"Repugnant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon. It may in an artisan State be used for soldiery (since such States commonly maintain but small armies and are commonly indifferent to military glory), or it may be set to useful labour, or again, destroyed; but this last use is repugnant to humanity, and so in the long run hurtful ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... but it was soon evident that his constitution made it impossible. After desultory schooling, and an immense amount of general reading, he entered the University of Edinburgh, and then tried the study of law. Although the thought of this profession became more and more repugnant, and finally intolerable, he passed his final examinations satisfactorily. This was ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said in conclusion. "The question of means is always a very grave one. It is a snare in which souls of average virtue often become entangled. But I know your scrupulous conscience. Deliberate carefully over each step you think of taking, and if it contains nothing repugnant to you, go on boldly. Pure natures have the marvelous gift of purifying ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of scorn and rage with which she dismissed him, Rafael thought he caught a trace of loathing at some memory of Boldini—that repugnant lecher, who had been the only person in the world to win her ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... capital and national wealth; on the other hand, a still more rapid multiplication of the proletariat, the destruction of all property-holding and of all security of employment for the working-class, demoralisation, political excitement, and all those facts so highly repugnant to Englishmen in comfortable circumstances, which we shall have to consider in the following pages. Having already seen what a transformation in the social condition of the lower classes a single ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... former teach me more. I am given up to the study of metaphysics. I have a passion for physical exercises, for gymnastics, for fencing, and I try to live in an evenly-balanced temper, nothing being so repugnant to me as affectation and emphasis. I find a good deal of pleasure in going to bull-fights (although I do not take my son to the Plaza dressed up like a miniature torero, as an American writer declares I do), and I cultivate the theatre, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... not sure of it," I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking. "But if he does," I went on to say, "it must be that we may see what it is like, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Stamp Act, as well as his plea for reconciliation, ten years later, were not prompted by a firm belief in the injustice of England's course. He expressly states, in both cases that to enforce measures so repugnant to the Americans, would be detrimental to the home government. It would result in confusion and disorder, and would bring, perhaps, in the end, open rebellion. All of his speeches on American affairs show his willingness to "barter and compromise" in order to ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... to their progress, for it was extensively covered with willow bushes. Cheenbuk climbed a neighbouring berg with Nazinred to have a look at it. The Eskimo looked rather glum, for the idea of land-travelling and struggling among willows was repugnant to him. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... deep-thinker] what poor creatures does this convince me we mortals are at best!—But what then must be the case of such a profligate as I, who by a past wicked life have added greater force to these natural terrors? If death be so repugnant a thing to human nature, that good men will be startled at it, what must it be to one who has lived a life of sense and appetite; nor ever reflected upon the end which I now am within ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... is on Trueman's lips, words not sarcastic, but stinging in their earnest truthfulness, and wise beyond the years of the man about to utter them. Each man has discovered that which is repugnant to him in the other—that which has remained hidden through ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... scene was repugnant beyond endurance. My ears were so filled with the death cries heard in the afternoon, I had no relish for Pierre's crude recital of what seemed to him a glorious conquest. I could not rid my mind of that dying boy's sad face. Many half-breeds were preparing to pillage the settlement. Intending ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... excepting the pious, whose hearts are governed by the Christian law of reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things, none can be found to lift their voices against a system so utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated humanity—a system which permits all the atrocities of the domestic slave trade—which permits the father to sell his children as he would his cattle—a system which consigns one half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... blue, with his sergeant's chevrons and all. He was grinding away at his old hand-organ as the last means left him for support. Every day he may be seen along the principal streets of the city, patiently and sadly earning his pittance in this way—a mode so very repugnant to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... reminder of the things of God in the town save a Catholic chapel. To many of the people this faith was most repugnant. There was no Sabbath, though for some the day's toil was not quite so arduous. The saloon, with its warmth and brightness, lured the tired men with the promise ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... of it, and the cause and difference of currents in particular places, to which we may add the doctrine of tides, which were very imperfectly known, even by the greatest men in former times, whose accounts have been found equally repugnant to reason and experience. ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett's sanction to their marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestine character thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise than repugnant to Mr. Browning's pride; but it was dictated by the deepest filial affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be no question in so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness with ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Within a few weeks previously she had announced comprehensive plans which it was confidently asserted would be efficacious to remedy the evils so deeply affecting our own country, so injurious to the true interests of the mother country as well as to those of Cuba, and so repugnant to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... now. She was amenable to reason, though she did not consciously know what reason was; but to accept some one else's reason blindfold was repugnant to her nature, even at her then age. She was about to speak angrily, but looking up she saw that Harold's mouth was set with marble firmness. So, after her manner, she acquiesced ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... many children as she possibly can have. It is time that such an injurious prejudice was discarded, and the truth recognised, that while marriage looks to offspring as its natural sequence, there should be inculcated such a thing as marital continence, and that excess here as elsewhere is repugnant to morality, and is visited by the laws of physiology with certain and severe punishment on ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... convulsions, avoid exercising it. Mrs. Lupin was one of the victims of the modern feminine 'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman; devout and charitable, as her nieces admitted; but radically—what? They did not like to think, or to say, what;—repugnant, seemed to be the word. A woman who consented to perceive the double-meaning, who acknowledged its suggestions of a violation of decency laughable, and who could not restrain laughter, was, in their judgement, righteously a victim. After signal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... former orders, rules, and deuises, made and prouided for the good order of our ships, wares, and goods, being not repugnant, contrary or diuerse to these articles, and the contents of the same, shall be, and stand in full force and effect to be in all respects obserued and kept of all and euery person and persons, whom the same doth or shall ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... profession; the word "clergyman" in land grants to signify clergy; felons from other Provinces to be apprehended, and the trade between the United States and the Province to be temporarily provided for, by the suspension of an Act repugnant to the free intercourse with the United States, established by treaty of 1794. Several amendments to Acts and other Acts were passed, when the Session was prorogued in ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... believe in the final end of existences which have touched their imagination; they will not admit that great personalities can be struck down by death like ordinary folk; such an end to a noble career is repugnant to them. Impostors, like la Dame des Armoises, never fail to find some who will believe in them. And the Dame appeared at a time which was singularly favourable to such a delusion; intellects had been dulled ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... proportion to the accentuation of the institution of private, as against communal, property. When private property ceases to be the fulcrum around which the relations between the sexes turn, any attempt at coercion, moral or material, in these relations must necessarily become repugnant to the moral ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... indivisible; he recognizes, further, that the FACT of this indivisibility is not proved; but he adds that science cannot dispense with this hypothesis: so that, by the confession of its teachers, chemistry has for its point of departure a fiction as repugnant to the mind as it is ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... English system; they have acquired the force and gayety of liberty, but not the dignity of independence, and are only provincial, when they hoped to be national. Mr. Cooper has been more happy than any other writer in reconciling these repugnant qualities, and displaying the features, character, and tone of a great rational style in letters, which, original and unimitative, is yet in harmony ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... be repugnant to the vital principles of our government virtually to exclude from public trusts, talents and ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... was in the highest degree repugnant to me to come forward as the opponent of a man whom I learned, a quarter of a century ago, to acknowledge and to honour as the reformer of medical science; a man whose most ardent disciple and most enthusiastic follower I at that ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... to what she considered Mr. Dinsmore's tyranny being still more repugnant to her, she resolved to abide by her decision, risking ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... friendship, he embraced the fisherman and led him to his own apartments. All the while he was thinking and thinking what he could do to get rid of him. The idea of having him, a mere peasant and one of his own subjects, for a son-in-law was most repugnant to him, and hurt his kingly pride. At last he said, "The chamberlain will most certainly be punished for his crime. As for you, who have twice been my saviour, you shall be my son-in-law. Now the customs observed at court demand that you should send your bride ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... worthless and designing men, who say everything with a view of pleasing, and nothing with regard to truth. Now while hypocrisy in all things is blamable (for it does away with all judgment of truth, and adulterates truth itself), so especially is it repugnant to friendship, for it destroys all truth, without which the name of friendship can ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... the drum, this snapping together of the heels at the sound of a sergeant's voice, this sudden freezing to a rigid pose without the move of a muscle, except at the word of command, was something almost beyond him. It seemed utterly unnatural, if not utterly repugnant. Accustomed to swinging along the winding banks of the White Oak, or the cow-paths of the pasture lot, this moving only at a measured pace of twenty-eight inches, and one hundred and ten to the minute, and all in strict unison with the step of the guide on the marching flank or at the head of ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... sharp, forensic. It was hauntingly familiar to him, a voice he might not know at the moment, yet one that had at least belonged to some part of his Addington life. The response it brought from him, in assaulted nerves and repugnant ears, was entirely distasteful. Whatever the voice was, he had at some time hated it. Why it was continuing on that lifted note he could not guess. With a little twitch of the lips, the sign of a grim amusement, he thought this might even be an orator, some wardroom ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... heart in which it was impossible they should understand; they have presumed to explain a Christ whom years and years of obedience could alone have made them able to comprehend. Their teaching of him, therefore, has been repugnant to the common sense of many who had not half their privileges, but in whom, as in Nathanael, there was no guile. Such, naturally, press their theories, in general derived from them of old time, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... was the one to pull out the mote from any one's eye, even in the most tender manner;—she would have had to conquer reluctance before she could have done even this; but there was something undefinably repugnant to her in the manner of acting which Mr Bradshaw had proposed, and she determined not to accept the invitations which were to place her in ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... man who would allow nothing to turn him from his purpose once he was convinced that he was right; a man, too, to whom anything in the way of underhand intrigue, or backstairs negotiations, would be temperamentally repugnant. The chivalrous foeman had become the most loyal ally, and an ally of whom the entire British Empire should be proud. There was nothing tortuous about the farmer turned soldier, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the piano an hour every day, wore a sun-hat frequently—spite of which she was freckled—wore shoes and stockings on the hottest days, when one's feet are so hungry for the cool, springy turf, and performed other acts repugnant to a soul that has brought itself erect. But she was fresh and dainty to look at, like an opened morning glory, with pretty frocks that the French lady whose name was Madmasel made her wear every day, and her eyes were much like certain flowers in the bed under the bay-window, with very long, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... grateful for your Patent of Nobility, and acknowleges the author of Excursion as the legitimate Fountain of Honor. We both agree, that to our feeling Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been something repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry! the fact is explicable, but how few to whom it could have been ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... baroness gave him all the pity she could spare from her own child, but the point could not be yielded. She closed her eyes and tried to think it over. She thought of Hilda, married and leaving Sigmundskron to live under the very roof where such deeds had been done, and the mere idea was painful and repugnant. Greif was wholly innocent of all that had happened, but the stain was upon his name, and the blood of his father was in his veins. Hilda's children would be the grandchildren of a murderer. Old Greifenstein had not ended his days in a shameful prison, merely because he had found courage to take ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... extracts from this circular in order that the position of the Countess may be fully perceived. "The minutes given by John Wesley we think ourselves obliged to disavow, believing such principles repugnant to Scripture and the whole plan of salvation under the new covenant. In union with all Protestant and Reformed Churches we hold faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ for the sinner's justification, sanctification, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... rubs, and dresses." How filthy! Yet be not too hard upon him, reader, for this observation; I have travelled in his neighbourhood, on the Mississippi steamers, and I can, therefore, well understand how the novelty of the operation must have struck him with astonishment, and how repugnant the practice must have been to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to a conference. Chairs being set, Mr. Flucker laid down this observation, that near relations should be deuced careful not to cast discredit upon one another; that now his sister was to be a lady, it was repugnant to his sense of right to be a fisherman and make her ladyship blush for him; on the contrary, he felt it his duty to rise to such high consideration that she should ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... nearly all of them possess brachycephalic skulls, indicating the influence upon them of Mongolian invasions thousands of years ago and supplying, perhaps, a very substantial argument that, if we find the faintly Mongoloid type of emigrant repugnant to us, we can never expect to assimilate ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... of the feudal system are, however, the best proof that it was the natural and inevitable product of social evolution. A legal theory so complex, so repugnant to the best traditions both of Roman and barbarian government, could not have obtained general recognition, as part of the natural order of things, unless it had grown up by degrees, unless it had been the outcome of older usages and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... the conquered South by the army was repugnant to even radical Northerners, yet the white inhabitants were Democratic almost to the last man, and if restored to civil rights would control their States. The only means of developing a Southern Republican party that might ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... of South Carolina was in process of construction, the Supreme Court of the United States had not passed upon the legality of the so-called educational provision of the Mississippi Constitution, and the possibility that it might in the near future declare all such enactments repugnant to the Constitution of the United States deterred the members of the South Carolina constitutional convention from going the full length of the Mississippi plan. Although they had assembled for no other ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... teaches that if you omit to name anything in confession, however repugnant or revolting to purity, which you even doubt having committed, your subsequent confessions are thus rendered null and sacrilegious; while it also inculcates that sins of thought should be confessed in order that the confessor may judge of their mortal ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... the possibility of her loving him again. And here was a woman, a dyspeptic, unwholesome spinster, who had just said she had loved him. If Miss Raleigh had loved this man, how could she, Olive, love him? There was something repugnant about it which she did not attempt to understand. It went beyond reason. She felt it to be an actual relief to look up at Claude Locker, and to listen to what ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... together—even if neither had never known the other. Whereas she on her part had never been conscious of any sense of sympathy with Victor, but only of timidity and reluctance which had latterly manifested in unquestionable aversion. And then there was his attitude toward her, raising a question so repugnant to her understanding that never before to-night had Sofia admitted its existence and given it the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... of espionage is always repugnant, and to have a rejected lover always in the offing, as ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... though in such occasions others endeavour to gain their judges by flatteries and ignominious solicitations, which often procure them their pardon, he would not put in practice any of these mean artifices that are repugnant to the laws, and yet he might very easily have got himself acquitted, if he could have prevailed with himself to comply in the least with the custom, but he chose rather to die in an exact observance of the laws, than to save his life by acting contrary to them, for he utterly abhorred all mean ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... discors[Lat]. fish out of water. V. disagree; clash, jar &c. (discord) 713; interfere, intrude, come amiss; not concern &c. 10; mismatch; humano capiti cervicem jungere equinam[Lat]. Adj. disagreeing &c. v.; discordant, discrepant; at variance, at war; hostile, antagonistic, repugnant, incompatible, irreconcilable, inconsistent with; unconformable, exceptional &c. 83; intrusive, incongruous; disproportionate, disproportionated[obs3]; inharmonious, unharmonious[obs3]; inconsonant, unconsonant[obs3]; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... having been made by the people. In his Inaugural Address, he speaks of the Compromise measures as a part of the law of the land, the maintenance of which is demanded by every consideration of good faith and sound policy. The Fugitive Slave law he says, "is painfully repugnant to the feelings of the North, but is designed to fulfill a plain constitutional obligation, deliberately and unanimously assumed, with a full knowledge of its import, by those who framed the Constitution, and since affirmed and enforced ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... nothing but the moral true? The framework, moreover, is one so plainly professing to be fact, that it was certain to be received as such by a simple people. It seems to me that there is something very suspicious, something repugnant to notions of truth and honest dealing, in the possible communication of underlying Divine truth through the medium of stories, which are not stories on the face of them, but profess and pretend to be statements of fact ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... things that Graham came upon that night, none jarred more upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of the little pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vague first movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was wholly repugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. His statistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian times the most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, that there human mortality had ever been most terrible. On the other ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... rage against the whole world, against the others and against himself. The spectacle seemed to him a most repugnant, cowardly atrocity. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... appears to me absurd, wrong, foolish, And quite repugnant to my scheme of life, Yet, if you're so much bent on't, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... stood silent, a superstitious dread creeping over him. "Dreaming, dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." A horror grew upon him, a feeling that something, some being antagonistic, repugnant to his very nature was sharing the darkness with him. The strokes of the bell above him seemed to grow horribly menacing to his feverish fancy. He struggled with himself to throw off the mantle of terror descending ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... must, which would otherwise make a disagreeable wine, into one in which everything is in its proper proportion, and which will delight the consumer, to whose fastidious taste if would otherwise have been repugnant. True, we have here a more congenial climate, and the grapes will generally ripen better, so that we can in most seasons produce a drinkable wine. But if we can increase the quantity, and at the same time improve the quality, there is certainly an ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... no danger of having dealings with prostitutes. The preliminaries, the conversation of such women, especially their drinking habits, would have been disgusting and repugnant to him in the extreme. He would have shunned the possibility of acquiring venereal disease like the plague. But he was never free from solitary vice; he secretly envied those who had occasions for coitus ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally CONTRADICTORY and REPUGNANT. I use these terms to distinguish this last case from another which might appear to resemble it, but which would, in fact, be essentially different; I mean where the exercise of a concurrent jurisdiction might be productive of occasional ...
— The Federalist Papers
... reader will bear in mind that the present work consists of Autobiography, and therefore, however repugnant to the writer's feelings, the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... had to offer. Her foster-sister had married a school-master in one of the Communal schools of Bruges while Julie was still a girl at the convent. Leonie's lame child had been much with her grandmother, old Madame Le Breton. To Julie she had been at first unwelcome and repugnant. Then some quality in the frail creature had unlocked the girl's sealed and often ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "bibles of all nations" so ably collected for us by Mr. Corway in the "Sacred Anthology" quoted from above? "Let a man continually take pleasure in truth, in justice, in laudable practices and in purity; let him keep in subjection his speech, his arm, and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... often affirmed, that the first matter which occasioned his search into the popish doctrine, was, that he saw divers things, most repugnant in their nature to one another, forced upon men at the same time; upon this foundation his resolution and intended obedience to that church were somewhat shaken, and by degrees a dislike ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a little more hurried conversation, the sheriff said, "If that be so, you have permission to fire." The uproar all this time was deafening, and the order, "Ready!" of General Sandford, could hardly be heard; but the sharp, quick rattle of steel rose distinctly over the discord. Still terribly repugnant to shoot down citizens, General Hall and Colonel Duryea made another attempt to address the crowd, and begged them to cease these attacks. "Fire and be d—ned!" shouted a burly fellow. "Fire, if you dare—take the life of a freeborn American ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... natural result, to arouse emulation. For no one had the stirring tales a greater charm than for the reigning Sovereign, Francis I., whose spirit of rivalry, thirst of glory, and love of adventure, they were especially calculated to stimulate. It would have been as repugnant to the nature, as it was inconsistent with the policy of the ambitious monarch, to permit the Kings of Spain [Footnote: In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the islands of the Western Hemisphere, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... as had seldom appeared hitherto; and certainly never before Mrs. Robson. Sylvia was annoyed at Molly's whole tone and manner, which were loud, laughing, and boisterous; but to her mother they were positively repugnant. She said shortly ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... M. Necker, whose ambition had not then drawn him into schemes repugnant to his better judgment, and whose views appeared to the Queen to be very judicious, she indulged in hopes of the restoration of the finances. Knowing that M. de Maurepas wished to drive M. Necker to resign, she urged him to have patience until the death of an old man whom the King kept about him ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... in which individuals have denied the binding authority of acts of Congress, and even States have proposed to nullify such acts upon the ground that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land, and that those acts of Congress were repugnant to that instrument; but nullification is now aimed not so much against particular laws as being inconsistent with the Constitution as against the Constitution itself, and it is not to be disguised that a spirit exists, and has been actively at work, to rend ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... occasion, made use of the comparison with Brutus, and that Michelangelo himself, even late in life, was not unfriendly to ideas of this kind, may be inferred from his bust of Brutus in the Bargello. He left it unfinished, like nearly all his works, but certainly not because the murder of Caesar was repugnant to his feeling, as the couplet ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... It was repugnant to his imagination, shocking to his ideas of honesty, shocking to his conception of mankind. This enormity affected one's outlook on what was possible in this world: it was as if for instance the sun had turned blue, throwing a new and sinister light on men and nature. Really in the first ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... always spoken of by such persons as something in itself repugnant, disgusting, low and lustful. Consciously or unconsciously, they look upon it as a hardship, to be endured only, to bring "God's image and likeness" into the world. Their very attitude precludes any great ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... less certain that there is not one of them who does not know that no inducement on earth would prevail with me to bring me to acquiesce in any measures which seemed to me repugnant to public morals, or Imperial interests; and I must say that, far from finding in my advisers a desire to entrap me into proceedings of which 1 might disapprove, I find a tendency constantly increasing to attach ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... a carper is repugnant. The "Essays," "Biology," "Psychology," "Sociology," and "Ethics" are all better than "First Principles," and contain numerous and admirable bits of penetrating work of detail. My impression is that, of the systematic treaties, the "Psychology" will rank as the most original. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... he thinks, provided that he limits himself to speaking and to teaching in the name of pure reason, and that he does not attempt, in his private capacity, to introduce innovations into the State. For example, a citizen demonstrates that a certain law is repugnant to sound reason, and believing this, he thinks it ought to be abrogated. If he submits his opinion to the judgment of the sovereign, to which alone it belongs to establish and to abolish laws, and if, in the meantime, he does nothing contrary to law, he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... been uncommon in courts, at least in days of old; and it is quite probable that an early story was adapted, first to the incident of 1563, and again to the Russian story of 1718. Perhaps we may remark in passing that it is a pity that so repugnant a story should be attached to a ballad containing such beautiful stanzas ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... the reverend gentleman are not considered such "as to attach and endear his congregation to him." He is reported to be subject "to an occasional exuberance of animal spirits, and at times to display a liveliness of manner and conversation which would be repugnant to the feelings of a large portion of the congregation of Banff." Others of the objections assert, that his illustrations in the pulpit do not bear upon his text—that his subjects are incoherent and ill deduced; and the reverend gentleman is also ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... necessary furniture for his rooms. Shelley was certainly entirely indifferent to money, and profusely generous. He had begun by admiring Byron, with all the enthusiasm of hero-worship, but a closer acquaintance had revealed much that was distasteful and even repugnant to him, and it may safely be said that if he had lived he would soon have withdrawn from Byron's society. Shelley's ideas of morality were not conventional; his affection and enthusiasm for people burnt ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... notoriety, submitted this translation to the Publick, under that title, rather than what I hold to be the true one, viz. Horace's Epistle to The Pisos. The Author of the English Commentary has adopted the same title, though directly repugnant to his own system; and, I suppose, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... touched. "I like him," she answered, and looked across the slope of meadow they were passing. "I liked him, yes, as any woman would like a man who treated her as he did me. He was very good tome. And not in the least repugnant.—But care?" she interrupted herself. "If by care, you mean ... Then no, a hundred thousand times, no! I shall never care for anyone in that way again, and you know it. I had enough of that to last me ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... deliberated, that by putting the sick on half allowance was but putting them to death by halves; but after a counsel, at which presided the most dreadful despair, it was decided they should be thrown into the sea. This means, however repugnant, however horrible it appeared to us, procured the survivors six days' wine. But after the decision was made, who durst execute it? The habit of seeing death ready to devour us; the certainty of our infallible destruction without this monstrous expedient; all, in short, had hardened our hearts ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... is regulated according to the Agreement first stipulated between the Gamesters, and this Fault is called Raking, i. e. not striking your Ball cleanly, but gliding along, as it were; But in this, if you touch your Ball twice, it is a loss; as indeed repugnant to all ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... to elapse, as would suffice to afford, by the effects it should itself produce, some fair criterion and presumption of the inclination which my mind was likely to adopt in reference to the final decision. At the same time it would also have been undutiful, and most repugnant to my feelings, to permit the prolongation of that intervening period to such an extent, as to give the shadow of a reason to suppose that anything approaching to reserve had been the cause of my silence. The present time seems to lie between these two extremes, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... helplessness. She had given up commanding him to leave her alone. His presence frequently became a nausea. Her enfevered senses had come to perceive in the conventionally clothed and spoken figure of the young attorney, a concentration of the repugnant things before which she cowered. During his courtship he had grown familiar to her as a penalty and his visits ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... indulges more in lengthened quotations in his text from the old chronicles, or their mere paraphrases into his own language; their frequency is the great defect of his valuable history. But the variety and interest of the subjects render this mosaic species of composition more excusable, and less repugnant to good taste, in the account of the Crusades, than it would be, perhaps, in the annals ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... tendency of such a course, because the human mind is trained by the knowledge imparted to it and the direction given to its ideas. Only what is great can make it great; the little can only make it little, if the mind itself does not reject it as something repugnant. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... betray his friend? No—never. He might betray his enemy, the creature he abhorred, whose downfall would cause him joy. But his friend? The very idea was repugnant, impossible to an ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... appears to be impossible that the prisoner can have committed this crime. A mother guilty of such conduct to her own child? Why, it is repugnant to our better feelings"; and then being carried away by his own eloquence, he proceeded: "Gentlemen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, suckle ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... it is to be presumed, but his steady determination of omitting no means of attracting to himself that royal favor which he contemplated as the instrument by which to work out his future fortunes, could have engaged him in a service so repugnant to his habits and pursuits, and for which the hand of nature herself had ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... King's-Hintock in his anger he had thrown away his best opportunity of counteracting his wife's preposterous notion of promising his poor little Betty's hand to a man she had hardly seen. To protect her from such a repugnant bargain he should have remained on the spot. He felt it almost as a misfortune that the child would inherit so much wealth. She would be a mark for all the adventurers in the kingdom. Had she been only the heiress to his own unassuming little place at Falls, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... Teachings, but that he also mentions Pythagoras and his school, and also the other Mysteries of Greece, showing his acquaintance with them, and his comparison of them with the Christian Mysteries, which latter he would not have been likely to have done were their teachings repugnant to, and at utter variance with, those of his own church. In the same writing Origen says: "But on these subjects much, and that of a mystical kind, might be said, in keeping with which is the following: 'It is good to ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... of Joe McCaskey, only dislike and a desire to avoid further contact with him. The prospect of a long winter in close proximity to a proven scoundrel was repugnant. Balanced against this was the magic of Big Lars' name. It was a problem; again indecision rose ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... like speech-making, he showed from the beginning that he meant to master the repugnant art. To read speeches, as he did in the early days of the tour, was not good enough. He schooled himself steadily to deliver them without manuscript, so that by the end of the trip he was able to deliver a long and important speech—such ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... man, or for anything else that thou canst not have?" "I declare to Heaven," said the Countess, "that in the whole world there is not a man equal to him." "Not so," said Luned, "for an ugly man would be as good as or better than he." "I declare to Heaven," said the Countess, "that were it not repugnant to me to put to death one whom I have brought up, I would have thee executed for making such a comparison to me. As it is, I will banish thee." "I am glad," said Luned, "that thou hast no other cause to do so than that I would have been of service to thee, where thou didst ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... campaign; its inhabitants were warlike, but they were comparatively poor, and the true sinews of war are money; moreover, they were divided amongst themselves, locally split up by the physical conformation of their country, and politically repugnant to anything like centralization or union. A Persian king like Cambyses or Darius might be excused if, when his thoughts turned to Greece, he had a complacent feeling that no danger could threaten him from that quarter—that the little territory on his western border was a prey which he might ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... acts of Congress of February 12th, 1793, and September 18th, 1850, and are in violation of the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution, as before stated. That the spirit of those statutes appears to be repugnant to the principles of compromise and mutual and liberal concessions which dictated the section of the Constitution in question, and which pervades every part of that instrument. It is, therefore, respectfully requested by this Convention that the several ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... with infinite self-accusation. "How repugnant I must be to her,—an intruder, thrusting myself into the heart that is sacred ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... in order to exalt him, to disparage others with whom he came into strong collision. His own funeral orations from time to time on some who were in one degree or another his antagonists, prove that this petty and ungenerous method would have been to him of all men most repugnant. Then to pretend that for sixty years, with all 'the varying weather of the mind,' he traversed in every zone the restless ocean of a great nation's shifting and complex politics, without many a faulty tack and many a wrong reckoning, would indeed ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... She had often broached the subject before, but he had never wanted to do it. He did not believe in the rats, and even if they were to jump over his nose he would not bring any poison into the house. The thought was repugnant to him. When she wanted poison for the vermin on the farm she had never been able to get it, except by producing a paper ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... [Greek: Phoinikisten basileion].] AEmilius Portus, on the authority of Zonaras, Lex. p. 1818, interprets this "dyer of the king's purple;" an interpretation repugnant to what follows. Morus makes it purpuratus; Larcher, vexillarius, because in Diod. Sic. xiv. 26 a standard is called [Greek: phoinikis]: Brodaeus gives 'unus e regiis familiaribus, punicea veste indutus, non purpurea.' "Without doubt he was one of the highest Persian ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... reorganized, and the churches thrown open to the Reformed worship—to the exclusion, at first, of the Catholics. This was certainly contrary to the Ghent treaty, and to the recent Satisfaction; it was also highly repugnant to the opinions of Orange. After a short time, accordingly, the Catholics were again allowed access to the churches, but the tables had now been turned for ever in the capital of Holland, and the Reformation was an established ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this passage was not as positive as it might have been and, though the proposition was evidently repugnant to her, she merely directed that the matter be suspended for the present until some other way of providing on the spot be found and that the Admiral should report further. Columbus, however, did not wait to receive the royal approval ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this transaction Captain Bligh exerted himself to the utmost to reduce the people to a sense of their duty by haranguing and expostulating with them, which caused me to assume a degree of ferocity quite repugnant to my feelings, as I dreaded the effect which his remonstrances might produce. Hence I several times threatened him with instant death unless he desisted; but my menaces were all in vain. He continued to harangue us with so ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... most surprising in this people is that it goes on giving proofs that it knows how to frame laws, commensurate with the progress of the age, to respect them and obey them, demonstrating that its national customs are not repugnant to this progress; that it is not ambitious for power nor honors nor riches aside from the rational and just aspirations for a free and independent life, and inspired by the most lofty idea of patriotism and national honor; and that in the service of this idea and for the realization ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... that this whole theory of baptismal grace was conceived by man; was modified by the reformation and now might be entirely abandoned as adverse to the teachings of Christ and repugnant to ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... authority to make such by-laws regulating the use and management of the public ways within their respective limits, not repugnant to law, as they shall judge to be most conducive to their welfare.[64] They may make such by-laws to secure, among other things, the removal of snow and ice from sidewalks by the owners of adjoining estates; to prevent the pasturing of cattle or other animals in the highways; to regulate the driving ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... pleasure? My friend, that is not the fashion of invention; and the facts about Socrates are less attested than the facts about Christ.[345] Yet with all that, this same gospel abounds in things incredible, which are repugnant to reason, and which it is impossible for any sensible man to conceive or admit. What are we to do in the midst of all these contradictions? To be ever modest and circumspect, my son; to respect in silence what one can neither reject nor understand, and to make one's self lowly before the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... you are dull to-night. I had been so successful in protecting Mrs. Linley and the child, and my excellent courier had found such a charming place of retreat for them in one of the suburbs of Hanover, that 'she saw no reason now for taking the shocking course that I had recommended to her—so repugnant to all her most cherished convictions; so sinful and so shameful in its doing of evil that good might come. Experience had convinced her that (thanks to me) there was no fear of Kitty being discovered and taken from her. She ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... with enhanced severity; his professional honour had been touched in a delicate place. The bare suggestion that a footpad might dare operate in a district under his immediate personal supervision would have been to him deeply repugnant, and here was this weirdly attired wanderer making ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Was I repugnant to her? I thought of my victory over the acrimonious photographer at the railroad station. Had I not won her favor there? And it came over me that even on that occasion she had shown me but scant cordiality. Was it all because of Auntie Yetta's idiotic jest? She beckoned to Miss Siegel, who was on ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... John Russell, who advised her on what he understood to be the facts. On his advice the Queen stated in reply, that she could not "consent to a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and is repugnant to her feelings." Sir Robert Peel held firm to his stipulation, and the chance of his then forming a Ministry was at an end. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had to be recalled, and at a Cabinet meeting they adopted a minute ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... but return my love!" he faltered with dry throat. "But no! that were too much for a man of my years to hope. But whisper at least, that I am not repugnant to thee." ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the "piety") of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of all claims to Katie was in itself so far from being repugnant to Ashby, that, as the reader knows, he had already virtually renounced her, and formally, too, by word of mouth to Dolores. But to do this to Lopez was a far different thing. It would, he felt, be base; it ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... phenomenon, if this interpretation had remained the prevailing one among the Jews. According to the declaration of the Apostle, the Cross of Christ is to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness. The idea of a suffering and expiating Messiah was repugnant to the carnally minded Jews. And the reason why it was repugnant to them is, that they did not possess that which alone makes that doctrine acceptable, viz., the knowledge of sin, and the consciousness of the need of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... The founder, Mr. McGill, is silent in his will upon the subject of religion, and gave no direction to which these Statutes will be repugnant. He was himself a member of the Church of England, in communion with that Church. We do not feel at liberty to imagine that he desired religious instruction to be excluded, and we think it reasonable to believe that in selecting ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... government a war which is put down only at the expense of enormous sacrifices of treasure and blood, can, when defeated, return of right to form a part of the government they have labored to subvert, is a proposition so repugnant to common sense that its acceptance by the people would send them down a step in the zooelogical scale. Have we been fighting in order to compel the South to resume its reluctant role of governing us? Are we to be told that the States which have sent mourning into every loyal family in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... you. I did not reprove you with so much as a fault. I know well that it is next to impossible to be in the frequent presence of an individual without experiencing at some time some emotion. He becomes continually repugnant, or else exceedingly fascinating. The sentiments of the heart never ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... a remnant of barbarism, repugnant to civilization, to decency, and to the laws of the United States. Territorial officers, however, have been found who are willing to perform their duty in a spirit of equity and with a due sense of the necessity of sustaining the majesty of the law. Neither ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... true supernaturalism we do not think there need be any war. We know that there are many men so rooted in their faith in nature, that they cannot see anything outside of it, or beyond it. To them God is law, and law only. Even creation is repugnant to them, because they see that creation is really a supernatural thing. Hence come the theories of development; the "Vestiges of Creation;" the nebular hypothesis; the Darwinian theory of formation of species ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... associate with misfortune; and I address this to you in behalf even of an enemy, a captain in the British service, now on his way to the headquarters of the American army, and unfortunately doomed to death for a crime not his own. A sentence so extraordinary, an execution so repugnant to every human sensation, ought never to be told without the circumstances which produced it: and as the destined victim is yet in existence, and in your hands rests his life or death, I shall briefly state the case, and the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... like a man turned into a stone. His brain appeared to him to expand like a bubble, the blood surged and hummed in his ears with every gigantic beat of his heart, his vision swam, and his trembling hands were bedewed with a cold and repugnant sweat. The dead figure upon the floor at his feet gazed at him with a wide, glassy stare, and in the confusion of his mind it appeared to Jonathan that he was, indeed, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... which holds men even exceptionally high-minded from breaking strong ties of custom and convenience is shown by a letter of Patrick Henry to a Quaker in 1773, in which he declared slavery "as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive of liberty. Every thinking, honest man rejects it as speculation, but how few in practice from conscientious motives! Would any one believe that I am a master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... distinctions of caste, they would seek in vain through the laws and institutions of Massachusetts for any recognition of their prejudice. He deplored the fact that they had attempted to foist into the legal arrangements of the land a principle utterly repugnant to the State constitution, and that what the sovereignty of the constitution dared not attempt a school committee accomplished. To Phillips it seemed crassly inconsistent to say that races permitted to intermarry should ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... most malignant. Yet it has so happened, that the same mistaken care which prevents the least admission of fresh air to the sick, has introduced the idea also of keeping them dirty; than which nothing can be more injurious to the afflicted, or more repugnant to common sense. In a room too, where cleanliness is neglected, a person in perfect health has a greater chance to become sick, than a sick person has to get well. It is also of great consequence, that cleanliness should be ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... documents—nothing alarming, only more worry for the Assistant Examiners, and that WE do not mind"; and finally signing the Report. But to do this after taking so small a share in the actual work of examining, grew more and more repugnant to him, till on October 12 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... distressing effects. The best of remedies must be cautiously applied, and suited to the state and constitution of the patient; otherwise, what is intended to cure, may produce convulsion. The late elections have shown that the measures proposed by Government are repugnant to the feelings and habitudes or disastrous to the interests of great portions of our fellow citizens. They should not, then, be forced home with rigor. Ours is a government of compromise. We have several great and distinct interests bound up ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... it said, had looked very little into Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read beautifully—all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent was not mimetic—not imitative; he could never have been an actor—never thrown himself into existences wholly alien or repugnant to his own. Grave or gay, stern or kind, Guy Darrell, though often varying, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... times during the weeks that flitted past when it seemed to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than that daily slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent conceptions of love and marriage were vain details by comparison with aching feet and sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the smart of sweat on her face, all the never-ending trifles that so irritated her. She had been ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair |
