"Shocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... No, of course not! She admired that bracelet of yours—by Jove, I said to myself, I'll get her one like it! Whatever I brought home to you you'd scarcely say thank you—and usually it went into the drawer—I'd such shocking bad taste! She'd beam! Well, as ill-luck would have it, you took a fancy to this one. I told ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... that a man should be blinded and pained by passing from a shaded room into dazzling sunlight. It is a serious thing to leap from a luxurious, enervating warm bath into cold water. All sudden transitions are shocking; and God has contrived the transitions of our lives so that they shall be mainly gradual. It is not to be wondered at that many men and women, by having the responsibilities of men and women thrust upon them too early, are shocked, and look back upon the shady ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... operation is fashionable; for he's a dear good fellow; and after all, as I always tell people, the operation will do them no harm: indeed, Ive known the nervous shake-up and the fortnight in bed do people a lot of good after a hard London season; but still it's a shocking fraud. [Rising] Well, I must be toddling. Good-bye, Paddy [Sir Patrick grunts] good-bye, goodbye. Good-bye, my dear Blenkinsop, good-bye! Goodbye, Ridgeon. Dont fret about your health: you know what to do: if your liver is sluggish, a little mercury never does any ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... to play cards together with her and Gedeonovsky, and Marfa Timofyevna led Lisa away up-stairs with her, saying that she looked shocking, and that she ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the wildest demonstration of grief Coiloo appeared—Coiloo, whom Stobart had saved from death, and whom Mick had treated with such cruelty. He was in a shocking state. The brand-marks had started to fester, and there were burns all over his body. He had come at a critical time. The wailing warraguls looked at his wounds and their excitement got more and more intense. They vowed terrible vengeance against the white man who had done this; against ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... ushered in that class of the creatures of his fancy in which he took himself perhaps the most delight, and which the oftener he dealt with the more he seemed to know how to vary and render attractive: gentlemen by nature, however shocking bad their hats or ungenteel their dialects; philosophers of modest endurance, and needy but most respectable coats; a sort of humble angels of sympathy and self-denial, though without a particle of splendor or even good looks about them, except what an eye as fine as their ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... soundness of Martin's verdict, for my part I feel that my experiences during that week left me with memories not perhaps more shocking, but certainly more humiliating and disgraceful to England, than the picture burnt into my mind by the Westminster Riot. I ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... willing to do a dirty piece of work to put you high and dry above the mire for the rest of your days. Do you ask the reason of this devotion? All right; I will tell you that some of these days. A word or two in your ear will explain it. I have begun by shocking you, by showing you the way to ring the changes, and giving you a sight of the mechanism of the social machine; but your first fright will go off like a conscript's terror on the battlefield. You will grow used to regarding men as common soldiers ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... been a merry prank; he was still a prank, but not often merry. His spirit seemed to be overcast; and the terrible fact came out gradually that he was not 'nicely disposed.' His relatives failed to understand him, and they gave him up like a puzzle. He was self-contradictory. For instance, though a shocking liar, he was lavish of truth whenever truth happened to be disconcerting and inopportune. He it was who told the forewoman of his uncle's millinery department, in front of a customer, that she had a moustache. His uncle threshed him. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What had passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shocking coil, suitable for medical purposes, may be constructed of materials found in nearly every amateur mechanic's collection of odds and ends. The core, A, Fig. 1, is a piece of round soft iron rod about 1/4 in. in diameter and about 4 in. long. A strip of stiff paper about ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... whether at long (hunting) ranges the remaining velocity of the big blunt nosed bullet is not seriously reduced; but as to that I have not enough data for a final conclusion. I have no doubt, however, that at such ranges, and beyond, the little Springfield has more shocking power. Of course at closer ranges the Winchester is by far the more powerful. I killed one rhinoceros with the 405, one buffalo and one hippo; but should consider it too light for an emergency gun against the larger dangerous animals, such as buffalo and rhinoceros. If one has ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... old man by complaints, or alterations of his arrangements, had troubled themselves little about the matter; took things as they found them, ate dry bread when the cookery was bad, walked if the road was 'shocking'; went away the sooner, if the inns were 'intolerable'; made merry over every inconvenience, and turned it into an excellent story for Charles. They did not even distress themselves about sights ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hot heart upon events which are still recent one is apt to lose one's sense of proportion. At every step one should check one's self by the reflection as to how this may appear ten years hence, and how far events which seem shocking and abnormal may prove themselves to be a necessary accompaniment of every condition of war. But a time has now come when in cold blood, with every possible restraint, one is justified in saying that since ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the southern satraps refused to obey. A similar inference may be drawn from the summary execution of four ministers of state for remonstrating against throwing in the fortunes of the empire with the Boxer party. China [Page 180] should be made to do penance on her knees for those shocking displays of barbarism. At Taiyuan-fu, forty-five missionaries were murdered by the governor, and sixteen at Paoting-fu. Such atrocities are only possible ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... conception it would be vain to deny. A vast majority of mankind associate with the idea of disbelief in their Gods, everything stupid, monstrous, absurd and atrocious. Absolute Universalism is thought by them the inseparable ally of most shocking wickedness, involving 'blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,' which we are assured shall not be forgiven unto men 'neither in this world nor in that which is to come.' Educated to consider it 'an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every restraint ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... haste, and repented at leisure. Now, don't be hypocritical, and pretend to grieve for him. His death was shocking—fearful—but you're really relieved that he is gone. Why not ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... starving brutes whom they lead—men nursed in poverty, entirely ignorant, made to take a pride in deeds of blood—men who can have no amusement but in drunkenness, debauch, and plunder. It is with these shocking instruments that your great warriors and kings have been doing their murderous work in the world; and while, for instance, we are at the present moment admiring the 'Great Frederick,' as we call him, and his philosophy, and his liberality, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was obvious, yet almost shocking, and Julian could not question her good faith. She had certainly not known. He longed to find out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment of her, but she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really loathed and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to his laboratory in the capacity of laboratory-assistant, with the deliberate intention of making sensational exposures; and by the help of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house. It was in the silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... followed the instructions of Maurice, and broached the affair to Barneveldt; but he was inexorable. He clearly explained to her the perilous career on which the prince proposed to enter; he showed how great, how independent, how almost absolute, he might continue, without shocking the principles of republicanism by grasping at an empty dignity, which could not virtually increase his authority, and would most probably convulse the state to its foundation and lead to his own ruin. The princess, convinced by ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... rosy cheeks, which does not differ from that of her attendant; both like a smart man, the one the footman and the other his master, for the same reason; both like handsome furniture and fine houses; both apply the terms shocking and disagreeable to the same things and persons; both have a great notion of balls, plays, treats, song-books, and love-tales; both like a wedding or a christening, and both would give their little fingers ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... little. "You make me feel quite nervous. What a shocking thing it would be if I ever did anything to ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Throws her old banana peel; Throws her apple skin and cores, Right in front of people's doors! Isn't that a shocking trick? Ask that ...
— The Goop Directory • Gelett Burgess
... or two about the mutiny at the Nore, and I have done, for ever I trust, with so shocking a subject. The men here were far more insolent and overbearing in their demands. The president of the mutineers—fancy calling a mutineer a president!—was, worse luck, a Scotsman from Perth, of the name of Parker. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... Selina repeated, her voice thick with passion. Then she turned to me. "Go to your room at once!" she said in her most awful tone. "Go to your room and leave this—this shocking affair ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... John Bull is in his own family-relations, who have watched his tender forbearance with his eldest son Erin, and his long-suffering suavity with his youngest son India, and says to them,—'To a moral citizen of the world it is very shocking to see such an insolent attack upon a peaceable person. That man is an intolerable bully. If he were smaller, I'd step over and kick him.'—Do you feel drowsy?" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... worrying, tormenting, carking. intolerable, insufferable, insupportable; unbearable, unendurable; past bearing; not to be borne, not to be endured; more than flesh and blood can bear; enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson swear, enough to gag a maggot. shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing; dreadful, fearful, frightful; thrilling, tremendous, dire; heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening; harrowing, rending. odious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... both concern'd in the murder of their husbands, and are afterwards married to the murderers. There is in the first part of the Greek Tragedy, something very moving in the grief of Electra; but as Mr. D'Acier has observ'd, there is something very unnatural and shocking in the Manners he has given that Princess and Orestes in the latter part. Orestes embrues his hands in the blood of his own mother; and that barbarous action is perform'd, tho' not immediately upon the stage, yet so near, that the audience hear Clytemnestra ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... of them acquire the affection and confidence of their superiors. The price of a slave in Sarawak is from thirty to sixty dollars, but as the trade is being as quickly repressed as possible, without too much shocking the prejudices of the inhabitants, they have of late become very scarce, and difficult to be bought. The price of a girl varies from thirty to one hundred dollars, but at Sarawak they are even more difficult than men to obtain." Thus wrote Mr. Low in the year 1848. By this time, 1882, slavery is ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... you against your will. . . . So I was telling myself if that's so, and Martin and you came together now, and you encouraged him, and let him go on and anything came of it . . . any trouble or disgrace or the like of that . . . it would be such a terrible cruel shocking thing for the boy . . . just when everybody's talking about him and speaking ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... carcasses, and similar objects, if they strike upon the view too much, will be as disgusting in a picture as they are in nature; and that grimaces, hideous or monstrous deformities, whether moral or physical, will be as shocking in the one as the other. Events which are sufficiently unnatural, barbarous, and cruel, to shake violently the soul, and cause it to tremble with insurmountable horror, create an agitation too frightful for it to resist, much less to be pleased with. Subjects of so bad a choice, (which Horace ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... long after she had retired for the night. Indeed, they made such an uproar, that it was difficult to sleep till they were gone. Sometimes, after they had broken up, I heard them talking on the piazza; and their oaths and obscene jests were shocking to hear; yet if I met any of them the next day, they appeared like courtly gentlemen. When they were intoxicated, niggers and Abolitionists seemed always to haunt their imaginations. I remember one night in particular. I judged by their conversation that they had been reading in a Northern newspaper ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... thing, on the horns of a dilemma. Painful position, very. She was the greatest of great ladies, full of fire and fashion, and with a purple blush (she was born that colour) flung bangly arms round the neck of her lord and master. The unfortunate man was a shocking sufferer, having a bad unearned increment, and enduring constant pain on account of his back being ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... you ever hear any one so wickedly obstinate before?" cried nurse. "Isn't it shocking? and his ma that delicate and worried living all alone, like, here out in these strange parts, and him as ought to be a comfort to her doing nothing but hanker after running away to find him as ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... the people at large were throughout on the side of France. Florence had never ceased to confess with shocking naivete its old Guelph preference for the French. And when Charles VIII actually appeared on the south of the Alps, all Italy accepted him with an enthusiasm which to himself and his followers seemed unaccountable. In the imagination ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... never before happened since the discovery of the Aborigines in America. In the morning, at the breakfast table, my brother William did not appear, and every one was surprised not to see him at the table. After breakfast, a messenger was sent to his room. He soon returned with the shocking news that he was dead. Then the authorities of the college arose and rushed to the scene, and there they found him on the floor, lying in his own blood. When Hamlin, his cousin heard of it, he too rushed to the room; and after his cousin's body was taken out, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... the story was in the mouths of all the gossips that morning, and Valdarno had only repeated what he had heard. He had meant to annoy the old man; he had certainly not intended to make him so furiously angry. As for the deliberate insult he had received, it was undoubtedly very shocking to be told that one lied in such very plain terms; but on the other hand, to demand satisfaction of such an old wreck as Astrardente would be ridiculous in the extreme. Valdarno was incapable of very violent passion, and was easily persuaded that he was in the wrong when ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... reigned among us was in strange and shocking contrast with the situation of some of the invalids. Thus at least did it seem to me, though ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... introducing the Deity, as in Scripture (though Milton does, and not very wisely either); but have adopted his angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings on the subject, by falling short of what all uninspired men must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of the presence of Jehovah. The Old Mysteries introduced him liberally enough, and this is avoided ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... overhead, and looked down from a tree. Then out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along. But just in the middle, oh, shocking to tell! From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touched not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... conceive how shocking to me was the appearance of that great gleaming length of white desolation. On the deck of a stout ship sailing safely past it I should have found the scene magnificent, I doubt not; for the sun, being low with westering, shone redly, and the range of ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... some sort of an inarticulate excuse, he left me. I knew very well that this nervously correct personage had jumped up from his dinner in order that he might meet me at the door and thus prevent my unconventional attire from shocking any ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... regiment, and in the breaking and reforming and twilight of the smoke, through the falling of officers and the surging to and fro, the troops became interwoven, warp of one division, woof of another. The sound was shocking; when, now and then there fell a briefest interval it was as though the world had stopped, had fallen into a gulf ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... himself together, and attempted to carry Mrs. Stuart off for the waltz, but for once in her life that lady had lost her head. "It is shocking!" she said, "outrageously shocking! I wonder if they told Mr. McDonald before he married her!" Then looking hurriedly round, she too saw the young husband's face—and ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... vis a vis; Baby keeps a-squalling, woman looks at me; Asks about the distance—says 'tis tiresome talking, Noises of the cars are so very shocking! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... The whole thing was shocking, no doubt, gruesome in the extreme, but the mystery which surrounded this strange death had roused ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... ladies; them times is too shocking to remember; but it's true gospel, as we all remained servants and slaves to them——scums. They took the ship, and painted and fitted her out until her own sister would not ha' known her. And they came and went just as suited 'em, always a-leaving us with sum on 'em, and their ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Don Francesco was deservedly popular as ecclesiastic. Women adored him; he adored women. He passed for an unrivalled preacher; his golden eloquence made converts everywhere, greatly to the annoyance of the parroco, the parish priest, who was doubtless sounder on the Trinity but a shocking bad orator and altogether deficient in humanity, and who nearly had a fit, they said, when the other was created Monsignor. Don Francesco was a fisher of men, and of women. He fished AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, and for the fun of the thing. It was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... herself with awe. "I only meant to tell him that they were all out, and run back. Why did I forget father?" She would never be able to persuade anybody that she had literally forgotten her father's existence for quite ten minutes; but it was true, though shocking. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... some disaster hath befell: Speak, nurse; I hope the boy is well.' 10 'Dear madam, think not me to blame; Invisible the fairy came: Your precious babe is hence conveyed, And in the place a changeling laid. Where are the father's mouth and nose, The mother's eyes, as black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... from the tropics, solitary and alone, to the New World. What is she? She is freighted with the elements of unmixed evil. Hark! hear those rattling chains, hear that cry of despair and wail of anguish, as they die away in the unpitying distance. Listen to those shocking oaths, the crack of that flesh-cutting whip. Ah! it is the first cargo of slaves on their way to Jamestown, Virginia. Behold the May-flower anchored at Plymouth Rock, the slave-ship in James River. Each a parent, one of the prosperous, labour-honouring, law-sustaining institutions of the ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... him, by degrees, that his own personal importance among his kind might be due, in part, to his fortune. And from the first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly with ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... a body To the Town Hall came flocking; "Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation,—shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry, civic robe ease? Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking, To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... on my back. I'll be up in a minute. Let me tell you. The only thing I enjoyed was shocking people; wearing something quite impossible and quite charming to a fancy-dress party, going round with the fastest men in New York, and getting into some of ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... What a shocking name the next is—LYING LUCY! It is dreadful to think that any one should deserve to be so called, but this wicked little girl deserves it, for she has no sense of honour, and seldom speaks the truth. Even when she does say what is ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... even Mr Slope, felt at present rather abashed. He hardly knew how to frame his little request in language sufficiently modest. He had recognised and acknowledged, to himself the necessity of shocking the bishop in the first instance by the temerity of his application, and his difficulty was how best to remedy that by his adroitness and eloquence. 'I doubted myself,' said he, 'whether your lordship would have any one immediately in your eye, and it is on this account that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... been surpassed. If the poets were few after the Restoration, the novelists were many, with transcendent excellences and transcendent faults, reaching the heart by their pathos, insulting the reason by their exaggerations, captivating the imagination while shocking the moral sense; painting manners and dissecting passions with powerful, acute, and vivid touch. Such were Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, and Alexandre Dumas, whose creations interested all classes alike, not merely in France, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... shocking to you," ses Mr. Goodman, putting down 'is glass and dryin' 'is lips on each other, "but I find it useful for ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... upon every thing, and is never at a loss; and the more trifling the subject, the more he has to say.'—'Yes,' cried Olivia, 'he is well enough for a man; but for my part, I don't much like him, he is so extremely impudent and familiar; but on the guitar he is shocking.' These two last speeches I interpreted by contraries. I found by this, that Sophia internally despised, as much as Olivia secretly admired him.—'Whatever may be your opinions of him, my children,' cried I, 'to confess a truth, he has not prepossest me in his favour. Disproportioned ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... excellently well conducted, but which must find something to fill their columns, and so print all the new plans of treatment and new remedies they can get hold of, as the newspapers, from a similar necessity, print the shocking catastrophes and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... analogous not so much to justification by faith as to sacramental ritual. The parallel may seem shocking, but most tantric ceremonies are similar in idea to Christian sacraments and may be called sacramental as correctly as magical. Even in the Anglican Church baptism includes sprinkling with water (abhisheka), the sign of the cross (nyasa) and a ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... struck with dread of judgment. But even so, to scare them long in their contemptuous, godless vein was beyond the power of Heaven itself; and when one of my long tresses fell, to my great vexation, down my breast, a shocking sneer arose, and words unfit for a ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... man, was so overcome by the fury of the seething waters, that he tried to throw himself from the rails at the quarter-deck, and to end in death a scene he felt too shocking to ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... out of sixty perpetrators of homicidal crime suffers the extreme penalty attaching to such crimes in America, and these figures, I admit, are a shocking revelation of supine justice and sentimental executive, as when politics can even bend our President to grant silly pardons, with baleful results upon the doings of other wealthy criminals. We use as large an amount of habit-forming drugs per capita ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... put the things right," said Fancy soothingly, and rising from her seat. "I ought to have laid out better things, I suppose. But" (here she enlarged her looks so as to include Dick) "I have been away from home a good deal, and I make shocking blunders in my housekeeping." Smiles and suavity were then dispensed all around by this bright ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the annals of the yacht clubs of San Francisco there has never been a fatal accident, never a drowning, nor a capsizing, nor a wreck, and this covers a period of thirteen years; alas! in a single day, on a cruise such as I have been writing of, there was a shocking death. One yacht nearly foundered, but fortunately escaped into smooth water, another was dashed upon the rocks, and is probably a total wreck; while a third lost her centre-board over a mud bank, where ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: ''Tis clear', cried they, 'our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation—shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease? Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to the fate of my parents proved too true; for soon after I left them they were killed and scalped, together with Robert, Matthew, Betsey, and the woman and her two children, and mangled in the most shocking manner. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... "Oh, what a shocking thing!" said Charles; "But why do they do it mamma? I cannot think why people should fight battles ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner
... etiquette of the smile there has been developed a secondary etiquette, the observance of which has frequently impelled foreigners to form the most cruel misjudgements as to Japanese sensibility. It is the native custom that whenever a painful or shocking fact must be told, the announcement should be made, by the sufferer, with a smile. [3] The graver the subject, the more accentuated the smile; and when the matter is very unpleasant to the person speaking of it, the smile often changes to a low, soft laugh. However bitterly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... deny the many horrible exceptions, the shocking cruelties, that blot the records of slave-life; but I do maintain that they were exceptions, and that nine cases out of ten—nay, more than that proportion—that came under my personal observation proved that a sincere love existed between masters and slaves. In many instances I saw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... uneasy for the situation of the preacher. For I could not conceive how he would be able to let his audience down from the height to which he had wound them, without impairing the solemnity and dignity of his subject, or perhaps shocking them by the abruptness of the fall. But—no: the descent was as beautiful and sublime as the elevation had been rapid ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... payment of debts, for compensations, or for graces, to take themselves off within twenty-four hours on pain of being hanged; and, that it might appear how seriously meant the threat was, a very conspicuous gibbet was erected at Fontainebleau close to the palace. It was a shocking affront. The malcontents at once made up to the Reformers. Independently of the general oppression and perils under which these latter labored, they were liable to meet everywhere, at the corners of the streets, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... A shocking aeroplane smash up within a few yards of us. A brilliant young Officer (Captain Collet of the R.F.C.) killed outright and three men ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... security, which is worse than all former errors under the Pope have been." (C. R. 26, 9.) Agricola considered these and similar exhortations of Melanchthon unfriendly and Romanizing, and published his dissent in his 130 Questions for Young Children, where he displayed a shocking contempt for the Old Testament and the Law of God. In particular, he stressed the doctrine that genuine repentance (contrition) is wrought, not by the Law, but by the Gospel only. In letters to his friends, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... came Nelson's tragic end, shocking the whole country. Those of us in camp outside of the city were startled on the morning of September 29 by the news that General Jefferson C. Davis, of the Union Army, had shot General Nelson at the Galt House, and the wildest rumors in regard to the occurrence came thick and fast; one to the effect ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... the world we discover that certain tribes of sentient beings prey upon certain other tribes; and this seems, on a cursory view, to be very shocking to the finer sensibilities of our nature; yet it is an arrangement which results in a larger amount of sentient enjoyment than could otherwise obtain among these lower denizens of our inexplicable world. The most vigorous—that which embodies within itself the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to stop up, by drawing several parts of a cord across it. But the intolerable stench which came from his putrid face was alone sufficient to keep me out, had the entrance been ever so wide. His nose was quite gone, and his whole face in one continued ulcer; so that the very sight of him was shocking. As our people had not all got clear of a certain disease they had contracted at the Society Isles, I took all possible care to prevent its being communicated to the natives here; and I have reason to believe ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... amazing and shocking news, however, of the accident to Lord Talgarth and Archie, the precautions had been doubled. It was the clergyman who had first bought an evening paper soon after five o'clock, and within five minutes the other two ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... her aunts. That a girl barely fourteen should have decided views on the subject of dress, and insist upon wearing what she called a pompadour and having her belts extremely pointed in front, was surprising to Aunt Virginia, shocking to ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... any impression on the evil of prostitution. But he might have restored external decency and order, and he might possibly have prepared the way for some scientific examination of the problem. But a thing happened: one of those shocking blunders we too often let happen. The efforts of the chief of police were set back, because of that blunder, no one can tell how far. A new hysteria of vice and disorder dates from the hour the ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... whistling of the wind, which at another time would have lulled her to sleep, now kept her waking: but these ideal terrors had not long possessed her, before she had an occasion of real ones, more shocking than her most timid fancy could ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... every prospect of being elected. It is a shocking thing—I hardly know how to express ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... continued, "he'll be chaffed about that at the Club in the delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about it—softening the details for fear of shocking me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts of recommending him to throw up his Commission and go into the Church. In his present frame of mind he would obey ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... A shocking incongruity marred the whole effect. Suspended at the side of this hundred-year-old doorway was a black and gold, shield-shaped ornament of no inconsiderable dimensions informing the observer that a certain brand of lager beer ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... much delighted to have her with him again, so often repeating that she must not go away again, that the genuineness of his affection could not be doubted, and probably he would only retain an impression of having been led to say something very shocking, and the alarm to his sensitive conscience would hinder him from ever even trying to remember ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twelve o'clock to the elegant residence of the popular doctor, in Delight Street. The news was broken to the widow as agreeably as possible. Mrs. Thorne is a young and very beautiful woman, on whom this shocking blow falls ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... despairing, was drinking himself to death with the riffraff of Rangoon, or with such of it as would listen to his abuse of the white women and his slanders upon their honesty. The contrast between Shere Ali's fate and the hopes with which he had set out was shocking enough. Yet even in his case so very little had turned the scale. Between the fulfilment of his hopes and the great failure what was there? If he had been sent to Ajmere instead of to England, if he and Linforth had not crossed the Meije to La Grave in Dauphine, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... perfectly horrible persons! I've had experience with them. Why, I tried to bring out a violinist once—such a dirty young man, and he smelt terribly of garlic—he came from the Pyrenees—but he was quite a marvellous fiddler—and he turned out most ungratefully, and married my manicurist. Simply shocking! And as for singers!—my dear Maryllia, you never seem to realise what an utter little fright that Cicely Bourne of yours is! She will never get on with a yellow face like that! ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... got as far as Paris, where grandma and I happened to be staying. This was last August, and I was in the Rue de Rivoli one day, near Place Vendome, when, who should turn from a side street a few rods in advance of me but Jack himself, looking very rough and queer, with a long beard and a shocking hat. He did not see me, and was walking so fast that I had to run to overtake him, and even then I might not have captured him if I had not taken the handle of my umbrella and hooked it into his coat collar behind. This brought him to a stand-still and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... French Court many a fine-feathered villain "struts his brief hour" on the stage, dazzling eyes by his splendour, and shocking a world none too easily shocked in those days of easy morals by his profligacy; but it would be difficult among all these gilded rakes to find a match for the Duc de Richelieu, who carried his villainies through little less ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... of the speaker. I am sure that Skarphedin had more to say, or that if he had not the poet could have expressed him better. It recalls the humorous callousness of our soldiers, which, nakedly rendered, is often shocking. This is, however, not really the point. Terseness may be dramatic—it often is, as in "Cover her face—mine eyes dazzle—She died young"—but in narrative it may check instead of provoke the imagination. But if it provoke, ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... became loftily indignant and challenged him. The two made up their quarrel very soon in a ludicrous manner, but Wilkinson in the interval had an interview with Washington, which revealed an amount of duplicity and perfidy on the part of the cabal, so shocking to the former's sensitive nature, that he resigned his secretaryship of the board of war on account, as he frankly said, of the treachery and falsehood of Gates. Such a quarrel of course hurt the cabal, but it was still more weakened by Gates himself, whose only idea seemed to be ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... pick up the plate and carry it into the bathroom. Heroic measures were necessary: Tish was not her resolute self; and, indeed, through all the episode of Tufik, and the shocking denouement that followed, Tish was a spineless individual who swayed to and ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... then comes a lull—remarked by everyone—between half-past eleven and one or half-past, then a rush again up to daylight, when they all disappear, save one or two, who remain until they tumble dead drunk off the tree—a shocking example to the wood fairies, who are popularly supposed to draw the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... mind often operates in such moments of exciting suspense! I recall remarking a very slight stoop in Brennan's shoulders which I had never perceived before, I remember wondering where Moorehouse had ever discovered a tailor to give so shocking a fit to his coat, and finally I grew almost interested in two birds perched upon the limb of a tree opposite where I stood. I even smiled to myself over a jest one of the young officers had made an hour before. Yet with ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... to the right and streaked up a shocking road at forty-five.... We flashed into a hamlet, turned at right angles, missed a waggon by an inch and flung up a frightful track ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... "Wait a minute—we will wrap it up in the poem. 'Exit Atalanta, carrying her Ham in a newspaper'—how deliciously vulgar! Elphinstone, you have always been the best of brothers; you are behaving beautifully—and—and I never could resist shocking you; but we're pretty fond of one ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed by two of depression most dreadful. . . . I look back upon her earlier attacks with longing,—nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by complete restoration,—shocking as they were to ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... coal below them was almost unbearable. In the cabin the six doors kept up a continuous ear-shocking fusillade, as though half a dozen men were fighting with revolvers; from without, down the open skylight, came the sing-song talk of the Chinamen and the wash and ripple of the two vessels, now side by side. The air, foul beyond expression, tasted of brass, their heads swam and ached to bursting, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... thought of these five shillings made me laugh louder and louder. Wasn't I a devil of a fellow, eh? Five shillings! My mirth increased, and I gave way to it. Ugh! what a shocking smell of cooking there was here—a downright disgustingly strong smell of chops for dinner, phew! and I flung open the window to let out this beastly smell. "Waiter, a plate of beef!" Turning to the table —this miserable table that I was forced to support with my ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... not let yourself take an exaggerated view of the case. Sad and shocking as it is to have been so deceived, it is what happens to many of us, though not to so terrible a degree; and as to your coming to Rome having anything to do ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to protest against the shocking insecurity of life and property in London? What are the Police doing? Only yesterday I was walking, in the middle of the day, in a rather quiet road in this suburb, when a highway robber, disguised as an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... head wonderingly. "How d'you do it?" he asked. "The other guards have to keep shocking one after another of the lazy dogs, yet you've made no move at a single one—and they keep right on hustling. I've never seen a crew ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... lives, I'm afraid in shocking lodgings—it must be, so unhealthy—just to become acquainted with the life of poor people, and be helpful to them. Isn't it heroic? He seems to have given up his whole life to it. One never meets him anywhere; I think ours ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... infatuation (says Smollett), luxury, vice, and profligacy increased to a shocking degree; the adventurers, intoxicated by their imaginary wealth, pampered themselves with the rarest dainties and the most costly wines. They purchased the most sumptuous furniture, equipage, and apparel, though with no ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... east, to massacre all the Greeks and Romans whom they could get into their power. 4. This rebellion first began in Cyre'ne, a Roman province in Africa; from thence the flame extended to Egypt, and next to the island of Cyprus. Dreadful were the devastations committed by these infatuated people, and shocking the barbarities exercised on the unoffending inhabitants. 5. Some were sawn asunder, others cast to wild beasts, or made to kill each other, while the most unheard-of torments were invented and exercised on the unhappy victims of their fury. Nay, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... I am getting old—but not so old as to venture upon so shocking an insinuation against a man of Mr. Roberts' repute and seeming honor, if I had not some very substantial proofs to ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... had three sons and three daughters. His son Louis had embraced the Roman Catholic faith through the persuasions of a female domestic who had lived thirty years in the family. In October 1761 another son, Antoine, hanged himself in his father's warehouse. The crowd, which collected on so shocking a discovery, took up the idea that he had been strangled by the family to prevent him from changing his religion, and that this was a common practice among Protestants. The officers of justice adopted the popular tale, and were supplied by the mob with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of peace reached New York, February 11, 1815. The Evening Post, in its number of February 14, says, "We give to-day one of the effects of the prospect of peace, even before ratification. Our markets of every kind experienced a sudden, and to many a shocking, change. Sugar, for instance, fell from $26 per hundredweight to $12.50. Tea, which sold on Saturday at $2.25, on Monday was purchased at a $1.00. Specie, which had got up to the enormous rate of 22 per cent premium, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... think me a brute beast, a rhinoceros, never to have acknowledged the receipt of your precious present. But indeed I am none of those shocking things, but have arrived at that indisposition to letter-writing, which would make it a hard exertion to write three lines to a king to spare a friend's life. Whether it is that the Magazine paying me so much a page, I am loath to throw away composition—how much a sheet do you give your correspondents? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... these eight paupers was touchingly dreadful: sixpence-farthing a day had been sufficient for their diet when the almshouse was founded; and on sixpence-farthing a day were they still doomed to starve, though food was four times as dear, and money four times as plentiful. It was shocking to find how the conversation of these eight starved old men in their dormitory shamed that of the clergyman's family in his rich drawing-room. The absolute words they uttered were not perhaps spoken in the purest English, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... intemperate husband and father? We can be sober in language, and shun cursing and swearing—the most useless, unmeaning, and brutal of vulgarities. Nothing can be so silly and unmeaning—not to say shocking, repulsive, and sinful—as the oaths so common in the mouths of vulgar swearers. They are profanation without ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... "A shocking child murder has just been committed at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. Wragg ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... be, bereft of all enjoyment now, nothing but marches—hard, long marches—to go to the war—to be killed, perhaps, Oh! Inspired by such feelings, no wonder Bombay was inclined to be pugnacious when I ordered him to his place, and I was in a shocking bad temper for having been kept waiting from 8 A.M. to 2 P.M. for him. There was simply a word and a savage look, and my cane was flying around Bombay's shoulders, as if he were to be annihilated. I fancy that the eager fury of my onslaught broke his stubbornness more than anything else; ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... he has little soul. His understanding of love, religion, duty, patriotism, is paltry and even shocking. He lacks an ardent generosity. A central dryness, an ill-cloaked egoism show through his supple and rich talent. True, this selfishness of his at least respects everyone's liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps no one, troubles itself for no one, bears no one's burden; in a word, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... form the Tenth Book of his correspondence, and which show us Pliny acting as Governor of the province of Pontus and Bithynia. He had been sent there because the finances of many of the cities had been allowed to fall into a shocking state, and because the Emperor wanted a man whom he could thoroughly trust to put them straight. No doubt Pliny, while flattered at this proof of Trajan's regard, felt the severance from his friends and ordinary pursuits which this term of absence ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... back from me as if I had said something very shocking. 'Do I understand Colonel Altamont aright?' says she: 'and that a British officer refuses to meet any person who provokes him to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Bassanio, who, notwithstanding all the Jew had said of his kind intentions, did not like his friend should run the hazard of this shocking penalty for his sake, Anthonio signed the bond, thinking it really was (as the Jew said) merely ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... substituted in their place. This being election day, passed a great many people on the road. All merry. Great contention between the Dutch and Irish. Arrived at a small village called ... where the election was held. Saw a shocking fight, which ended in murder. A small man knocked down by his adversary and his intestines literally stamped out. I pressed through the crowd, and insisted on bleeding the unfortunate young man. Just as I was about to open a vein his senses returned. He begged I would not ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... formally transferred to Vincent. Dan was wild with delight when he heard that Vincent was now his master, and that he was to accompany him to the war. It had been known two days before that Vincent was going, and it seemed quite shocking to the negroes that the young master should go as a private soldier, and have to do everything for himself-"just," as they said, "like de poor white trash;" for the slaves were proud to belong to an old family, and looked down with almost contempt upon the poorer class of whites, regarding ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... they scattered, and from behind the shelter of trees fought the Indians in their own fashion. Some of the British tried to do the same. But Braddock had no knowledge of savage warfare. To fight in such a manner seemed to him shocking. It was unsoldierly; it was cowardly. So he swore savagely at his men, calling them cowards, and beat them back into line with the flat of his sword. And thus huddled together they stood a brilliant, living target for ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... sir. I can't help saying rubbernecks, sir, though it's a shocking word. It's the only name for them, sir. That's what the little Prince calls them, too. You see, it's one form of amusement they provide for him, and I am supposed to help it along as much as possible. Mr. Tullis takes him out in the avenue whenever ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... their counsel; and even they, though not lacking in decision as a rule, regarded first the Colonel's letter and then their brother with disturbed and doubtful eyes. He gave them no hint of the dreadful and disreputable change in their father's very being; that was positively too shocking to confide even to a sister (besides, they wouldn't have believed him), but he considered that the essentials of the problem were now fairly grasped by them both, and he was pleased to find ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... with a lot of straw, then some of the villagers, and finally made one of the women set fire to the straw by holding a revolver to her head and threatening to shoot her. The man said that the village priest had told him this shocking story. I asked how the Germans had behaved otherwise, and he said, "Very well in one sense." They had been billeted on the people, who were obliged to feed them; but, of course, it is war. When, however, ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... the unspeakable mystery of human life, and still more about the far greater and more awful mysteries of the life beyond the grave, and the endless happiness and misery believed to exist there, the humbugs about these have been infinitely more absurd, more shocking, more ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... speech of mine reached the ear of our Scheherezade, who said that it was perfectly shocking and that I deserved to be shown up as the outlaw in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... before she unclasped them. That twice-flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been called a snob. A snob!—he, whose readiness to form what would certainly be regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have stifled the charge, not merely vindicated him from it! He had forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had not been so forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously, for his own sake. Nay, rather ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... not conferred by its organic law or necessary for its own preservation, nor dishonor its own engagements when able to meet them, without either shocking or demoralizing the sentiment of the people; and the fact that the indefinite continuance of the circulation of an inconvertible but still legal tender currency is so generally advocated indicates how far we ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... "What a shocking thing! Do you really mean it?" exclaimed Miss Houghton. "Thank you, cream but no sugar; don't you know, Mrs. O'Reilly, that it is only Low-Church people who take sugar nowadays? But, really, now, about Mr. Zaluski? How ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... (give it only enough turnings) of making the men, at a shock, into five long, prostrate heaps of clay, lifeless, useless, and offensive, as are the expletives in question, by reason of a succession of just such shocking assaults as the untruth ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time Pa comes home and goes to bed in town, when he is running a political campaign. Well, sir, I had to jump from one thing to another from three o'clock in the morning till nine at night, pitching hay, driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled my clothes, and I think another week would make a pirate of me. But during it all I had the advantage of a pious example. I tell ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... is an affable fellow, though sloppy. He is friendly to man: providing the journalist with copy, the diplomatist with lying practice, and the punster with shocking opportunities. Ungrateful for these benefits, however, or perhaps savage at them, man responds by knocking the seal on the head and taking his skin: an injury which the seal avenges by driving man into the Bankruptcy Court with bills for his ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dressing and decorating them you are preparing them for the market of base men. Last week some titled philanthropist had hauled up a woman in the East End of London for attempting to sell her daughter. How shocking! everybody said. What a disgrace to the nineteenth century! But the wretched creature had only been doing the best according to her light for the welfare of her miserable child; while here—with their eyes open, with their cultured consciences—the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... would never even have spoken to such baggages! Mon sieur Bergeret—an amiable weak thing! D'Artagnan—a true swashbuckler! Tom Jones, Faust, Don Juan—we might not even think of them: And those poor Greeks: Prometheus—shocking rebel. OEdipus for a long time banished by the Censor. Phaedra and Elektra, not even so virtuous as Mary, who failed of being what she should be! And coming to more familiar persons Joseph and Moses, David and Elijah, all of them lacked his finality of true heroism—none could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Well, it was shocking of Jack, I admit. But, after all, this Mr. Farrell had ruined his life, and—of course I don't quite understand men and their code—but isn't it a trifle uncharitable of you, Roddy, not to allow that the shock may have unhinged his mind for a time? . . . ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she is game!" Cora thought, and aloud she went on, "Cecilia isn't a bad sort—a shocking snob, as all of us are who are not the real thing and want to be—like your own common pushers over here. We used to laugh at her awfully when she first came from Pittsburgh and tried to cut in before she married my cousin. Poor old Vin! He was crazy about her." Then she went ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... their interested oppressors a pretence for representing them as unworthy of liberty, and the natural rights of mankind. But these sophisters turn the argument full upon themselves, when they instigate the poor creatures to such shocking impiety, by every means that fantastic subtilty can suggest; thereby shewing in their own conduct, a more glaring proof of the same depravity, and, if there was any reason in the argument, a greater unfitness for the same precious enjoyment: for though some of the ignorant ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... and fro by the jerks and rolls of the ship, without exerting any efforts to help themselves. So terrible was the scene of foaming breakers around us, that one of the bravest men we had could not help expressing his dismay at it, saying, it was too shocking a sight to bear; and would have thrown himself over the rails of the quarterdeck into the sea had he not been prevented; but at the same time there were not wanting those who preserved a presence of mind truly heroic. The man at the helm, though both rudder and tiller ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... was there in a second! Not only so, but he fell upon the viands with an ardour and sincerity that were alarming. In two minutes he had got away with everything on the table. The rapidity with which that spirit crowded all manner of edibles into his neck was simply shocking! ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... necessary in pursuance of this order. The Southerners either did not in fact wreak their vengeance in fulfillment of their furious vows, or else covered their doings so that they could not be proved. Only the shocking incident of the massacre at Fort Pillow seemed to demand stern retaliatory measures, and even this was, too mercifully, allowed gradually to sink away ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... encircled by a muddy ditch, and a little further on was a tiny thatched cottage, out of which came the Yellow Dwarf with a very jaunty air. He wore wooden shoes and a little yellow coat, and as he had no hair and very long ears he looked altogether a shocking little object. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Dickie's mother at the pier in October, I expected to hear that he had written all about my wicked interference in the Rosie affair. He hadn't, though, and I shamelessly accepted her thanks, wondering all the while what she would say when the shocking truth came out. Her Dickie engaged! And to a nameless nobody! It would not be pleasant to face Dickie's mother after ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... generations in Rome. Dining on one occasion, as an invited guest, at a table where the servants had inadvertently, for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse lamp-oil, Caesar would not allow the rest of the company to point out the mistake to their host, for fear of shocking him too much by exposing what might have been construed into inhospitality. At another time, whilst halting at a little cabaret, when one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use the sole bed which ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... "It's shocking bad luck," the Duke declared, "but there's no earthly chance of your seeing the course, Prince. Come on the top of the stand with me, and bring your glasses. I think I can point out the way ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... first object he beheld was the coffin which contained the body of his beloved mistress! It had been made of lead, but being found to be too short, they had, with unheard of brutality; severed her head from her body! Horror-struck with the shocking spectacle, he, from that hour, renounced all connexion with the world, and imposed upon himself the most rigid austerities, which he continued until his death, ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... made up his mind that, although he would not give way in the slightest in the matter of his faith, he would yet abstain from shocking the religious feeling of the natives. After the first involuntary start at the discovery, he silenced his feelings, and asked how many skulls there were in the heap. He could not, however, understand the reply, as he had ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... of the operation. It would happen in the morning. Only one thing worried her. Something Connie had told her. Under the anaesthetic you said things. Shocking, indecent things. But there wasn't anything she could say. She didn't know anything.... Yes. She did. There were Connie's stories. And Black's Lane. Behind the dirty blue ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... dishes, And fatten on a few good wishes! Or, on some venial treason bent, Frame thyself a government, For thy crest a brirnless hat, Poverty's aristocrat! Nonne habeam te tristem, Planet of the human system? Comet lank and melancholic —Orbit shocking parabolic— Seen for a little in the sky Of the world of sympathy— Seldom failing when predicted, Coming most when most restricted, Dragging a nebulous tail with thee Of hypothetic vagrancy— Of vagrants large, and vagrants ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Dan answered unctuously. "It's just shocking the stories that are told—" and for the rest of the way he discoursed about morals, illustrating his meaning as he proceeded with ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... what shocking words! Of course, I shall quarrel with him. I should quarrel with any husband. Married people always quarrel, I believe. But as to being miserable, and bitter, and all those dreadful things, you know, why I couldn't ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hostess, "why will thee always use such shocking slang? How can I teach Jamie English with his father's example before him?" She shook a ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... war!" she answered. "We're all terribly tired of it. Tanya's given up going to the English hospital now, and is just meaning to be as gay as she can be; and Zinaida Fyodorovna had just come back from her Otriad on the Galician front, and she says it's shocking there now—no food or dancing or anything. Why ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole |
