... sheer violence, sometimes aggravated by the grossest meanness and treachery, and these titles were not recognized by the plundered race. Even with their gradual recognition it would have been difficult to introduce the English system of tenure, which was radically different and repellent to the Irish mind. The bare idea of one man absolutely owning land and transmitting it entire to his heirs was incomprehensible ... — The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... begun, and he turned towards his house. But he couldn't sleep; the house was repellent, and he waited among the thorn-bushes and ferns. Of what use to lie in one's bed when sleep is far and will not be beckoned? and his brain being clear as day he went away to the woods and watersides, saying: 'Life is orientated ... — The Lake • George Moore
... he is coming in! He had still that defiant, devil-may-care step, that haughty, insolent look, as if the whole world were full of his lackeys, that repellent beauty, for his features were as vacant as they ... — A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... attitude was the exact reverse of Horace Vanney's. For himself, he unaffectedly disliked and despised publicity; for the interests which he represented, he delegated it to others. He would rarely be interviewed; his attitude toward the newspapers was consistently repellent. Consequently his infrequent utterances were treasured as pearls, and given a prominence far above those of the too eager and over-friendly Mr. Vanney, who, incidentally, was his associate on the directorate of the Law Enforcement Society. The newspapers did not like Willis Enderby any ... — Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... other things, he did not intend that a lot of American relations should come tumbling in when they chose to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it, and took discreet steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wrote to America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make himself civilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law as to discourage in them more than once their half-formed plan of paying a visit to their child in her new home. He opened, read and reclosed all epistles to and from New York, and while Mrs. Vanderpoel was ... — The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... curved, oval, or round. In Montalluyah straight lines are avoided. The houses are built principally with a white stone, mingled with a peculiar stone of a bright sky-blue colour, both stones repellent of heat. ... — Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... daily more wretchedly haggard; the Doctor was at fault, Mrs. Henley looked sagacious, while his manner became so dry and repellent that visitors went away moralizing on the absurdity of "nouveaux riches" taking so much state ... — The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of those pages was to be a repellent task to him; it was a task to which he could not bring himself at the moment; to-night, in the privacy of his own chamber, he would sift Mr. Taggett's baleful fancies. Thus temporizing, Mr. Slocum dropped the volume ... — The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of manners, all repellent, mien being ... — The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to turn back. There was something fascinating as well as repellent about the woods. Down there was a grave. At the head of the grave was a stone. On that stone ... — Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... gives of both these latter schools is indistinct; and he appears reluctant to mention the names of their teachers. Nor can we easily determine how much is to be assigned to the Cynics, how much to the Megarians, or whether the 'repellent Materialists' (Theaet.) are Cynics or Atomists, or represent some unknown phase of opinion at Athens. To the Cynics and Antisthenes is commonly attributed, on the authority of Aristotle, the denial of predication, while the Megarians are said to have been Nominalists, asserting the One Good ... — Sophist • Plato
... that for that barren honour a human being dyed his hands with murder and risked momentary assassination for the remainder of his lifetime? Well, we have heard of the Man who would be King, and empty titles still are sought by political services equally repellent. ... — Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... particularly, and I knew them to be bride and bridegroom. The man was tall and broad, with dark hair and eyes, and a sensual and cruel face. He seemed, however, to be quite enslaved by the woman by his side, whom I hardly even now like to think of, there was something to me so repellent in ... — A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... look as cold as all arctics and says, 'It's repellent'—that's all, just 'repellent.' I see I was up against it. No good talking. Sometimes it comes over me like a flash when not to talk. It does to some women. So I affected a light manner and pretended to laugh it off, just as if I didn't see scandal threatening—think of having it talked about that ... — Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to your loins the great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole, white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and we ... — Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... shocked, being sure that it was his duty to be. There was about the young man's mental condition a sort of infantile unsophistication. The New England mind often seems to inherit from bygone Puritanism a certain repellent quality through which it takes long for anything savoring of worldliness or worldly wisdom to penetrate. When once this covering is broken, it may be added, the result is much the same as in the case of the cracking of ... — The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... ridiculed. He needs before all else our love and our sympathy; for his nature is essentially that of a child, and, childlike, he craves for human love as the first necessity of his life. To those who set up an idol of their own fancy and worship that as his image, he will be cold and repellent, but to those who know him as he really is he will return their love with all the warmth and purity of his childlike nature. Two things are intolerable to a healthy-minded child—rough brutality and mawkish ... — Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... her face going dead white. She hadn't yet met Naka Machi, but his name told her enough. The thought of a Japanese, however, was far less repellent than the cold, calm way in which Barter spoke of using the offspring of such ... — The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... paradise you might call it—ah! a paradise or a—garden of Eden, wi' Eve and the serpent and all!" and he broke out into a cackling laugh. And, in the look and the laugh, indeed about his whole figure, there was something so repellent, so evil, that I was minded to kick and trample him down into the ditch, yet the leering triumph in ... — The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... glum, ill-humored, repelling, austere, dreary, grim, ill-natured, repulsive, crabbed, forbidding, harsh, offensive, unkind, disagreeable, gloomy, hateful, repellent, unpleasant. ... — English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in the Europeans, Particularly in those whose luck was not good. There was already talk of a white rising to drive the heathen from the field, and Done found his mates entirely in sympathy with the common sentiment; to him; also the Celestials became exceedingly repellent as he grew more familiar with their habits and manners, although he was opposed to making differences of race an excuse ... — In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the spruce-lined river banks on either side that morning as we toiled onward, and grim and repellent indeed were the rocky hills outlined against the sky beyond. Everything seemed frozen stiff and dead except ourselves. No sound broke the absolute silence save the crunch, crunch, crunch of our feet, the squeak ... — The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... careless gayety. To Talbot, however, there was something beneath all this, which was very plainly visible; and to her, with her profound insight into Brooke's deeper nature, all this nonsense offered nothing that was repellent; on the contrary, she found it most touching and most sad. It seemed to her like the effort of a strong man to rid himself of an overmastering feeling—a feeling deep within him that struggled forever upward and would not ... — A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... projected, well-built, unfinished, barely furnished house, with its great central room empty, where the devil, coming and going at his pleasure, had not yet begun to make any great racket. There might be endless embryonic evil in him, but Letty was aware of no repellent atmosphere about him, and did not shrink from his advances. He pleased her, and why should she not be pleased with him? Was it a fault to be easily pleased? The truer and sweeter any human self, the readier is it to be pleased ... — Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Marion, she seemed as calm as I was agitated. Her demeanor was a singular one. She was not exactly frigid or repellent. She was rather shy and reserved. It was rather the constraint of timidity than of dislike. Dislike? No. Not a bit of it. Whatever her feelings might be, she had no reason for dislike. Still she was cold—and her coldness began gradually to affect ... — The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... which Stepfather Time had heard the voice but never seen the face. Each of three attempts to investigate with a view to negotiations had been frustrated by a crabbed and violent-looking man with a repellent club. Nevertheless, the voice alone had ensnared the connoisseur; it was, by the test of the pipe which he carried on all his quests, D in alt, and would thus complete the major chord of a chime which ... — From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... books which go with midnight, solitude, and a candle. It is much easier to say what does not please us then than what is exactly right. The book must be, anyhow, something benedictory by a sinning fellow-man. Cleverness would be repellent at such an hour. Cleverness, anyhow, is the level of mediocrity today; we are all too infernally clever. The first witty and perverse paradox blows out the candle. Only the sick in mind crave cleverness, as a morbid body turns to drink. The late candle throws its beams ... — Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... delicacy, squid are esteemed, and even the devilfish is on the tables, hideous, repellent, slimy, horned, and tentacled; not mighty enough to crush out the life of the fisher, as was the horrific creature in Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea," whom his hero fought, yet menacing even when ... — Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the Somme's resilient phase, From Flanders slime and bomb-proof burrows, Much as we did in ancient days They smite the Cam's repellent furrows. ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... how far this was fostered by those old-fashioned habits of strictness which it is the present habit to view as repellent? Every morning, immediately after breakfast, Lady Patteson read the Psalms and Lessons for the day with the four children, and after these a portion of some book of religious instruction, such as 'Horne on the Psalms' ... — Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they say. Accidents have occurred there; a strange ill omen, it is believed, invests those ghostly snows; the death-clutch of the Balaitous holds many a brave mountaineer. As seen from here, it has an indefinably spectral, repellent look; there seems something almost hideous in its white and ... — A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... studied him, put out a greedy palm, developed a smile still more repellent than her brutality, and ... — The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than ... — The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... sterile and complacent artificiality that was so long the curse of woman's life. I deem it almost reprehensible that, save a few general statistics, the women's colleges have not only made no study themselves of the larger problems that impend, but have often maintained a repellent attitude toward others who wished to do so. No one that I know of connected with any of these institutions, where the richest material is going to waste, is making any serious and competent research on lines calculated to bring out the psycho-physiological ... — Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... him in the hall as she indicated the depository for his hat and stick and opened the door of the sitting-room. She had barely smiled. Indeed she had not smiled. She had not mentioned the weather. On the other hand, she had not been prim or repellent. She had revealed nothing of herself. Her one feat had been to stimulate mightily his curiosity and his imagination concerning her—rampant enough even before ... — The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... attractive and yet repellent about a well, at least to me. I always want to look down it and listen to the peculiar echoing noise, and the whispers that seem to creep ... — Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... fabled fascination of a serpent's. I knew instinctively that he would have the power, and use it, of probing every wound he might suspect in me to the quick. Yet he interested me; and there was something not entirely repellent to me about him. Above all for Olivia's sake, should we find her still living, I was anxious to study his character. It might happen, as it does sometimes, that my honor and straight-forwardness might prove a ... — The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... very striking, and it merits particular comment, as its ideal was so radically different from those adopted by Story and Gould in their statues of the Egyptian Queen.... The effects of death are represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellent. Apart from all questions of taste, however, the striking qualities of the work are undeniable, and it could only have been produced by a sculptor of very genuine endowments."—Great ... — Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... magnificence, by Irving, and met with considerable success. "The Promise of May" is another play which was staged, in 1882, by Mrs. Bernard Beere, but met with failure by the critics, owing, in some degree, to its supposed caricature of modern agnostics, and to the repellent portrayal of one of the characters in the piece, the sensualist, Philip Edgar. Later, in (1892) appeared "The Foresters," a pretty pastoral play, on the theme of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which was produced on the boards in New York by Mr. Daly and his company, with a charming woodland setting. ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... adolescence of the Filipino youth makes him very repellent to the American. One of the most frightful things which I ever saw was a play given in Spanish by children. The play itself was one which Americans would never have permitted children to read or to see, much less to present. The principal character was a debauched and feeble old man of the ... — A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... a number of rooms all well and comfortably furnished, but although my imagination may have been responsible for the idea, they all seemed to possess a chilly and repellent atmosphere. I felt that to essay sleep in any one of them would be the merest farce, that the place to all intents and purposes was uninhabitable, that something incalculably evil presided over ... — The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... that Kate forsook him, burying herself in her distant room, guilty and heart-broken, fearing above all things on earth, the first repellent glance he would bestow upon her. Once, while he slept, she peered through his door, going back to her room and her spinning with tears blinding the plaintive ... — Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... them and that, being able to prevent them through his omnipotence, he yet permits them. This is why some philosophers and even some theologians have rather chosen to deny to God any knowledge of the detail of things and, above all, of future events, than to admit what they believed repellent to his goodness. The Socinians and Conrad Vorstius lean towards that side; and Thomas Bonartes, an English Jesuit disguised under a pseudonym but exceedingly learned, who wrote a book De Concordia Scientiae cum Fide, of which I will speak later, appears to hint ... — Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... that is true, too. Everything about him is repellent to me! We have not a thought in common. We have no single ... — Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... her eyes wide with a curious conviction that there was a cat in the room, and then all in a moment she met the cool, repellent stare of the black-browed doctor whom ... — The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... mirror. A few crayon sketches of himself—dilectissimae imagines—are as much as he should ever do. That D'Orsay's portraits, even his much-approved portrait of the Duke of Wellington, are quite amateurish, is no excuse. It is the process of painting which is repellent; to force from little tubes of lead a glutinous flamboyance and to defile, with the hair of a camel therein steeped, taut canvas, is hardly the diversion for a gentleman; and to have done all this for a man ... — The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Of late years John Barton had had a repellent power about him, felt by all, except to the few who had either known him in his better and happier days, or those to whom he had given his sympathy and his confidence. People did not care to enter the doors of one whose very depth of thoughtfulness ... — Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... youth among the men; some are fashionable and some outrageously not; peculiarities of all kinds abound without conflicting. Some talk, frankly audible, and others are frankly silent, but a deep, wide purr, tacit or explicit, close upon a muted hymn of thanksgiving, in that assemblage of mutually repellent personalities, for the nonce united, would ... — Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... their beauty; yet she wore half-a-dozen worthless ones habitually for the love of those who gave them, to her. It was said that she was striking in appearance, but cold and indifferent in manner. Some, on whom she had never turned her eyes, called her repellent. But it was noticed that men who took her down to dinner, or had any other opportunity of talking to her, were never very positive in, what they said of her afterwards. She made every one, men and women alike, feel, and she did ... — Ideala • Sarah Grand
... in a humour keyed to the highest pitch of gaiety consistent with good breeding, so with more half-stifled laughter they settled into chairs well apart from all others but, as it happened, in a direct line between Lanyard and the man whose repellent cast of countenance had ... — Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... personal worth, she is consequently free from that haughty exclusiveness which is to be found wherever real excellences are wanting. The women of the so-called better classes among us at home treat their less fortunate sisters with such repellent arrogance simply because they cannot get rid of the instinctive feeling that these poorer sisters would have very well occupied their own places, and vice versa, had their husbands been changed. And even when it is not so, when the European 'lady' actually ... — Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... are hurt." No wonder that these two captains became fast friends. It is because sea warfare abounds in such manly incidents as these that the modern naval code of Germany, as exemplified in the acts of her submarine commanders, was so peculiarly barbarous and repellent. ... — The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... into the car, but Rick stopped him. "Let's go to the drugstore. I want to get a spray can of insect repellent." ... — The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... tell, though his thick, short hair is iron gray and his beard many shades whiter. Short of stature, with very high shoulders, that suggest physical deformity, squarely built and stout, a square, rugged face, with light, steely eyes and overhanging brows. It is a repellent face and form, and Floyd ... — Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ladies and gentlemen, for obtruding my repellent personality on this joyful assemblage, but our dear guest will not, I am sure, object to answering a simple question. I have no civic pride myself, but do you mind, sir, telling me the object of your visit to this lovely ... — Best Short Stories • Various
... such rare and positive beauty, had now shut down into a hard, repellent little mask of hate. Mr. Bristol looked at her for a moment in silence, and then at Sylvia, sobbing, her arm crooked over her face, hiding everything but her shining curls. "And what has this little girl to ... — The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... service of machinery? How shall the man who, by the effect of his labor, has become a slave,—that is, a chattel, a thing,— again become a person by the same labor, or in continuing the same exercise? Why is it not seen that these ideas are mutually repellent, and that, if, by some impossibility, the proletaire could reach a certain degree of intelligence, he would make use of it in the first place to revolutionize society and change all civil and industrial relations? And what I say is no ... — The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... sinuous, and the momentum of current consequently lessened. For example, striking in an arm of the river, by the inertia of the moving volume, the water is thrown, and with less velocity, upon the opposite bank, which it pursues until it meets another repellent obstacle, from which it refracts, taking direction again for the other side. Above the Missouri, the river is principally directed by the natural trough of the valley. Below this, however, the channel is purely the work of the river itself, shaped according ... — Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... conviction that she had been more sinned against than sinning. She had forgiven, whereas she might have exacted forgiveness. She had been gracious, whereas she might have followed her mother's advice and have been repellent till she had brought him to her feet. As it was, her strong desire to have him once again had softened her, and now she had the double reward. She had what she wanted, and was able to congratulate herself at the same time on her virtue. But he, though he had too what he wanted, ... — Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... the diffusion of these things among children involves serious dangers alike to their morals and to their health. Speaking generally, upon adults pornographic objects have rather a repellent than a sexually exciting effect. In the case of children in whom no sexual sensibility has as yet developed, they exercise no sexual stimulation, but may later give rise to ill effects. But it is to ripening children and young persons, who do not yet understand ... — The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... be accomplished; let freedom succeed, and from that moment, every hostile sentiment at once subsides, and the sundered sections, 'like kindred drops,' again 'mingle into one.' A free community will gravitate to the central orb of liberty; one that is repellent to freedom will fly off on its erratic course to the regions of outer darkness, and will never return until, having completed the cycle of its destiny of ruin, it shall be brought back to be regenerated at the fountain of light, and ... — The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... very discontented and unhappy. I had forgotten all about it until I saw the girl today. She certainly seems to be a very superior person; she will find the Cove very lonely, I am sure. It is not probable she will stay there long. I must see what I can do for her, but her manner seemed rather repellent, don't you think?" ... — Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... people who indulged their fancy. In Harry and Lucy, for instance, Lucy, who is the only human figure in the book, is perpetually being snubbed by the terrible hard-headed Harry, with his desperate interest in machinery, by the repellent father who delights to explain the laws of gravity and the parabola described by the stone which Harry throws. What was undervalued in those old, dry, high-principled books was the charm of vivid apprehension, of fanciful imagination, of simple, neighbourly kindliness. The aim was too much to improve ... — From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... squirrel, now among the branches of an elm, is twitching from one rigid attitude to another, electrified by the crisp atmosphere and the inspiration of the snow. Again he is leaping over the white surface to clamber up the repellent bark of a tall hickory. Among the larger limbs he disappears. As he never attempts to hide, he must have retired into his own dwelling to partake of the store laid by in the season of plenty. Hickory nuts are his favourite food, and the hard shells ... — The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... cold and repellent. He would not believe my story, and so refused to have me come to his wigwam. So Shakoona and I had to meet when we could, and that was not often, for the father was cruel and Oosahmekoo had many spies. Still, we had many friends. Miskoodell, the little sister, was ... — Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... was dilapidated,—a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome in some strange and half-repellent way, with his pale dark face, rather long in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on the broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his drawing nearer, she saw for the first time—it had been hidden by the shadow of his slouched hat—an ugly scar ... — The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... what I mean. My wife is a modest, intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat, and tastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered into one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any refined woman would shrink from. But along comes a flauntingly dressed woman, of known disreputable character, whom my wife would be disgraced to know, and she takes any place that ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are, these balze form an appropriate preface to the gloomy and repellent isolation of Canossa. The rock towers from a narrow platform to the height of rather more than 160 feet from its base. The top is fairly level, forming an irregular triangle, of which the greatest length is about 260 feet, and the width about ... — Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... pleasant and even joking terms with the waitresses. But with Daisy he never joked. He called the other girls by their first names, as became a social superior, but Daisy was always Miss Obloski to him. With Linnevitch alone he made no headway. Linnevitch maintained a pointedly surly and repellent attitude, as if he really wished to turn away a profitable patronage. And Barstow learned to leave ... — IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... his dinner hurriedly, staring at his plate in a moodiness which he did not take the trouble to conceal. With all the youthful beauty of his face, there was a boorishness in his ill-humour which in a less commanding figure would have been repellent—an evident pride in the sincerity of the scowl upon his brow. When his meal was over he rose with a muttered excuse and went out into the yard, where a few minutes afterward Carraway was ... — The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... devoted to books of travel, my father asked me to parse Kane's "Arctic Voyages." I found the volumes cold and repellent. They gave me a rooted prejudice against the North Pole which even the adventure of Doctor Cook has never enabled me ... — Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... be carried, the license, that is, of departing from the strict literal forms of the original writer, whether as to expressions, images, or even as to the secondary thoughts, for the sake of reproducing them in some shape less repellent to a modern ear, and therefore virtually sustaining the harmony of the composition by preventing the attention from settling in a disproportionate degree upon what might have a startling effect to a taste trained under modern discipline—this question has always ... — The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... may be preserved dry for delicate work by rubbing a little club moss (lycopodium), in fine powder, over them. So repellent is this substance of moisture, that if a small quantity of it be sprinkled on the surface of a basin of water, the hand, by a little adroitness, may be plunged to the bottom of ... — The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... negative charge, be equally heated, the negative is more readily dissipated than the positive. But, so far as we at present know, this question enters into the discussion scarcely, if at all. Our knowledge seems rather to point to the substances upon which the charges are collected. The self-repellent nature of electricity compels it to manifest itself at the more prominent parts of the surface, the level being forsaken for the point. The tension of the charge, or its tendency to fly off, is proportionately increased. ... — Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... city was a fortress, but a lovely fortress. Yet there was a coldness, an angularity, that told me these Zervs, as Nokomee had called her race, lacked true sympathy for life forms, lacked emotion as we know it in art. Yet it was beautiful, if repellent because so alien, so pure in design, so lacking in the sympathetic understanding of man's nature. This was a city no earthman could ever call home. It lacked something. There were no dogs, no strolling women or running children, it lay ... — Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... heterogeneous, from the incoherent to the coherent, and from the indefinite to the definite condition. Difficult words at first to apprehend, no doubt, and therefore to many people, as to Mr. Matthew Arnold, very repellent, but full of meaning, lucidity, and suggestiveness, if only we once take the trouble fairly ... — Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... when she spoke to him there was something of the gentleness of the day before in her manner; but this exception excepted, the girl had reverted to her old air of silent, resentful indifference, and her strange beauty was to the watchful old woman as repellent as ... — The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... out his scarf, and purchases a new stick. Somehow it seems to me that a gentleman of natural high honor will always present his average self to the one woman. That he should be attentive is natural, that he should be affected is repellent to my notions. Perhaps it was for this reason that without preparation I closed my desk and walked up to meet Julianna, as I would have walked home to my own ... — The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... would brand him throughout Europe. Weber, however, had spoken of a morganatic marriage, and fearful pressure might be brought to bear. A country so energetic and advanced as Germany had clung, nevertheless, to many repellent principles of medievalism. A nation listened with calm acceptance and complacency, while its Kaiser claimed a partnership, and not altogether a junior partnership either, with the Almighty. Much could be forgiven to an Auersperg, the head of ... — The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... such a temperamental difference in this mere setting things to rights. It can be done so that every chair has a stiffly repellent look, and the conspicuous absence of dust makes one painfully conscious that it has not always been thus, while the fingers inadvertently stray over one's attire, plucking a shred here and a thread there. Even flowers can be ... — The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... such knowledge adds to His glory, but because it satisfies His love, since it will make the men who know His name blessed. The truth that God's motive is His own name's sake may be so put as to be hideous and repellent; but it really proclaims that He is love, and that His motive is His poor ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... thread in some obscure cell or dim closet, where pride of authorship, as we may feel and enjoy it, there was none, when beyond the walls of a convent or those of a native town their names were unknown, their personality unrecognised. Except to the theologian or ritualist how repellent and illegible this mass of printed and manuscript matter must ever seem! How deficient in human sympathy and pertinence! These treatises, so erudite, so prolix, and so multifarious, were composed by men (Universal, Irrefragable, or Seraphic Doctors), and ... — The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... retreat into Italy, already mentioned, on account of the troubles in James the IId's reign, was prevented by the gout, of which he was so impatient, that he admitted a repellent application from a French empyric, by which his distemper was driven up into his bowels, and put an end ... — The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... word from him. What a widespread enthusiastic following he had, how many warm friends and venerators! There is something naive in the way in which he thinks it requisite to treat all his friends, in an open letter, to a detailed, rather repellent account of an illness that attacked him on the way back from Basle to Louvain. His part, his position, his name, this more and more becomes the aspect under which he sees world-events. Years will come in which his whole enormous ... — Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... railway from Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct above the city and the whole valley. Stockport is renowned throughout the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks, indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent. But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not remember to have seen so many cellars used as dwellings ... — The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... classes, are in part attributable to the demoralizing example of a shockingly licentious and shameless court; but in a larger measure, perhaps, should be viewed as the natural reaction from the over-stern, repellent Puritanism of the preceding period. The Puritans undoubtedly erred in their indiscriminate and wholesale denunciation of all forms of harmless amusement and innocent pleasure. They not only rebuked gaming, drinking, and profanity, and ... — A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... his people, beside his friend the gray-headed Vicar, a short, almost dwarfed, thick-set, large-headed man, with a shiny bald head fringed by grisly, harsh-looking hair,—and whose dark, wrinkled face was made almost repellent by the shaggy brows that overhung his fierce, piercing, black eyes—took a step forward menacingly, and holding out his left hand, palm upwards, began beating it with his right fist, fiercely shouting in ... — Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... me from that moment. A long, tender, wistful gaze followed me about. She did not venture to dispute Grace Tyrrell's possession of me, but it made her uneasy. She was observant and sad, patient and kind, while my manner to her was often irritable and repellent. One night she stole into my room when I was sinking to sleep, and bent over me in my bed. "My darling, my sister!" she said, "let me kiss you, let me put my arms round you. Oh! why will you always turn away ... — The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... very enfeebled wife, both submerged by piety. Tonks went bankrupt, and was succeeded by a branch of the National Provision Company, with a young manager exactly like a fox, except that he barked. The toy and sweetstuff shop was kept by an old woman of repellent manners, and so was the little fish shop at the end of the street. The Berlin-wool shop having gone bankrupt, became a newspaper shop, then fell to a haberdasher in consumption, and finally to a stationer; the three shops at the end of the street wallowed ... — The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a ... — The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Roger Williams went after he was banished from Salem. The history of the Puritan clergy would have been more pleasing had they been more tolerant, less narrow, more modern, like Roger Williams. Yet perhaps it is best not to complain overmuch of the strange and somewhat repellent architecture of the bridge which bore us over the stream dividing the desert of royal and ecclesiastical tyranny from the Promised Land of our Republic. Let us not forget that the clergy insisted on popular education; ... — History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Thatcher appeared, with anger unmistakably showing in his face, and apparently disposed to resume in the hall the discussion which the minister had terminated in the library. Thatcher seemed balder and more repellent than when she had first seen him on the floor of the convention hall on the day Harwood uttered Bassett's defiance. Sylvia rose with the book still in her hand and walked to the end of the room; but any one in the house might have ... — A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... that great wild tract that under the general name of Egdon Heath forms a picturesque and often gloomy background to many of Mr. Hardy's romances. These heath-lands are a marked characteristic of the scenery of this part of the county. Repellent at first, their dark beauty, more often than not, will capture the interest and perhaps awe of the stranger. Much more than a mere relic of the great forest that stretched for many miles west of Southampton ... — Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... leaves that were scuddering over the fields. His voice, the very roughened bitterness of it; his eyes, with their peremptory challenge, their sore accusingness; the very contradictions of the man's personality, now delightful, now repellent, and, breathing through them all, the passion she must needs divine—of these various impressions, small and great, she was the struggling captive. ... — The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be called the practical aspects of the subject, and answering from experience the objections which experience may raise. The writer is so deeply in earnest, has meditated so intensely on the subject, and is so free from the repellent qualities which are apt to embitter theological controversies, that even when his ideas come into conflict with the most obstinate prejudices and rooted convictions, there is nothing in his mode of stating or enforcing them to give offence. The book will ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various |