"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the chief ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... in 1812, and said, "So you're back from Moscow, eh?" Mike was feeling thoroughly jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his hair. Also the boots he wore. He hated the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Kate's side, was revealed to her in a new and most unpleasant light. She resented his scowling glances, and pitied his failure to glow in such genial company. She saw him for the first time the prosing bigot, narrow and repulsive. She resented his failure to subordinate his theories. Up to this moment she had supposed herself respecting him; now she began to realize that she had lost even that, and the thought made her shiver with foreboding. How different were the men of science, with their jocular, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... utter abhorrence of the proposal, cast the Bible at his feet, and eyed her with such a fixed and evil frown, that he looked less like a living man than a marble statue, wrought by some dark- imagined sculptor to express the most repulsive mood that human features could assume. And, as his look grew even devilish, so, with an equal change did Mary Goffe become more sad, more mild, more pitiful, more like a sorrowing angel. But, the more heavenly she was, the more hateful did she seem to ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there were no longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to refer to condescendingly as life. People sitting in a room like this had been furniture that amused him. Now they were alive, repulsive, with a meaning to them that sickened him. Streets had once been stone and gesture. Now they, too, were meanings that sickened. A sanity in which he alone was insane, surrounded him; a completion in which he alone seemed incomplete. Men and women together—tired faces, lighted faces—all ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... that the difference of climate and of industry, proceeding from that cause, inseparable from such vast domains, and which under other systems might have a repulsive tendency, can not fail to produce with us under wise regulations the opposite effect. What one portion wants the other may supply; and this will be most sensibly felt by the parts most distant from each other, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... passage, which I did not care to open at present; and so I passed on to the central door that led into the main room. I had feared that I might be startled by the sight of dead bodies or skeletons here; but there was nothing repulsive to be seen, nothing that looked like disorder or confusion. There stood the centre-table, with a few books and pamphlets lying on it, and two or three chairs drawn around, and a large lamp suspended above. There was the grate, containing a few half-consumed ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... in which the legless beggar was repulsive to her sense of perfection the secret-service agent was attractive. She had never seen a man so agreeable to her eyes. And yet, as a marine artist might see fame in painting a wreck upon a sea-shore, rather than a fine new ship under full sail, so she felt that, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace. And when the meal was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... another place is the image of Shiva himself; it has a silver face, though made of stone, and possesses four hands; it is guarded by a dog, and you can buy little imitation dogs made of sugar anywhere near. There is even an image of the goddess of smallpox, and if you ask why the Hindu chooses such repulsive and revolting things to worship, the answer is, because he is afraid. He says, "If the gods are good they will not injure me, but if they are evil ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... readjustment of all the lines of her face took place. She became sinister, mocking, and pitiless. An exultant cruelty croaked in her voice. Minute, repulsive remodellings of her neck and cheeks changed her to a harpy, and seeing these evidences of her great genius Douglass grew bitterly resentful, and when she laughed, with the action of a vulture thrusting her head forward from the shoulders, he sickened ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... One of the most formidable rebellions that the Romans had to encounter during their disturbed and troubled sway in Britain was led on by a woman. Her name was Boadicea. Boadicea, like almost all other heroines, was coarse and repulsive in appearance. She was tall and masculine in form. The tones of her voice were harsh, and she had the countenance of a savage. Her hair was yellow. It might have been beautiful if it had been neatly arranged, and had shaded a face which possessed the gentle expression that belongs ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his mind was a more appetising and less raw-looking object than a piece of Hardy's. There were many modes of revolt growing all around him; Shaw supported them—and supplanted them. Many were pitting the realism of war against the romance of war: they succeeded in making the fight dreary and repulsive, but the book dreary and repulsive too. Shaw, in Arms and the Man, did manage to make war funny as well as frightful. Many were questioning the right of revenge or punishment; but they wrote their books in such a way that ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... soldierly virtue, the exercise of which sheds a nobility over the repulsive horrors of the battlefield. Joshua had to be fitted to command by learning to obey, and, like that other soldier whose rough trade had led him to some inkling of Christ's authority by its familiarising him with the idea of the strange power of the word ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were idiots, not to mind it, since I should not like them the less on that account. This wish of mine never came to utterance; but not the less they were aware, by my manner of salutation, that one person at least, amongst those who might be considered strangers, did not find any thing repulsive about them; and the pleasure they felt was expressed broadly upon ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the months that followed—it would be a record of degradations, and remorse; alternately, I fell, and was ashamed. There were days when I never left the house, when I was repulsive to myself; I shuddered at the horrors that I had committed. No saint has loved virtue better than I did during those long, sick days of self-disgust; no man was ever more sure of defying such hideous ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... often in the weary ways of fiction! I know every variety of her so well! She consists of nothing but superlatives, and is as conventional as the torso of an Egyptian statue, with her everlasting physical perfection. I think her as repulsive as a barber's block. I confess that a woman who has golden hair and manages to look like a lady, or to be like one even in a book, is a wonder, considering all that is associated with golden hair in our day; but I should avoid the abnormal ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... neighbours' persons, to every rag in their foul clothing, to every slimy and fetid pool that lay beside their path. It was his way of bringing his own qualities into relief. He meant that she should go hand in hand with him through the brimstone lake, and the more repulsive it seemed to her, the more overwhelming would his superiority become. He meant to destroy those doubts of his character which Carrington was so carefully fostering, to rouse her sympathy, to stimulate her ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... The virtues also, like the beauties of the body, can grow old, and become repulsive and ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... generous towards them, as was always my friend Mrs. F., whom they highly esteemed. Yet some hearts are closed against appeals daily made to their humanity. An Indian woman may suffer from hunger or sickness, because her looks are repulsive and her garments unwashed: some will say they can bear the want of warm clothing, because they have been ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... drove to the station—even so soon! I could see him as he is. I noticed at once— but it was for the first time—I noticed that, although his face is handsome, the expression of it is not noble at all." She shuddered as at the sight of something repulsive. "You see," she explained, "my taste is cultivated to so fine an extent, I require something extremely well-flavoured for the dish which is to be the piece de resistance of my life-feast. My appetite is delicate, it requires to be tempted, and a husband of that kind, a moral leper"—she ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... but for a long time he goes on muttering, sighing and clearing his throat.... The cold air in the railway van grows thicker and more stifling The pungent odor of fresh dung and smoldering candle makes it so repulsive and acrid that it irritates Yasha's throat and chest as he falls asleep. He coughs and sneezes, while the old man, being accustomed to it, breathes with his whole chest as though nothing were amiss, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... climb up their own body, and snap, as if to bite at one’s hand; but their only real mode of defence is to inflate the body with air to its utmost power of expansion, and then emit it again, charged with a strong odour, repulsive enough to drive most things from it. {71a} They are found in length from one foot and a half to three feet; and the writer has seen one killed, from which 32 unhatched eggs were taken, each egg about an inch long. The question of snakes swallowing their young, to ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... were all in all, and the grave remained the extreme horizon of our hopes and fears, the Harmonie Pre-etablie might be tolerated as credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful. It is when forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has no natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. The world may be in the main good; while the good, from the unknown condition of its existence, may be impossible without some intermixture of evil; and although Leibnitz was at times staggered even himself by the misery and wickedness which he witnessed, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... to us in French, the most part in German. Of the boats that were left, two had rowed away for the lesser gate, but five drifted about our rock and drew so close that we could have tossed a biscuit to them. Never have I seen a crowd of faces more repulsive or jowls so repellent. Iron-limbed men, fat Germans, sleek Frenchmen, Greeks, niggers, some armed with rifles, some with fearsome knives, they squatted all together in the open boats and roared together for pity and release. Then, for the first time, I was able to see ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... reasons for arriving at it seem irresistible. The formation of systems out of this matter implies a change of some kind with regard to the condition of the heat. Had this power continued to act with its full original repulsive energy, the process of agglomeration by attraction could not have gone on. We do not know enough of the laws of heat to enable us to surmise how the necessary change in this respect was brought about, but we can trace some of the steps and consequences of the process. ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... repulsive orifice the face was quite blank to the chin, for the thing had no mouth ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pleasure and I often wish my wife would cease to love me so that we might separate. But she would be heart-broken at the suggestion and I feel driven to attempt to relieve my feelings even in a way that has previously seemed repulsive to me,—I mean ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... would impair his health. Every day found him more cheerful than the last; and it was plain enough that youth and time were rapidly conquering his grief. He began to go into society again, and the presence of the ladies was not altogether repulsive to him. In June, with Tom as his companion, he went home ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... the moment when the Vicomtesse entered her husband's room, where he was lying on the couch. He signed to her to close the door. The Marquis was the living image of his mother, except that her beautiful regular features became in his face bony and repulsive. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... surprising symmetry, just voluptuous enough. But, after all, her great power lay in her freedom from all affectation and conventionality,—in her spontaneity, her free, sparkling, and vivacious manners. She was the most daring and dazzling of women, without ever appearing immodest or repulsive. She walked with such proud, secure steps over the commonly accepted barriers of social intercourse, that even those who blamed her and pretended to be shocked were compelled to admire. She was the belle, the Juno, of the saloon, the supreme ornament ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... "No," was the cold, repulsive answer, "although my peace of mind is fled," he pursued, rather more mildly, "my honor, thank heaven, remains as pure as when you first pledged yourself for ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... young ones was springing up to take their places. I found no trace of fire in these woods. The ground was covered with leaves, branches, and fallen trunks perhaps a dozen generations deep, slowly decaying, forming a grand mossy mass of ruins, kept fresh and beautiful. All that is repulsive about death was here hidden beneath abounding life. Some rocks along the shore were completely covered with crimson-leafed huckleberry bushes; one species still in fruit might well be called the winter huckleberry. In a short walk I ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... Sartor. Five hundred copies only make the edition, at one dollar a copy. About one hundred and fifty copies are subscribed for. How it will be received I know not. I am not very sanguine, for I often hear and read somewhat concerning its repulsive style. Certainly, I tell them, it is very odd. Yet I read a chapter lately with great pleasure. I send you also, with Dr. Channing's regards and good wishes, a copy of his little work, lately published, on our ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... away in Mulberry Street, called "Death's Thoroughfare" in the same report, were the "Old Church Tenements," part of the Five Points and nearly the worst part. "One of the largest contributors to the hospitals," this repulsive pile had seen the day when men and women sat under its roof and worshipped God. When the congregation grew rich, it handed over its house to the devil and moved up-town. That is not putting it too strong. Counting in the front tenements that shut out what little air and sunshine ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Protestant lady for a wife, they would endow her, and with a portion as great as that which had been offered with Catharine. They, moreover, represented to Charles that Catharine was out of health, and very plain and repulsive in her personal appearance, and that, besides, it would be a great deal better for him, for obvious political reasons, to marry a Protestant princess. The other party replied that Catharine was not ugly by any means, and they showed ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... always had a great reverence for his heavenly Father. Several years ago, he was reading a description of one of the idols of the Hindoos. The picture was disgustingly repulsive. He went to Mrs. Dudley with his book, saying, "Mother, I don't like to call g-o-d God here; I want to call it d-o-g, for I don't think it is right to call such a thing by ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... of Lateran; it contained the ashes of Agrippa, which were placed at the foot of the statue that he had raised to himself. The ancients took so much care to soften the idea of dissolution that they knew how to strip it of every thing that was doleful and repulsive. There was, besides, so much magnificence in their tombs that the contrast was less felt between the blank of death and the splendours of life. It is true that the hope of another world being less vivid among the Pagans than amongst Christians, they endeavoured to dispute with death the future ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... that terribly repulsive face. For some moments she seemed dazed; sat there dully, the onlookers forbearing to disturb her. Then her gaze encountered that of him who had slain the free baron and she sprang to her feet. On her features an expression of bewilderment had been ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... at last—and where there had once been Gypsy Nan, haglike and repulsive, there was now a stylishly, even elegantly, dressed woman of well under middle age. The transformation seemed to have acted as a stimulant upon Gypsy Nan. She laughed with nervous hilarity she even tried valiantly to put on a pair of new black kid gloves, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... that such a power of style must be adverse to a just delineation of character. Dickens is not calm enough, he says, to penetrate to the bottom of what he is dealing with. He takes sides with it as friend or enemy, laughs or cries over it, makes it odious or touching, repulsive or attractive, and is too vehement and not enough inquisitive to paint a likeness. His imagination is at once too vivid and not sufficiently large. Its tenacious quality, and the force and concentration with which his thoughts ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... would not look at him, for fear that the meeting of eyes might hint at more than she meant. She threw her head back on her chair and remained looking at the ceiling. But to think that the souls of the dead—ah, how repulsive! ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... often—nay, daily—a discontent; yet a noble discontent, and curbed with a grand, unconscious patience. She scoured her knives; she shuffled along the streets on hasty errands; she went up and down the house in her small menial duties; she put on and off her coarse, repulsive clothing; she uttered herself in her common, ignorant forms of speech; she showed only as a poor, low, little Irish girl with red hair and staring, wondering eyes, and awkward movements, and a frightened fashion of getting into everybody's way; and yet, behind all this, there was another ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a social service to his fellows. The spontaneous tenderness which he put into his contact with the sick was an expression of his sense of the sacredness of life. A leper with fingerless hands and decaying joints was repulsive to the aesthetic feelings and a menace to selfish fear of infection. The community quarantined the lepers in waste places by stoning them when they crossed bounds. (Remember Ben Hur's mother and ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... were two vases filled with flowers; flowers were also on a table near the window. The expression of the abbe's face, which was that of amazement at the change in the room, now restored to its former state, showing me that the dying woman had sent away the repulsive preparations which surround a sick-bed. She had spent the last waning strength of fever in decorating her room to receive him whom in that final hour she loved above all things else. Surrounded by clouds of lace, her shrunken face, which had the greenish pallor of a magnolia ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Salvation Army is the most remarkable in the history of the work of the spiritual, social, and material regeneration of the submerged. From the by-ways of all the world human derelicts, which other agencies passed by, have been rescued. No one was too degraded, too repulsive to be neglected. The work is too great to be estimated in a way which can show its extent. It has been achieved mainly by two great factors. The first is perfect organisation. Lord Wolseley once described General ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... swift glance around the cave, then, with eyes still holding Cameron, he whistled shrilly on his fingers. Almost immediately, it seemed to Cameron, there came into the light another man who proved to be an Indian, short, heavily built, with a face hideously ugly and rendered more repulsive by the small, red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes that seemed to Cameron to peer like ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... once more, the enchantment is everything and the distance nothing. If I must find fault with the later of the stories, it will not be with its general extravagance—for extravagance is part of the secret of Romance—but with the sordid and very nasty Madame Delhasse. She would be repulsive enough in any case: but as Marie's mother she is peculiarly repulsive and, let me add, improbable. Nobody looks for heredity in a tale of this sort: but even in the fairy tales it is always the heroine's step-mother who ends very fitly with a roll downhill ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his place in the picture, sat the genius of it all—the millionaire. The creature's wasted, skeleton-like limbs, were clothed grotesquely in conventional evening dress. His haggard, bestial face—repulsive with every mark of his wicked, licentious years—grinned with an insane determination to take the place that was his by right of his money bags; while his glazed and sunken eyes shone with fitful gleams, as he rallied the last of his vital forces, with a devilish defiance ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... but because it is such an important factor in it and is so dangerous from every point of view. The names "manure fly" and "privy fly" have also been suggested and would perhaps serve just as well, as the only object in giving it another name would be to find a more repulsive one to remind us constantly of the filthy and dangerous habits ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... team at the shearing-pens she walked around the house and looked once more at the repulsive object lying upon a dingy quilt. Death had refused Dubois even the usual gift of dignity. His mouth was open, and his eyes; he looked even more than in life the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... on rapidly, but he did not desist. They thought him repulsive. There was something alarming ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are those of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style." It takes courage for a young man to stand ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... that Shakespeare intended the simulated madness of the latter through his intellectual supremacy to be equally true to nature, the manners of his age permitting the delineation in a form which is now repulsive and inadmissible. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... again, till one would think the brain must weary itself beyond endurance. It can go on for many hours consecutively, and not only remain a sufficient and pleasurable employment, but render every other business repulsive, all ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... me something to eat, how happy I should be. And I cried. And a great red-faced man came out of the house, and took me in, and gave me something to eat. His name was Mike Mullholland, and he was good to me, and I liked him, and took his name. And he lived with a repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid ten dollars a month for. He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in a slaughter-house in Staunton street. The dogs were known in the neighborhood as Mullholland's dogs, and with them I used to sleep on the rags of carpet spread ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... large opening and wind-flap at top favored ventilation, and though he had lain there in an open coffin a full month, some of which was hot weather, there was but little effluvia; in fact, I have seldom found much in a burial-teepee, and when this mode of burial is thus performed it is less repulsive ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... such as a deserted house, the foot of a tree, a forest, or a cave. Without allowing his practices to be known by others, or concealing their real nature by appearing to adopt others (that are hateful or repulsive), he should enter his own Self.[1338] By association with Yoga and dissociation from company, he should be perfectly equable, steadily fixed, and uniform. He should not earn either merit or demerit by means of acts.[1339] ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... awaken them' (iii. 200). Doubtless they got it, and if we will take Edwards' word for it, the awakening process never did harm in any one instance. Here we are touching the doctrines which naturally excite a fierce revolt of the conscience against the most repulsive of all theological dogmas, though unfortunately a revolt which is apt to ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... line beyond which they could not go if they wished to keep their self-respect, and that within the region to which they had restricted themselves there was a choice of streets. At first all the New York streets looked to them ill-paved, dirty, and repulsive; the general infamy imparted itself in their casual impression to streets in no wise guilty. But they began to notice that some streets were quiet and clean, and, though never so quiet and clean as Boston ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... divided from that below it by a sharp line which precluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon, who had asked her to come and hear Whitefield, "I thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... them have no interest: the language, the manners, the very dwellings and household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts must be to such readers in a great measure unintelligible, and—where intelligible—repulsive. Men and women who, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate in degree, and little marked in kind, have been trained from their cradle to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of language, will hardly know what to make ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... was counted one of the cleverest second-story workers and lock-pickers in the Bad Lands—Hoppy Meggs, they called him. Again Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted—to Hunchback Joe once more. Like some abnormal and repulsive toad the man looked. His shoulders were thrust upward until they seemed to merge with the head itself, the body was crooked and bent forward, due to the ugly deformity of the man's back, while the face was carried at an ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... away. But there was fascination, too, in the hag-like visage of those grim brick walls, checkered with innumerable dirty windows and trussed up, like a paralytic old crone, with rusty fire-escapes. It was the fascination of the mysterious and of the evil; and, repulsive and forbidding as was its general aspect, nothing could now have induced me to turn back. Instinct told me that I was about to enter into no commonplace experience. And so, unresisting, I was borne along in the swift current of humanity that was swept down ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... appropriate subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples. No one is to be despaired of. We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the loathsomeness of sin,—one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... weather-stained features, indicated his having seen some fifty summers. But, if he was brusque of figure and coarse of deportment, he had a good soft heart in the right place; nor did he fail to exercise its virtues while pursuing the duties of a repulsive profession; albeit, he was keeper of the establishment, and superintended all punishments. Leisurely he smoked of a black pipe; and with shirt sleeves rolled up, a grey felt hat almost covering his dark, flashing eyes, and his arms easily folded, did he seem contemplating ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... fixing pigments in calico, woolen, or silk tissues. The pores of the skin are filled with insoluble greasy and curdy salts of the fatty acids contained in the soap, and it is only because the insoluble pigment produced is white, or nearly so, that so repulsive an operation is tolerated. To those, however, who have been accustomed to wash in soft water, the abnormal condition of skin thus induced is for a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... quay, limping, with his hat on the back of his head, his beard unkempt, and dragging an old carpet-bag. He was almost repulsive; yet, in spite of his fifty years of age, he looked young, so clear and lustrous were his eyes, so much ingenuous audacity had been retained in his yellow, hollow face, so vividly did this old man express the eternal adolescence of the poet and artist. When she saw ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... there was now something which was not repulsive even to her. It was a noble, spiritual face. Dudleigh's features were remarkable for their faultless outline and symmetry, and now the expression was in perfect keeping with the beauty of physical form, for the ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... dissolving liquid—these molecules attract each other so strongly as to overcome the separating power of the solvent, and they unite to form crystals. Sugar is much more soluble at high than at low temperatures, the heat acting in this as in almost all cases as a repulsive force among the molecules. It is therefore necessary to maintain a high vacuum in order to boil at a low temperature, in boiling to grain. When the proper density is reached the crystals sometimes fail to appear, and a fresh portion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... still he peered into the vast basin, as if all the water of that great drinking-cup of Rome must needs be stained black or sanguine; and still he gesticulated to Miriam to follow his example. The spectators laughed loudly, but yet with a kind of constraint; for the creature's aspect was strangely repulsive and hideous. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... United States in France, who explained to him the state of affairs in America, and encouraged him in his project. Deane was but imperfectly acquainted with the French language, and of manners somewhat repulsive. A less enthusiastic temper than that of Lafayette might, perhaps, have been chilled by the reception that he met with from Deane. He had, as yet, not been acknowledged in any public capacity, and was beset by the spies of the British ambassador. For these reasons ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... fresh-water shrimps, which they find in great numbers in the river. I remembered that white people at home calling themselves civilized, eat live, or at least raw, oysters, but the sight of these active, squirming shrimps struggling between the white teeth of my associates was yet more repulsive. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... to protective duties, and in the States which demanded them. But the highest consideration in the mind of Hamilton and the most influential leaders of the party seems to have been the maintenance of the Union. The repulsive force of the States toward one another was still sufficiently strong to be an element of constant and recognized danger to the Union. One method of overcoming it, as a part of the whole Hamiltonian policy, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... repulsive system, that of France presented a perfect contrast. Either influenced by the politics of the moment, or suspecting that, in a contest with the great maritime nations of Europe, her commerce must search for security in other bottoms than her own, she opened the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... thus concealing the short, gray bristles of hair, and lending to her countenance a little of that softness which is a requisite of female character. Some attention had also been paid to the rest of her attire; and Jack was, altogether, less repulsive in her exterior than when, unaided, she had attempted to resume the proper garb of her sex. Use and association, too, had contributed a little to revive her woman's nature, if we may so express it, and she had begun, in particular, to feel the sort of interest in her patient which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a remarkable contrast between this man's occupation at the moment, and the expression of his countenance, which was singularly repulsive and malicious. His beetling brow almost obscured his eyes; his lip was curled contemptuously; his very shoulders seemed to sneer in stealthy whisperings with his great ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... we bear the contradiction of sinners? if a little pain overcomes us, how could we endure a cross? if we have no tender, cheerful, affectionate love to those with whom our daily hours are spent, how should we feel the pulse and ardor of love to the unknown and the evil, the ungrateful and repulsive? ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... school of Polish poets. Zaleski, Gosczynski, Grabowski, all of them poets of more than ordinary talents, give us pictures of this country, alternately sweet and rough, wild and romantic. There must necessarily be some mixture of attractive and repulsive elements here even for native poets; for the common people are Russians, and hate the Polish nobility as their oppressors. Nevertheless Thomas Padura, another of the young Polish school, chose even the dialect of the Ruthenian peasantry ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... about the 'big guitar.' In works written for foreign theatres Donizetti took more pains, and 'La Favorite,' produced in Paris in 1840, is in many ways the strongest of his tragic works. The story is more than usually repulsive. Fernando, a novice at the convent of St. James of Compostella, is about to take monastic vows, when he catches sight of a fair penitent, and bids farewell to the Church in order to follow her to court. She turns out to be Leonora, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... The bad policy which occasions the immense contraband trade in opium, deprives the government of duties, annually, to the amount of four or five millions of dollars. Their commercial system with foreigners, shows a great deal of deep cunning, but it is repulsive to wisdom and good policy, and by no means calculated to afford them the advantages they ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... first it is always repulsive, Makes you gag and back off in despair; But when you've got the scent of the cocoa, Just a scent, a mere whiff in the air, Then you're gone, boy, yes, and forever, Where'er in this world you may roam; When you ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... their conversation is supremely repulsive, let us go and take a breath of delicious pure sea air, and seat ourselves by Walter and Power on the shore. Walter is in good, and even gay spirits, being fresh from Semlyn, but Power seems a little ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... disregard of others in various unpolite ways—as, for instance, by neglect of propriety in dress, by the absence of cleanliness, or by indulging in repulsive habits. The slovenly dirty person, by rendering himself physically disagreeable, sets the tastes and feelings of others at defiance, and is rude and uncivil only under ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... not vary, yet why has not the protective beauty of the female been transferred by inheritance to the male? The beauty would be a gain to the male, as far as we can see, as a protection; and I cannot believe that it would be repulsive to the female as she became beautiful. But we shall never convince each other. I sometimes marvel how truth progresses, so difficult is it for one man to convince another, unless his mind is vacant. Nevertheless, I myself to a certain extent contradict my own remark, for ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive, morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime, even political crime, this work will not have been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not now believed to have been originally written by Shakspeare. It is considered too horrible and repulsive to be his work. However, it may have been brought to him to be retouched and made ready for the stage. Hence is it, perhaps, that some passages of ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... and good-humoured on his lips, and thus formed a striking contrast to his morose monosyllabic master, who had grown old before his time, and whose withered, wrinkled features, with the faint sad look from his hollow eyes, were no less repulsive to all, than Edward's cheerful frankness was attractive ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... dead bough from a scrub oak he approached the snake cautiously while the rest sat in their saddles silently anxious, and Charley edged his restive pony a little closer to the repulsive reptile. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... that excel only in memory, an arbitrary statement of facts to be recollected may be satisfactory, but to those who are capable of fully understanding such a science as Anthropology, arbitrary details, void of principle and reason, are repulsive. A chart of the human brain, without explanation of its philosophic basis and relations, embarrasses even the memory, for the memory of a philosophic mind retains principles rather ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... tiresome; and it was in a special degree irritating to me that, as often as I turned the conversation upon music, and particularly upon singing, he was sure to interrupt me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances betrayed, I perceived that he only did it to deprive me of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... big, ungainly boy, with his repulsive countenance, shambled out of his place into the middle of the room. Mr Rose swept him with one flashing glance. "That is the boy," thought he to himself, "who has been like an ulcer to this school. These boys shall have a good look at their ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... character. He never said, "My mother's religion is good enough for me." He despised her religion, and that of the Friars Gray who punished boys to make them good. His mind turned inward—he became silent, secretive, self-centered, and his repulsive exterior served him well as a tough husk to hide his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... experienced in such affairs, it is true. Arthur Weldon had been her first and only declared admirer, and no one living had studied his peculiar nature more critically than this observant girl. Also she knew well her own physical failings. She realized that her personality was to many repulsive, rather than attractive, and this in spite of her exquisite form, her perfect breeding and many undeniable accomplishments. Men, as a rule, seldom remained at her side save through politeness, and even seemed to fear her; but never until now had she cared for any man sufficiently ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... him and be permitted to spend his time there. For he knew from what the Doctor said that he must soon die if things kept on as they were. The weather was growing hotter and hotter; the water and the food, if possible, more repulsive than ever. Logan could no longer walk across the pen in which he was confined. He was so weak that he could not raise his heavily ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... nothing of the toothache when it is past. The mineral waters became too hot to drink, and not quite near enough the boiling-point to make good tea of, whilst, as for the provisions, such as got not too high, were so swathed in layers of questionable dust and grit as to be repulsive. Keeping even passably tidy was impossible, and in personal cleanliness a London scavenger could give a traveller by rail from Cairo to Assouan many points. It was at Wady Halfa that I got booked ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... of touching clay and wax with his fingers, or taking hammer, chisel, and file in his hands, was now repulsive; and when, just outside of the tent, a Biamite woman who was bringing fish to the cook reminded him of Ledscha, and that he had lost in her the right model for his Arachne, he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... reach. But, listen! Within an old dilapidated gateway, almost unknown to the world, and overgrown with wild vegetation, perchance we might find, shut up, a maiden charming beyond imagination. Her father might be an aged man, corpulent in person, and stern in mien, and her brothers of repulsive countenance; but there, in an uninviting room, she lives, full of delicacy and sentiment, and fairly skilled in the arts of poetry or music, which she may have acquired by her own exertions alone, unaided. If there were such a case, surely she deserves our attention, save that ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... playing on the piano, and shaking his head sadly. Then he seized on Weber's arm, and dragged him away to the Sauerhof, where he was wont to dine. 'Here,' wrote Weber afterward, 'we dined together in the happiest mood. The rough repulsive man paid me as much attention as if I were a lady to whom he was making court, and served me at table with the most delicate care. How proud I felt to receive all this kindness and affectionate regard from the great master spirit! The day will ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... and yet after all be a reprobate (1 Cor. xiii. 3); but this Ignatius indicates that all would be well with him, if he had the good fortune to be eaten by the lions. His letter is pervaded, not by the enlightened and cheerful piety of the New Testament, but by the gloomy and repulsive spirit of Montanism. Bishop Lightfoot tells us that it had "a wider popularity than the other letters of Ignatius" (vol. ii, sec. i. p. 186). It was accommodated to the taste of an age of deteriorated Christianity. Polycarp would have sternly condemned ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... a man to become a total abstainer, not in his own interests, but for the sake of others with whom he is brought into immediate contact. There can be no question but that drunkenness, which is a vice both degrading and repulsive in itself, is in many strata of English social life still ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... curious instance of this which occurred soon after the appearance of the comet of 1858. It chanced that, while that object was under discussion, reference was made to the action of a repulsive force exerted by the sun upon the matter of the comet's tail. On this, some one addressed a long letter to a Glasgow newspaper, announcing that he had long ago proved that the sun's attraction alone is insufficient ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... most repulsive pictures of the weakness, bigotry, turbulence, and fierce and treacherous cruelty of the populace. False and corrupt innovations of literature, a compound of facts and fiction, intermingling the old ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... to exist, and those who practise it will be, as they are to-day, and more than to-day, the profiteers, the lucky ones, and the adventurers. Excessive wealth will be more repulsive than it is now; whether it will be less valued depends upon the state of public ethics, a topic which we shall have to consider later. It is probable that in defiance of all legislation wealth will ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... frequent visits of Weber, on the other hand, seemed to have produced upon me those first sympathetic impressions which I have never since lost. In contrast to Sassaroli's repulsive figure, Weber's really refined, delicate, and intellectual appearance excited my ecstatic admiration. His narrow face and finely-cut features, his vivacious though often half-closed eyes, captivated and thrilled me; whilst ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was repulsive to you. Cobblestones? 'Ordinario, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float forever thus!' You bathed your spirit in sunshine and color; I can hear you murmur now, 'O Venezia ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... necessary for his own welfare. Their misery was even grotesque. Faces, discolored by cold, were covered with a layer of mud, on which tears had made a furrow from the eyes to the beard, showing the thickness of that miry mask. The filth of their long beards made these men still more repulsive. Some were wrapped in the countess's shawls, others wore the trappings of horses and muddy saddlecloths, or masses of rags from which the hoar-frost hung; some had a boot on one leg and a shoe on the other; in fact, there were none whose costume did not present ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... high development of the Caucasian race, it is repulsive to your sentiments to believe that man belongs to the animal kingdom as its highest link, and springs from this kingdom. Yet this feeling is false, and must be destroyed, since it originates only in self-conceit and it is not so very difficult to arrive at a juster view. Only go back to the time ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... thrusting itself uninvited into the great political family-party of heaven-anointed sovereigns and long-descended nobles, seemed a somewhat repulsive phenomenon. It became odious and dangerous when by the blows it could deal in battle, the logic it could chop in council, it indicated a remote future for the world, in which right divine and regal paraphernalia might ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... capable of an immense amount of intellectual work, it is a real calamity,—a calamity which in this case History mourns, as Edward Gaylord Bourne was an excellent teacher and a thorough historical scholar. The physical details of any illness are apt to be repulsive, but the malady in Bourne's case was somehow so bound up in his life that an inquiry into it comes from no morbid curiosity. When ten years old he was attacked with tubercular disease of the hip, and for some ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten times ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... the Ghetto, and sketched those patient Jewish faces, often grotesque, sometimes repulsive, always mobile. She wandered down South Clark street, flaring with purple-white arc-lights, and looked in at its windows that displayed a pawnbroker's glittering wares, or, just next door, a flat-topped stove over which a white-capped ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... to inquire for the causes of this physical and moral decay. For every class has its special complaint, every traveller his favorite theory, and every political economist his sufficient explanation. But let the cause be what it may, the fact stands out black and repulsive. Jamaica, which came from the hand of the Creator a fair and well-watered garden, has presented for more than half a century that melancholy spectacle, too common in Equatorial America, of a land rich in every natural advantage, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... repulsive the artificial bloom, the cosmetics and hair-dyes which make old age a horror, compared with her natural beauty! God bless and keep ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... thousand times on record, that the very goodness of the human heart in such a case ministers fuel to the moral degradation of a female combatant. Any woman, and exactly in proportion to the moral sensibility of her nature, finds it painful to live in the same house with a man not odiously repulsive in manners or in person on terms of eternal hostility. In a community so nobly released as was Rome from all base Oriental bondage of women, this followed—that compliances of a nature oftentimes to belie the native nobility of woman become painfully liable to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... there magic in that touch? The woman's repulsive aspect changed into one of kindly welcome, and she said, "Yes, it's a long way to G—. I guess we can find ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hidden smile answered him in Anne's gray eyes, as there might have done had it been only a question of mischief. There was something else . . . something ugly and repulsive. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of flesh from the victims of his avarice. He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove into the streets, followed in his path; the children stopped their games and hid until he passed. That repulsive character which haunts the evil-doers of society marked the aged banker as an object of dread and scorn to ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... making the acquaintance of one of them with a pardonable excitement. Doubtless she would hate a sinner if she saw one, as the nuns had taught her, although the sinner of her imagination was not a very repulsive personage. Flavia probably knew a great many, and Flavia said that society was very amusing. Faustina wished that the autumn months would pass a little more quickly, so that the carnival season ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... of fact there was nothing in the least degree squalid about Borrow's subjects or treatment. His tramps and vagabonds have nothing about them that is repulsive. Borrow, it is true, was ready enough to condone the offences of those who sought dupes among the well- to-do public; but he preferred the honester members of the vagrant class; and it is plain that they reciprocated ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... long time after midnight, being tired and yet excited, close to weeping and despair, and had for a long time sought to sleep in vain, his heart full of misery which he thought he could not bear any longer, full of a disgust which he felt penetrating his entire body like the lukewarm, repulsive taste of the wine, the just too sweet, dull music, the just too soft smile of the dancing girls, the just too sweet scent of their hair and breasts. But more than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed hair, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old, yet of an age that had not outlived the devil of youth. Probably the invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the elements of pleasing, it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft, fluent, polished, but savage license was not far off, hard held by a slender leash; an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The utterance, though somewhat rapid, was ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne |
