"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would do well to take a holiday of six months; journey through the West, and so come to a realisation of the magnitude of their country and correct their point of view. With every mile that one recedes from Castle Garden, the phenomenon grows less appalling: the cloud which was dense enough to blacken New York harbour makes not a veil to stop one ray of sunlight when shredded out over the Mississippi Valley and the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... manner, for his guests, who but half appreciated the sacrifice he was making on their account, from their dread of themselves becoming a sacrifice to the tiger. And as they crouched behind their respective bushes they had time to brood over the appalling stories of hairbreadth escapes just recounted to them by the gallant captain, who had been particular in describing the requisites for the successful tiger-shot—the steady hand and steady nerve—admitting that these ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very certainly her own work; neither Girardet the attorney nor the Abbe de Grancey could obtain any information concerning Albert. This silence was appalling. In a paroxysm of repentance she felt that she must confess to the Vicar-General the horrible machinations by which she had separated Francesca and Albert. They had been simple, but formidable. Mademoiselle de Watteville ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... meadow, Egham stands opposite Staines, separated by the river and a mile of dull road. Egham may have once had attractions, but they have nearly all disappeared. Nothing old or quiet could live near the Holloway College. A building of such appalling pretensions sears its neighbourhood like a hot iron. The town takes colour from its flamboyant arrogance; the local builder studs his rough-cast with glass, red and green and blue. Two old almshouses stand by the main street of the town; one, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... apparent, and a general sense of consternation pervaded the sisterhood. It was the enormity of the offence that struck them aghast, the boldness of the attempt, and its complete success. It was altogether a new idea to them that any one should wish to escape from those walls; an appalling one that any one should make such an attempt, and succeed. Soeur Lucie, held responsible for Madelon, was summoned before the Superior, questioned, cross-questioned, and, amid tears and sobs, could only ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Il Maledetto had been one of great vicissitudes and peril. He had often seen men pass suddenly into the other state of existence, and had been calm himself amid the cries, the groans, and what is far more appalling, the execrations of the dying, but never before had he witnessed so brief and silent an end. For more than a minute, he hung suspended over the dark and working water, expecting to see the student return; and, when hope was reluctantly abandoned, he arose to his feet, a startled and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... this aimless flitting about from one place of residence to another—this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling stagnation of soul—merely with the view to arriving at results. The event which (under Providence) proved to be the means of bringing Rachel Verinder and myself together again, was no other than the hiring of the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... painted ideal conditions for the nurture of genius in his picture of the poet's physical frame, his environment, and his material endowment, inasmuch as the death rate among young bards,—imaginary ones, at least, is appalling. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it to something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting. There is only one sort of man who is absolutely to blame for his own misery, and that is the man who finds life dull and dreary. There ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... wig had fallen off. A bald skull, as shining as a death's head, showed the man's real countenance. It was appalling. Lucien sat on his divan, his hands hanging limp, overpowered, and gazing ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... shot was thrown away. One of the pigs had sprained its ankle, apparently, for it could only run on three legs. This pig fell behind; Billy ran after it, overtook it, fell upon it, and almost crushed it to death—a fact which was announced by an appalling shriek. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... what power was kindled, and arose Within the sphere of that appalling fray! For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes, A vapor like the sea's suspended spray Hung gathered; in the void air, far away, Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap, Where'er the eagle's talons made their way, Like sparks into the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... by students and parents, nevertheless, the Federal Government might well give the benefit of its counsel and encouragement more freely in this direction. If anyone doubts the need of concerted action by the States of the Nation for this purpose, it is only necessary to consider the appalling figures of illiteracy representing a condition which does not vary much in all parts of the Union. I do not favor the making of appropriations from the National Treasury to be expended directly on local education, but I do consider it a fundamental requirement of national activity ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... she gather strength to act? She crouched upon the ground, her hands pressed tightly over her eyes. It seemed to her that all the torture, all the suspense and apprehension of the universe, were gathered into that half-hour of appalling silence. Once she ventured to unlace her fingers and glance through them fearfully; but at sight of the Prophet, calm, impassive, unconscious of his threatened danger—at sight of the six sombre shrouded figures that sat inside the Sanctuary ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... greatest evil wrought by war is not the wanton destruction of life and property, sinful though it is; it is not even the lowered vitality of succeeding generations, though that is attended by appalling injury to the moral nature—the real iniquity of war is that it sets aside the arbitrament of right and justice, and looks to ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... complete the ideal of his favorite subjects. Thenceforth, he followed no more after enticing damsels, but remained in his cloister, painting the Madonna more serenely beautiful, and the Arch Enemy more curiously appalling ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Stuart in unison, never ceased to push the attack. The forces were now drawing closer together. The lines were shorter and deeper. The concentrated fire on both sides was appalling. Bushes and saplings fell in the Wilderness as if they had been levelled ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... firm would extend we were not yet to know; but the details of the massacre at Magersfontein, which kept pouring in, indirectly suggested that the business might extend very far indeed. The losses sustained at Magersfontein were more appalling than we were at first led to believe. They were a bitter sequel to the memorable cannonade of ten days before. How inappropriate had been our jubilation! The citizens forgot their personal woes in sorrow for the brave men who after a series of brilliant successes had perished ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... engine of destruction seemed suddenly to be in the grip of some vastly greater Colossus—a clutching hand that closed! The plane jumped back with an appalling crash, a roar of rending metal. For an instant there came the sound like a mighty buzz-saw as the giant propellers of one wing cut into the body of the careening plane. In that instant, the great power ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... appalling thought that every additional rod we travelled involved an increase of expense, my first impulse was to jump out and dismiss him. But then came the more frightful nightmare fancy, that it was not possible to dismiss him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... number of accidents in the United States, including railway accidents, reaches the immense total of sixty thousand killed and many times that number injured. A most appalling waste of ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... see, and positively appalling. He is entirely mother's choice. He arrived ten minutes after the evening papers were out, but somehow or other I don't fancy that we shall make anything of him. It's ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... quarrel with Sergeant Borrow of the Coldstream Guards, which resulted in the Hyde Park encounter. Some four months later, i.e., 17th January, 1791, the decisive fight for the championship came off between Brain and Johnson. It was an appalling spectacle, and struck dumb with horror, even in that day, the witnesses to the dreadful conflict. Big Ben was the victor, and remained champion of England from that date until his death three years (not "four months") later—8th April, 1794. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of the air-hole. "Oh! oh!" she cried, with an appalling laugh; "'tis the Egyptian who is ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... their regiments. The women take care of this. The number actually killed, or who die of their wounds, are the only total losses to the State, and these form but a small proportion of the enormous butcher's bills, which seem at first so very appalling. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come for, if it took a ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... he commanded with extreme mildness it seemed to me, considering the appalling situation. "I thought you had had about enough practice for to-day and Charlotte could have ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... different opinion of his memory, with the size of its appalling task. It can only be presented in his own words. In the pages quoted he had mastered somewhat of the problem, and had begun to take on airs. His chief was a constant menace at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mutton in it. She was not an entirely bad woman, though a downright cunning virago, and perhaps some inkling of the nature of the blow that was about to fall on Miss Dexter's head caused her to come prepared by an acceptable present to somewhat mitigate its appalling approach. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... replied Chunerbutty. To show his freedom from caste prejudices he not only ate with Europeans, but even showed no objection to beef, much to the horror of all orthodox Hindus. That a Brahmin, of all men, should partake of the sacred flesh of the almost divine cow was an appalling sacrilege in their eyes. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... soul? Arise, arise from thy place, and look upon my grief for thee. Come and count the tears that roll down my cheeks, and bring the tale of them before God, that His wrath be turned away from me. O Joseph, my son, how painful and appalling was thy death! None hath died a death like thine since the world doth stand. I know well that it came to pass by reason of my sins. O that thou wouldst return and see the bitter sorrow thy misfortune hath brought upon me! But it is ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... safety. But the Europeans had firmly barricaded their houses, and none of them would have opened to admit the poor fugitives. On a sudden the wild cries that had almost terrified the crying children to death rose to appalling shrieks and ravings, and a mob of demons, incited by their fanatic passions almost to frenzy, rushed from a side street straight upon Heideck. They had somewhere on their way been joined by a large number of other female fugitives; and the sight of these unhappy creatures made the German ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... produce-broker's clumsiness of touch. His charm was the spontaneity of his spoken words, his enthusiastic personality disarming all criticism; what the labored productions of his fancy might prove to be, I hardly dared think. It was this dread that induced me, upon receipt of the box, appalling in its bulk and unpleasantly suggestive of the departure to other worlds of the original consignor, since it was long and deep like the outer oaken covering of a casket, to delay opening it for some days; but ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... confusion of shrieks, howls, yells, laughs, barking of dogs, beating of tins, blowing of horns, explosions of crackers, and a din that represents all that is wild and untamable in three nations. It is a weird, almost appalling prologue. Those laughs!—they are a study—they fairly chill the blood—they would make the fortune of a comic actor—so intense, thrilling, surprising, and seemingly filled with a ghoulish glee. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... verandah and as I went downstairs attack my face. This was far from funny. I am a person of average courage, but I don't think I was ever more cordially afraid of anything than of this miserable atomy, and the deuce of it was that I could not but admire her appalling courage and there was no means of punishing such a thread-paper creature without destroying it entirely. Act II. On Graham's arrival I gave him my room and came out to Lloyd's in the lower floor of Belle's—I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... constant laws of composition, but as they give each other expression and meaning, by particular application, requiring distinct thought to discover or to enjoy: the choice, for instance, of a particular lurid or appalling light, to illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a particular tone of pure color to prepare the mind for the expression of refined and delicate feeling; and, in a still higher sense, the invention of such incidents and thoughts as can be expressed ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and eloquently, raising her voice to that degree that the Easy Chair feared to hear the appalling "'sh! 'sh!" of the disturbed neighbors; "it is a grossly immoral spectacle, and the subtler and more fascinating the genius of Mr. Jefferson in the representation, the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... people were struggling for independence. The land flowed with blood, and along by the railway the ground is dotted with tumuli beneath which are buried the victims of their patriotism. But I did not come to Central Asia to travel as if I were in France! Novelty! Novelty! The unforeseen! The appalling! ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... 'In a most appalling manner! His wife's lover was a soldier from Perugia in garrison at Sienna—ask Ludovico—he knows all about it, but has never liked to tell you, for fear of hurting your feelings. Allow me to inform you, Bebe, that the Prince of Wales does not begin to smoke till between ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and she stepped inside. It was a dingy place, filthy, and littered, without the slightest attempt at order, with a heterogeneous collection of, it seemed, every article one could think of, from scraps of old iron and bundles of rags to cast-off furniture that was in an appalling state of dissolution. The light, that of a single and dim incandescent, came from the interior of what was apparently the "office" of the establishment, a small, glassed-in partition affair, at the far ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... Schwarz had not seen very many Bank of England notes. He could not have told whether one 'w' in Mr. Bowen's signature is better than another, but, though he did not speak English nearly as fluently as his pompous interlocutor, he understood every word of the appalling statement the latter ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Russian service, and one of the most noble and generous as well as her officers, Mouravieff. The Russians were repulsed again and again by the townspeople and their rude and undisciplined assistants from the country. The army of Mouravieff was punished with appalling slaughter, and had food been sent to the garrison, which the Turkish pashas could have effected, General Williams would not only have saved Kars, but have driven the Russians back upon the line of the Caucasus. Famine, however, conquered the heroic chief and his devoted followers. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that its use should never be called upon,—but he had trained himself into an attitude of such complete indifferentism towards life and the things of life, that to him it seemed useless to pray for what did not matter. Sometimes the thought, appalling in its truth, flashed across his brain that the force he had discovered and condensed within small compass might as easily destroy half the world as a nation! The fabled thunderbolts of Jove were child's play compared with those plain-looking, thimble-like ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... to an end. One candid youth admitted that all he knew of the matter was that he was very glad Hector was dead, and for this impious irrelevance he was ordered to write an appalling imposition and forfeit several half-holidays. But that, for the time being, was the worst thunderbolt that fell ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... indignation it had aroused, sent an embassador to London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... sacred writings of the Old and New Testaments. Nothing else is genuine that we have from antiquity,—not even the coins,—certainly, not the productions of the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church, nor the Ecumenical Councils down to that held at Trent, and to cap the climax of these appalling paradoxes, the parables and prophecies of the Saviour and the Apostles first appeared in Latin. More wondrous still! This wholesale fabrication all occurred in the 13th century, and the forgers were exclusively Benedictine monks. Had the great Jesuit confined his playful ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... appeared upon the lady's face. "I might have guessed it!" she exclaimed. "Thank you a thousand times! But at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors—oh, lost in them!" she cried, her face blanching at the words. "I beg you to lend me your arm," she added with the loveliest, suppliant inflection. "I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speaks untruth, over him whom he deceives, and a relative irresponsibility on the part of the other,—an incapacity to make use of certain truths except to his actual moral injury. And in each case all depends on the accuracy of this assumption." It is appalling to find a man like Rothe announcing a principle like this as operative in social ethics! Every man to decide for himself (taking the responsibility, of course, for his personal decision) whether he is in any sense such a guardian of his fellow-man as shall make ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... hand on the key, ready to turn it in the lock in case of necessity, he still looked back at the appalling object on the floor. There was no possibility of identifying those decayed and distorted features with any living creature whom he had seen—and, yet, he was conscious of feeling a vague and awful doubt ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... flashing In the sunny Southern sky: On, to death and glory dashing, On, where swords are clanging, clashing, On, where balls are crushing, crashing, On, 'mid perils dread, appalling, On, they're falling, falling, falling. On, they're growing fewer, fewer, On, their hearts beat all the truer, On, on, on, no fear, no falter, On, though round the battle-altar There were wounded victims moaning, There were dying soldiers groaning; On, right on, death's ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... published, the names and addresses of hundreds of manufacturers and tradesmen selling adulterated articles being fearlessly given. The responsibility incurred was immense, but the assertions of the journal were so well founded upon fact that they were universally accepted as accurately representing the appalling state of the food supply. As instances may be cited, that of thirty-four samples of coffee only three were pure, chicory being present in thirty-one, roasted corn in twelve, beans and potato flour each in one; of thirty-four samples of chicory, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the guides first proceed to render the passage more easy. He cautions travellers to pay implicit attention to guides, as the accident in 1822, when three persons sunk into the caverns of snow, was occasioned by this want of caution. It is appalling, said Dr. Clarke, to be carried over an abyss of unknown depth, slung upon cords and drawn over. On arriving at the summit of Mont Blanc the toils are amply repaid. Language cannot depict the scene before the traveller. The eye wanders ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... not especially of these matters that I wish to speak. What I want to talk about is the awful propriety, the terrible morality, of the ant [1]. Our most appalling ideals of conduct fall short of the ethics of the ant,—as progress is reckoned in time,—by nothing less than millions of years!... When I say "the ant," I mean the highest type of ant,—not, of course, ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... anxiety was visible on the face of every soul of that vast multitude. This anxiety was intensified when it was announced that the latest measurement was twenty-four feet nine inches; and what was simply appalling, that the register marked six inches rise in less than an hour. It was clear to every one that the critical moment had arrived. There was little to hope, and much to fear. Darkness fell upon as dismal a scene as imagination ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... the town with horrid noise, and in the entrance, behind the ticket-office, a huge negro was grinding out discord from an organ as big as an upright piano. We defy creation to produce another exhibition so entirely and profoundly atrocious as this. It consisted chiefly of wax figures of most appalling ugliness. There were Webster, Clay, General Scott, and another, sitting bolt upright at a card-table, staring hideously; the birth of Christ; the trial of Christ; Abraham Lincoln, dead and ghastly, upon a bier; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... their feet lay crumbling masses of calcined wood, which grew more numerous where there were open spaces farther on, and then the bare, black columns ran on again, up the valley and the steep hill benches on either hand. It was a weird scene of desolation; impressive to the point of being appalling in its suggestiveness of ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... race pass their lives. Acuteness, bravery, manliness are not wanting; right and wrong are not unacknowledged; the future world is not unknown. Even tenderness is not unfelt; the sorrows of children could touch Moselekatse's heart to its very core. But how appalling their ignorance, their misery, their SIN! Is it true that they are responsible—that "they are without excuse"? Is it true that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men"; ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... even turned aside from the goal of their precursors. Hopefulness and enthusiastic confidence in humanity when freed from the fetters of spiritual superstition and secular tyranny, marked all the most characteristic and influential speculations of the two generations before '89. The appalling failure which attended the splendid attempt to realise these hopes in a renewed and perfected social structure, had no more than its natural effect in turning men's minds back, not to the past of Rousseau's ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... young man. "I remember well, now." (He wished her mother had not been quite such an appalling person, fat and painted.) "It was only last October. I'd just come to Paris. It was my first day there, when I picked up the little dog. Now, on my first day here, you pay me back for what I did then—as if it needed ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... I came near the platform at decreasing speed, it seemed to stretch like elastic. It broke! The platform jumped up suddenly over my head, but I caught at the silk ladder. I was saved! There was a fearful silence, and then the appalling shock of hysterical applause from seven thousand throats. I slid down the ladder, ran across the stage into my dressing-room for a cloak, out again into the street. In two days I ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... it been, great Heavens! How long?" cried the engineer, a sudden fear creeping into his heart. For this, the reasserted dominance of nature, bore in on him with more appalling force than anything ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... importance where such vast crowds meet and remain together for days, and these are taken by the authorities. They cannot, however, provide against suffering caused by bad weather. Occasionally cholera breaks out, and then the scenes witnessed are appalling. At the mela of 1840 the weather was good, and there was no indication of disease among the people. Some years afterwards we were travelling towards Allahabad at an early period of the mela, and met crowds fleeing from it on account ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... prospect of a future world, into which they were thus to be hurled without a moment's preparation, was black and appalling. Most of them had been careless, and had no hope beyond the grave. Wilson was a professed infidel, and many a time had argued the truth of the Christian religion with me for a half day at a time; but in this awful ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... Indians. Their wigwams were of a great variety of structure. The scenes presented were astonishing in their wild and picturesque aspect. Crowds of weird-like savages would often be collected on the bluffs, watching the appalling phenomenon ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... and then had to start off on a tutorship. It is no use pretending that I went without vigorous protests. I said that I had never tutored anybody in my life, and was met by the answer that everything had to have a beginning, which is such an appalling truism that it ought never to be uttered. I then stated that I was sorry for the boy who had me as a tutor, though I meant, of course, that I was sorry for myself, and my mother replied that she should miss me very much, but that she had talked ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... to discover only the apathy so characteristic of the American races. On the present occasion, this must have been in part, at least, assumed. For it is impossible that the Indian prince should not have contemplated with curious interest a spectacle so strange, and, in some respects, appalling, as that of these mysterious strangers, for which no previous ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... dyke, etc. the "bund" or "band" of Anglo-India. Hence the "Sadd" on the Nile, the banks of grass and floating islands which "wall" the stream. There are few sights more appalling than a sandstorm in the desert, the "Zauba'ah" as the Arabs call it. Devils, or pillars of sand, vertical and inclined, measuring a thousand feet high, rush over the plain lashing the sand at their base like a sea surging under a furious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... it the number of that box. There was also a drop-scene, representing a pink and purple landscape, wherein sported many a lady lightly clad, and two more ladies lay along the top of the proscenium to steady a large and pallid clock. So rich and so appalling was the effect, that Philip could scarcely suppress a cry. There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy; it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany. It observes beauty, and chooses ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... will find recorded in these pages, but ten thousand times more. As I lift the dark veil and look back through the black, unlighted past, I shudder and hold my breath as scene after scene, each more appalling than the one just before it, rises like the phantom line of Banquo's issue, defining itself with pitiless distinctness upon my seared eyeballs, until the last and most awful of all stands tall and ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... forming the western wall of the 'Arabah valley, whose name they assume (Jibl el-'Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of the coast, pale quoins and naked cones ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of Tapleyism in me and come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say that no man ever saw me out of heart or ever heard a complaining word from me even when our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly crippled by cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack. However, it was done,—and after it was done came ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... was unprecedented. Never before in the history of the Great Northern had there been so heavy a snowfall in the Cascades; the sudden thaw following an ordinary precipitation must have looked serious, but the moving of this vast accumulation became appalling. All through that day, the second night the cannonading of avalanches continued, distant and near. At last came an interlude. The warm wind died out; at evening there was a promise of frost; and only the voice of the river disturbed the gorge. Dawn broke still and crisp and clear. The mountain tops ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... When a man is smitten inexplicably, as if by a bodiless hand stretched out of a cloud,—when the red slayer vanishes like a mist and leaves no faintest trace of his identity,—the mystery shrouding the deed presently becomes more appalling than the deed itself. There is something paralyzing in the thought of an invisible hand somewhere ready to strike at your life, or at some life dearer than your own. Whose hand, and where is it? Perhaps it passes you your coffee at breakfast; perhaps you have hired it to shovel the snow ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Children may escape the call to school and child labor be unchecked. When an investigation of conditions in almshouses and remote country districts of a certain southern state was made the numbers of defective and blind and crippled children brought to light was appalling. Yet one political leader of that state, at least, declared when the investigation began that "it was not only unnecessary but an insult to an enlightened state." The enlightened state simply did not know how ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... first," said Miss Avery. She drew the curtain, and Margaret uttered a cry of despair. For an appalling thing had happened. The hall was fitted up with the contents of the library from Wickham Place. The carpet had been laid, the big work-table drawn up near the window; the bookcases filled the wall opposite the fireplace, and her father's sword—this is what bewildered her ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... her; once he scored her cheek with his tongue: savage caresses that hurt like wounds. How weary she was! and yet how terribly awake! How fuller and fuller of dismay grew the knowledge that she was only prolonging her anguish and playing with death! How appalling the thought that with her voice ceased her existence! Yet she could not sing forever; her throat was dry and hard; her very breath was a pain; her mouth was hotter than any desert-worn pilgrim's;—if she could but drop upon her burning tongue one atom of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... when the sun is passed the comet sinks away again, and as it goes the tail dies down and finally disappears. The comet itself dwindles to a hairy star once more and goes—whither? Into space so remote that we cannot even dream of it—far away into cold more appalling than anything we could measure, the cold of absolute space. More and more slowly it travels, always away and away, until the sun, a short time back a huge furnace covering all the sky, is now but a faint star. Thus on its lonely journey unseen ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... ear. It was maintained, and before it fell was followed by a succession of those quarter-tones which only the Arabs have, and which I had thought finally banished from Europe. To this inhuman and appalling song were set loud open vowels ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... swift steps of the appalling discovery? You have guessed the truth already. There was the wrapper, the bottle, and the white powder inside, some sort of powder! But it wasn't quinine. One look at it was quite enough. I remember that at the very moment of picking up the bottle, before I even dealt with the wrapper, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... most appalling figure among the apocalyptic riders of Cornelius, who had used me when a child for the model of a laughing angel, he seemed to be stretching his hand toward me from his emaciated steed. The poppy leaf was not to flutter toward the sky, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... warn the flippant. It would be appalling if admirers of Literary (and other) Lapses were to send blithely to the libraries for Mr. LEACOCK'S latest and find themselves landed with The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (LANE). And yet I don't know. Here is a subject which even the flippant cannot long ignore. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... interruptions, let his own vocative stand. Then he presented a memorandum of a sum of money. It was not a large sum. But when he quoted it, everybody looked at everybody else, stricken. For it was a sum large enough to have required, in the earning, months of work on the part of an appalling ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... henceforth determine, whether he would lose a brother or a son, as I had determined to remain no longer under his roof, unless I had the assurance that I should never again see my uncle there. He looked at me. My God! what a look it was! so full of meek sorrow and appalling obedience! Without uttering a word, he sat down to his writing-table. The tears fell upon his paper; but they did not blot out a few bitter words addressed to his brother, which severed for ever in this world two noble hearts; cast, indeed, in different ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... interest of the book, however, is by far the greatest when it is regarded as a running commentary on the modern feminist movement. It is impossible to read such a book seriously without feeling a strong admiration for the courage, self-sacrifice and resolution it reflects, and at the same time a quite appalling sense of waste. When a way has been found to apply to the needs of our bewildered country the powers of such women as form the heroines of Lady CONSTANCE LYTTON'S book, I for one shall not be surprised ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... is one that I can never forget. It was frightful, yes. Yet there was a grandeur in the appalling intensity of living, in the appalling intensity of death as ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... Shosshi came into the room he divined that a change had come over the spirit of the dream. Out of the corners of his eyes he caught a glimpse of an appalling beauty standing behind a sewing machine. His face fired up, his legs began to quiver, he wished the ground would open and swallow him ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Are appalling calamities, like floods and earthquakes, the result of the working out of natural laws? Are they unmitigated evils? Were the floods in China and the plagues in India, which destroyed millions of lives, seemingly essential ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... remembered that desperate struggle for breath, for life it seemed to him, behind McIvor's broad back. The country was full of stories of men being overwhelmed by the choking, drifting whirl of snow. He knew how swift at times the on-fall of the blizzard could be, how long the storm could last, how appalling the cold could become. What should he do? He must think and act swiftly. That gleaming water near which his camp lay was, at the very best going, two hours distant. The blizzard might strike at any moment and ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... profoundly affected both English and American history. It has not worked out into such visible political forms. But any movement that makes for larger spiritual life makes for the strengthening of the entire life of the nation. The mere figures of the early Wesleyan movement are almost appalling. Here was a man, John Wesley, an Oxford scholar, who spent nearly fifty years traveling up and down and back and forth through England on horseback, covering more than two hundred and fifty thousand miles, preaching ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... chain would permit, heedless of any thing save this new object of terror. Count Robert upon this seized on a massive wooden stool, which was the only offensive weapon on which he could lay his hand, and, marking at those eyes which now reflected the blaze of fire, and which had recently seemed so appalling, he discharged against them this fragment of ponderous oak, with a force which less resembled human strength than the impetus with which an engine hurls a stone. He had employed his instant of time so well, and his aim was so true, that the missile went right to the mark and with incredible ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... It was an appalling moment. If they remained where they were, both would be crushed to death. The door was too far away for both to reach it; though it was barely possible that by a quick leap and dash he might get to the open air in the nick ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... human grandeur and the vanity of kingly pride, reminding them that there is but a step from the palace to the scaffold, which step had been taken by more than one of their family. The walls of their abode were yet marked by musket-balls, mementos of a day of appalling violence, and from the windows they could see the public square where the guillotine had permanently stood and the pavement had been crimsoned with the blood of their race. They had awakened from a long sleep, among a new order of men, who were strangers to them, and who looked upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... look forward to a festal treat. Their places taken, they, with eyebrows rais'd, Sit patiently, and fain would be amaz'd. I know the art to hit the public taste, Yet ne'er of failure felt so keen a dread; True, they are not accustomed to the best, But then appalling the amount they've read.. How make our entertainment striking, new, And yet significant and pleasing too? For to be plain, I love to see the throng, As to our booth the living tide progresses; As wave on wave successive ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... afterward that it was by only a matter of inches that I escaped disembowelling. Vaguely, too, I remember, my father carried me in his arms to the trees on the edge of the field, while all the world reeled and swung about me, and I was aware of deadly nausea mingled with an appalling conviction ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... followed, the famine became appalling. The starving peasants left their miserable huts and streamed into the towns for relief, only to die ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... share of mediaeval mischievousness, replied that the physique of the lower middle classes was improving at a most appalling rate. She saw that he was laughing at their harmless neighbour, and roused herself to ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... pictured by a pen alive with the subject; of the two sons, one is murdered by his father for preferring the love of a Capulet to the success of the Montagues; the other, Ostap, is taken prisoner, and tortured to death. Taras, in disguise, watches the appalling sufferings of his son; just before his death, Ostap, who had not uttered a word during the prolonged and awful agony, cries out to the hostile sky, like the bitter cry "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" "Father! where are you? do you hear all?" and to the amazement ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... into play—the asterisks—which on former occasions answered the purpose of a forest and a cloud, being now converted into a very convenient pool, in which she quietly immerses the offspring of her illicit passion. And the deed being done, its appalling consequences on her conscience are thus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Hamilton's Minutes of Proceedings in the Privy Council, there occurs a singular entry, evincing plainly that the Earl of Mar, and others of James's Council, were becoming fully sensible of the desperate iniquity and inhumanity of these proceedings. I have modernized the spelling that this appalling record may be legible to all ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... graduate, making him incapable of rendering correctly into English the spirit and the letter of a foreign tongue, I have respectfully declined. I may say, and with accuracy, that scarcely a translation is made which does not show some blunder more or less appalling. ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... in Europe. These cultivated forms have formed the basis of original descriptions in almost all of the European publications, and in very rare cases have any types been preserved. As a result, the bibliography of Cactaceae is appalling, and it is questionable whether satisfactory conclusions can be reached in the case of hundreds of published names. The earlier descriptions were not only meager, but were based upon what are now regarded very insufficient characters, and in the absence of types it is not only unsafe, ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... fronted them with buoyant and unquailing spirit, and rose, where other men of less faith and courage would have given up in despair, to the level of seeming impossibilities, and to the top of a truly appalling situation. Where were they, indeed, to procure arms? There was a blacksmith among them, who was set to manufacturing pike-heads and bayonets, and to turning long knives into daggers and dirks. Arms in the houses of the white folks they designed to borrow after the manner ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... millions, there lay on the desk before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs—a memorandum made by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. On the face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chief asset, indeed my only asset that measured up toward my debts, was my Coal stocks, those bought and those contracted for; and, while their par value far exceeded my liabilities, they had to appear in my memorandum at their actual market value on that day. I looked at the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... as they did in Wales and elsewhere, and amongst some of our far Eastern Indians. But there were terrifying and repulsive names as well, such as Sese kenapik kaow apeoo, "She sits like a rattle-snake"; and one individual rejoiced in the appalling surname of "Grand Bastard." These instances serve to illustrate the tendency of half-breed nomenclature at the lake towards the mother's side. Here, too, there was no reserve in giving the family name; it was given ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... of disease and death. Horrid sounds saluted the ears; ghastly figures met the eyes; and the fragrance of the flowers was overpowered by the tainted and noisome atmosphere issuing from the open doors and windows. The grocer had scarcely entered the gate when he was arrested by an appalling shriek, followed by a succession of cries so horrifying that he felt half disposed to fly. But mustering up his resolution, and breathing at a phial of vinegar, he advanced towards the principal door, which stood wide open, and called to one of the assistants. The man, however, was ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was broken by appalling yells and screams. My hair bristled for an instant and then I burst ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... effect annoyed both the duke and Coburg. Most reluctantly did the latter consent to the divergence of the British towards Dunkirk; but, as he had already decided to spend the rest of the campaign in reducing the border fortresses, the division of forces had none of those appalling results which Alison and others have detected. The duke's corps, then, turned off to the right, and, after gaining some successes over bodies of the French, set about the siege of Dunkirk. If his siege train had arrived in time, the town would probably soon ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... but the long railway journey, the strange field, and the clamorous mob render poor Bunny almost helpless, and he gives up his life only too easily. The best of the terriers were beautiful wretches with iron muscles and a general air of courageous wickedness. Their bloodthirstiness was appalling; they knew exactly what was to happen, and their sharp yells of rapture made a din that set my head swimming. Each of them writhed and strained at the collar, and I caught myself wondering what the poor rabbits ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... wagaries" (as his son called them) when he was roused, were something tremendous, earthquaky, appalling! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... utter. As for me, feeling as I do the full weight of my responsibilities, I wish to seek behind those words, beyond yourselves, whether there is not some detail unperceived by yourselves which will destroy the appalling truth established by your evidence. What I am seeking is—I tell you so frankly—a doubt on your part, a contradiction. I ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the appalling ennui that is trying me, sunk in this company, in the midst of the country, far from my own people, she does not reply, but her lips close tight, her eyes take on an indefinable expression of melancholy and of pity. One day she said to me in a dry tone: "Oh, liberty's worth ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... and I have vivid memories of their angular peculiarities even to-day. They might have been of considerable interest as geological specimens to a scientific man under happier conditions. As ballast they were useful. As weights to be moved about in cramped quarters they were simply appalling. They spared no portion of our poor bodies. Another of our troubles, worth mention here, was the chafing of our legs by our wet clothes, which had not been changed now for seven months. The insides of our thighs were rubbed raw, and the one ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... ammunition was exhausted. The British casualties amounted to sixteen killed, forty-three wounded, eight missing, and thirty-five captured. These figures would be insignificant on the battlefields of Europe, but to lose so many men in only one attack in South Africa was almost appalling. This reverse having brought home to the waverers the danger of procrastination, a fresh spirit set in among the passive loyalists. But the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... beginning to arrive. Fortunately some commodious caravans had arrived from England, only a few days before, and these were now entering the gate. They were filled principally with Brunswickers and Highlanders; and it was an appalling spectacle to behold the very soldiers, whose fine martial appearance and excellent appointments I had so much admired at the review, now lying helpless and mutilated—their uniforms soiled with blood and dirt—their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... picture of himself as a thirsty man in a waterless land. That may be a literally true reproduction of his condition, if indeed the old idea is correct, that this is a work of David's; for there is no more appalling desert than that in which he wandered as an exile. It is a land of arid mountains without a blade of verdure, blazing in their ghastly whiteness under the fierce sunshine, and with gaunt ravines in which there are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... endured, in the first portion of this dismal valley, great darkness and distress of mind about his soul's safety for eternity; and, in the latter part of the valley, the dread of an ignominious, and cruel, and sudden execution in the midst of his days-a fear more appalling than the prospect of a natural death. This he was enabled to bear, because he then enjoyed the light, the presence, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of June 29, 1861, closed with appalling suddenness the fifteen years' married life of Browning. "I shall grow still, I hope," he wrote to Miss Haworth, a month later, "but my root is taken, and remains." The words vividly express the valour in the midst of desolation which animated one little tried ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... your pocket money, your knife and your watch. She added that my coachman John—whom I shall instantly discharge—was witness to the whole transaction. Now, Ernest, be pleased to tell me whether this appalling ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... inexorable accents, the grove was thronged with the revellers. They jostled each other in their solicitude to minister to the cruelty of the despot; and that cruelty was as ruthless, and as hell-born, as it was ingenious and appalling. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Henry Clay was the most skilful and effective. He both handled the sore place with consummate dexterity, and kept up the constitution of the patient by stimulants, which enabled him, at last, to live through the appalling operation which removed the cause of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... words, and Judithe noticed, as she had done often before, the lack of complaint or bewailings of the disasters so appalling to the South, for even the victories were so dearly bought. There was an intense eagerness for news from the front, and when it was read, the tears were silent ones. The women smiled bravely and were sure of victory in the end. Their faith in ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... air and flung it against the houses. It undermined the heaps of clotted snow till they tottered like icebergs and fell to pieces. Men made their way through, it on stilts. Had a frost followed, the result would have been appalling; but there was no more frost that winter. A fortnight passed before the place looked itself again, and even then congealed snow stood doggedly in the streets, while the country roads were like newly ploughed ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... earnest and zealous men should have adopted such a style of discussing religious differences. I cannot help thinking it is injurious to Christian feelings of love and Christian kindness. It is really sometimes quite appalling. From the same quarter I must expect myself severe handling for some of these pages, should they fall into their way. We cannot but lament, however, when we find such language used towards each other by those who are believers in a common Bible, and ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... such a life the plain, with its sliding snow and ferocious wind, was appalling—a treeless expanse and a racing-ground for snow and wind. The man's mood grew darker while he mused. He served the meal on the rude box which took the place of table, and still his companion did not come. Ho looked at his watch. It was nearly one o'clock, and yet there was no sign ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... conviction of their reality. Signorelli is the only painter of the Renaissance I can recall who has succeeded in giving a savage sternness, a formidable brutishness to his fiends, which is very far from grotesque, but is really appalling. These ferocious creatures are of all colours, slate-blue, crude purple, heavy green, livid mauve—sometimes of all these poisonous-looking colours fading one into the other. Strong and malevolent, they triumph in their work of torture, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling solemnity, against the rocks. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... It is appalling to a beginner when he first reads the long list of names of classes, genera, and species, as the latter are so closely allied in resemblance. One has not always the time nor inclination to condense facts for himself, nor ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organisation. The managers remain studiously concealed and masked; but there is no doubt about their ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... you for some inconvenience. I don't see why you should be suspected. You will be supposed to be fast asleep on your virtuous couch, while some bad burglar is robbing your worthy employer. Of course you will be thunderstruck when in the morning the appalling discovery is made. I'll tell you what will be a ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... him his austere grandfather, Don Horacio, and along with him the animosities of the Inquisitor-general, he of the appalling visiting card, and the souls of the famous knight commander and other ancestors. In the mind of the man of today still lingered something of that "perpetual governor" who considered the Jewish converts on the island as ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of it singularly dramatic and even appalling to the woman who sat with the pearl-gray veil drawn closely about her face. For eighteen hours she had been a keenly attentive, wide-eyed, and partly frightened bit of humanity in this onrush of "the horde." She had heard a voice behind her speak of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... in sardonic astonishment upon the two young creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny in this appalling business. Flying from palaces ... hiding in tombs ... taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... lid against the sand, and waited. I knew by the masklike expression of his face, the pallor, and the steadiness of the eyes, that he anticipated something that might be very terrible—appalling. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... case of a certain slave mother, who, when dying, was asked how she felt about leaving her children and who replied: "O missis, you will take care of them; I don't mind them." It has been truthfully said that the most appalling feature of slavery was the lack of family life suffered by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... trees and the ground. He knows every plant and its uses, the best wood for fires; he knows when he may expect to find water, and which liana makes the strongest rope. Yet even he seems to feel something of the appalling loneliness of ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... view him; and limiting this view to his civil administration, I demand, where is there a Chief Magistrate of whom so much evil has been predicted, and from whom so much good has come? Never has any man entered upon the Chief Magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration of justice ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton
... not," she replied; "I was alone. Yet I felt as though some living thing were nigh—some unseen form, of terrible and appalling attributes! Was it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... this is," said Bertie Wilton. "I feel really a better man since I've seen it. Seriously, I don't think I shall ever drink champagne of that colour now that we have seen the appalling results. It's a terrible ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... am the Prince of Darkness," the announcement could not have wrought a more appalling change in her. She fell back a step, putting out one faltering hand to the wall for support. Her small bullying mien vanished like a garment twitched from her shoulders by unseen magic. Her face blanched piteously; terror looked from her eyes. "Oh, I was afraid of this!" she gasped, in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... denunciation of the recent seizure of flour; but this is counteracted by an appalling intimation in one of the papers that unless the army be subsisted, it will be withdrawn from the State, and Virginia must fall into the hands of the enemy. The loss of Virginia might be the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... prayer; may Indra with seasonable showers render the earth bountiful of grain; may the presiding Brahmans secure the favour of the gods by acceptable sacrifices; may the association of the pious confer delight until the end of time, and may the appalling blasphemies of the profane be silenced ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry, threatening throng, who didn't dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, in the strangers' faces. The change was appalling in its electric suddenness. Muriel drew back horrified, in an agony of alarm. "Oh, what have I done!" she cried, piteously, clinging to Felix for support. "Why on earth are ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... precisely the scene of his honeymoon. The hazard of fate was truly appalling. He and his wife might have walked one day straight into the arms of her sister! He ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... was over, but I had still my accounts for that entertainment to square. And the result of that operation was appalling. It was a fortnight since my salary had been raised, but so far I had not a penny saved. The extra money had gone, I couldn't exactly say how, in sundry "trifling expenditures," such as pomatum, a scarf-pin, and a steel chain for my waistcoat, all ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... winter of 1795-1796, spent within the walls of an asylum. In 1796 Lamb's sister Mary, who was as talented and remarkable as Lamb himself, went violently insane and killed her own mother. For a long time after this appalling tragedy she was in an asylum at Hoxton; then Lamb, in 1797, brought her to his own little house, and for the remainder of his life cared for her with a tenderness and devotion which furnishes one of the most beautiful pages in our literary history. At times the malady would return to Mary, giving ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... I feel now as if I knew nothing about them, and was quite incompetent to so great an office—to rule over such vast concerns, with such parties. With so many great things and so many little things to decide it is quite appalling. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... And the instinct of the world felt this in a moment. In the new precision and accurate law of the classical forms, they perceived something peculiarly adapted to the setting forth of state in an appalling manner: Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic was good for God's worship, but this was good for man's worship. The Gothic had fellowship with all hearts, and was universal, like nature: it could frame a temple for the prayer ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... described. The most sensational accounts of the yellowest journals fell far short of the truth—simply because its full horror was beyond the power of words to portray. Figures and statistics can give little idea of the results of such an appalling calamity; and to this day, people at a distance have no realization of the unutterable woe which our Red Cross band of less than a dozen, strove to alleviate. We arrived on the eighth day after the tragedy, in which upward of ten thousand lives went ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... the ground beside her. Still she took not the smallest notice of it; she laid one shapely hand on the small of its back, as if to make sure it was there, and continued her conversation tranquilly with Morley. How she could hear what he said I could not tell. I could hear nothing but the appalling row ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross |
