"Execrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Newport to-day, and finding it all so fair, it seems hard to believe that the foundation of all its wealth and prosperity rested upon the most cruel, the most execrable, the most inhuman traffic that ever was plied by degraded men—the traffic in slaves. Yet in the old days the trade was far from being held either cruel inhuman—indeed, vessels often set sail for the Bight of Benin to swap rum for slaves, after their owners had invoked the blessing ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... are not to that end and purpose proposed, that these functions should be opposed one against another, in a hostile posture, or in terms of enmity, than which nothing is more hurtful to the church and commonwealth, nothing more execrable to them who are truly and sincerely zealous for the house of God (for they have not so learned Christ); but the aim is, first, and above all, that unto the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ, the only monarch of the church, his own prerogative royal (of which also himself ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. "That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour," forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England has been in the hearts and mouths of many who have known that the establishment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... in a fierce silence that distressed his wife. Morestal was nervous, excited and in an execrable temper. He went out for no reason, came in again at ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... sacrifice to its claims the clearest dictates of humanity and religion; being at all times ready to bind themselves by an oath that they would neither eat nor drink until they had slain the enemy of their nation or of their God. This was the school which supplied that execrable faction, who added tenfold to the miseries of Jerusalem in the day of her visitation, and who contributed more than all the legions of Rome to realize the bitterness of the curse which was poured ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... of the great crowned statue of the Virgin. It was illuminated by means of blue and yellow globes which encompassed it with a gaudy splendour; and despite all his piety M. de Guersaint could not help finding these decorations in execrable taste. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... trained up in Holy Scriptures would suffer one syllable of Divine truth to be betrayed; but were ready, if it be required, to suffer any death in the defence thereof.' People, he maintained, are ever carried on by the example of their governors. 'How,' he asks, 'was the Eastern Empire polluted with execrable Arianism, whilst yet the Western continued in the truth? The historians give the reason of it. Constantine, an Arian, ruled in the East when at the same time Constans and Constantius, sons to Constantine the Great, treading in the steps of their pious father, adhered to the truth professed by him, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... was not lively, and the Duke, they say, made a most execrable speech. The fact is that he is not up to a great speech on a great question; he wants the information and preparation, the discipline of mind, that is necessary, and accordingly he exposes himself dreadfully, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Giovanni, his son. There was a village band performing up the street, in front of the house of a colonel who had come home wounded from Tripoli. Everybody in the village was wildly proud about the colonel and about the brass band, the music of which was execrable. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... between two lengthy hilly ridges, thickly dotted with the giant forms of the baobab. Kididimo is exceedingly bleak in aspect. Even the faces of the Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... tude, f., study. evanouir (s'), to vanish; to faint. veiller, s'—, to wake. vnement, m., event. viter, to avoid. xces, m., excess; — d'honneur, passing great honor. xciter, to urge. excrable, execrable, hateful. excuter, to carry out. exemple, m., example. exercer, to wield. exiler, to exile. expirer, to expire. expliquer, to explain. exposer, to expose, reveal; s'—, to risk one's life, exprimer, to express, describe. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... cookery and law chicanery. These are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill used, to show that they are not totally forgotten. These others do the same, who insist upon stoutly defending the forms of speaking, dances and games to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices—it is for the Spartans only to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they are just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... one of those warm spring mornings when vital energies flag, that Mr. and Mrs. Vincent toiled up the third flight of stairs; the halls filled with execrable odours of fried ham and cheap coffee; each busy with their own thoughts, possibly of green fields, apple-blossoms, spring violets, tables with damask and silver, cool, inviting rooms, and other equally tantalising suggestions. Faith, at the ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... grow wearier of dwelling in a body worn out and condemned to suffer. I am writing to you in the first moment of my grief. Astonishment, sorrow, indignation, scorn, all blended together, lacerate my soul. Let us get to the end, then, of this execrable Campaign; I will then write to you what is to become of me; and we will arrange the rest. Pity me;—ad make no noise about me; bad news go fast enough of themselves. Adieu, dear Marquis." [OEuvres de Frederic, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Coleridge of the kittens, and tell her that George's brandy is just what smuggled spirits might be expected to be, execrable! The smack of it remains in my mouth, and I believe will keep me most horribly temperate for half a century. He (Burnet) was bit, but I caught the Brandiphobia.[36] [obliterations ...]—scratched out, well knowing that you never ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... But the judgment of general history ought not to be restricted to considerations of personal merit. Marcus Aurelius and his noble teachers have had no permanent influence on the world. Marcus Aurelius left behind him delightful books, an execrable son, and a decaying nation. Jesus remains an inexhaustible principle of moral regeneration for humanity. Philosophy does not suffice for the multitude. They must have sanctity. An Apollonius of Tyana, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... of his mood; now preoccupied with one hero or god, now with another. The Tennyson in his twenties, who wrote the fairylike Lady of Shalott, was a very different man in mood and outlook from the Mid-Victorian Tennyson who wrote the execrable Merlin and Vivien; but both were possessed with the Arthurian legend. At thirty and at fifty you may easily take different views of the same men and incidents. The Iliad, I suggest, may be explained as ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... boots and shoes, the former of which are worn chiefly, of Buenos Ayres make; and ready-made garments of linen and poor cloths. The imported liquors and articles of food are principally a small quantity of sugar, lard, wine of an execrable quality, and Hamburg gin, together with a few boxes of candles and some oil and soap. To this list of imports must be added the inevitable Chinese fire-crackers, without which noisy accessories no Paraguayan holiday would be complete. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of Lady Fareham's most serious letters. Her pen was exercised, for the most part, in a lighter vein. She wrote of the Court beauties, the Court jests—practical jokes some of them, which our finer minds of to-day would consider in execrable taste—such jests as we read of in Grammont's memoirs, which generally aimed at making an ugly woman ridiculous, or an injured husband the sport and victim of wicked lover and heartless wife. No sense of the fitness of things constrained her ladyship from communicating these Court ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the house of one Geresolveert,[140] schout (sheriff or constable), of the place, who had formerly lived in Brazil, and whose heart was still full of it. This house was constantly filled with people, all the time drinking, for the most part, that execrable rum. He had also the best cider we have tasted. Among the crowd we found a person of quality, an Englishman, named Captain Catrix, whose father is in great favor with the king, and he himself had assisted in several exploits ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her face. And yet refusing ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... law you had outraged, none knew whither; traveller once more revisiting London, with the same earthly passions which filled your heart when races now no more walked through yonder streets; outlaw from the school of all the nobler and diviner mystics; execrable Image of Life in Death and Death in Life, I warn you back from the cities and homes of healthful men; back to the ruins of departed empires; back to the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers. Whereas, with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily, and smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... period of her history, was a mere den of execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the interests ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defense. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to informing you that ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... St. Pancras was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1537, Thomas Cromwell, that execrable vandal, not only abolishing the monks but destroying the buildings, which covered, with their gardens and fish ponds, forty acres. The ruins that remain give some idea of the extent of this wonderful priory, another ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... so,—and it was but too probable,—to whom should he send his letters hereafter? Here, again, he saw himself reduced to Maxime de Brevan as the only one who could convey news from him to Henrietta. Ah! he recognized but too clearly the execrable but most cunning policy ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... evidently borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff. Almost every man carries a supply of coarse snuff in a little sheepskin wallet or dried bladder; at short intervals he rubs a pinch of this villainous stuff all over his teeth and gums and deposits a second ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... humanity, delivered up above twenty men of the garrison to the Indians in lieu of the same number they had lost during the siege; and in all probability these miserable captives were put to death by those barbarians, with the most excruciating tortures, according to the execrable custom ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... drove to the Sparrow Hills, about five miles west of the city. The road was execrable, full of ruts and holes. They passed the palace of the Empress-Mother, which has some handsome gardens. They saw also an asylum for the widows and children of decayed merchants. It is a wide, extended building, with a church in ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... well, like an old drunkard saturated with liquor, whom the alcohol seemed to preserve. At Plassans he had left a terrible reputation as a do-nothing and a scoundrel, and the old men whispered the execrable story of the corpses that lay between him and the Rougons, an act of treachery in the troublous days of December, 1851, an ambuscade in which he had left comrades with their bellies ripped open, lying on the bloody ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... all use white garments within the city, but at night or outside the city they use red garments either of wool or silk. They hate black as they do dung, and therefore they dislike the Japanese, who are fond of black. Pride they consider the most execrable vice, and one who acts proudly is chastised with the most ruthless correction. Wherefore no one thinks it lowering to wait at table or to work in the kitchen or fields. All work they call discipline, and thus they say that it is honourable to go on foot, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... very bad case, indeed!" Mr. King was exploding at intervals, while the torrent was rushing on in execrable French as far as accent went. No one else of the spellbound group could have spoken if there had been occasion for a word. Then he pulled out the pocket-book again, and taking out several franc notes of a good size, he pressed them between the man's dirty ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... of four, accompanied by a following of black fellows and half a dozen dogs, set out by train. Before reaching San Felipe our bones had a shaking. The roadbed was execrable, the trucks of the cars were without springs, and to me it seemed as if we must leave ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... day in company with Carreno at the house of Don Pedro de Arce, when a discussion arose about the merits of a certain copy of Titian's St. Margaret, which hung in the room After all present had voted it execrable, Carreno quietly remarked, "It at least has the merit of showing that no man need despair of improving in art, for I painted it myself when ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... much-vaunted book, by a young American, but one in which we take no pleasure. In the first place, it is written in a most execrable style,—all affectation, and verbal wriggling and twisting for the sake of originality. The veriest sophomore ought to be "rusticated" for such conceited phrases as "beautiful budburstiness of bosom,"—"her ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... wrath of man, in other words, is made to praise God, showing that He is the Sovereign ruler on this earth, and uses what instruments He pleases to carry out his great and benevolent designs. However atrocious the causes of wars, and execrable the spirit in which they are carried out, they are ever made to subserve the benefit of future ages, and the great cause of civilization in its vast connections. Men may be guilty, and may be punished for their wickedness, and execrated through all ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... people derived from this execrable amusement, induced the candidates for office to gratify, them frequently with this spectacle. The exhibitions were no longer confined to funerals; they formed an integrant part of every election, and were found more powerful than merit in opening a way ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... attention to experience) to cast their eyes upon the proceedings and manners of the French court (wild and chimerical as such an appeal will no doubt appear to them) during the dominion of Catharine of Medicis and her offspring, those execrable deceivers, corrupters, and executioners of their people. To what are the almost incredible abominations, familiar as household words to the French court of that day, to be ascribed? To what are the persecutions, perjuries, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... for Zotique asserts the region has that name); then was a veracious steamboat guide for tourists to the Gulf; edited a comic weekly at Quebec, "illustrated" it, itself cheerfully and truly confessed, "with execrable wood-engravings;" as Papal Zouave, he embarked for Rome to gallant in voluminous trousers on four sous a day; fought wildly, for the fun of it, at the Pia Gate against Victor Emmanuel's red-shirted patriots,—and came back to Dormilliere disgusted. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... inferiority to Edward,—to sympathize with the youth's horror at the sight of this obnoxious husband, "who seems to him," as M. Janin says in his preface, "a hero—what do I say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, la Franaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity can hardly be controlled. It seems as if M. Feydeau, by collecting in one individual all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... people of the quarter; their land of lethe. So near were the saloons and drinking gardens that from their open doorways there came a pungent odor of beer. Every place had instrumental music of some kind. Mandolins and guitars, in the hands of gentlemen of color, were the favorites. Pianos of execrable tone, played by youths with defective complexions, or by machinery, were a close second. Before one place, a crowd blocked the sidewalk; and there Ben stopped. A vaudeville performance was going on within—an invisible dialect comedian doing a German ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... come to anchor," said our dirty Polish host to us in execrable English. "And we may be off on board," said Smith. "Not yet," he said; "they must put their cargo out first." I saw, however, that Smith was uneasy, and I made up my mind to go off to the vessel at once. When they should ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... the company mustered. The weather was execrable—fog that you might cut with an axe; and the Duke rode out "in a perfect sulkiness." But suddenly, as he looked round, the sun ploughed up the woolly mass, and drove it in all directions, and looking through the courtyard arch, he saw a troop of Gipsies on their march, coming with the annual ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... extremely hard it is for us, with the best intentions, to communicate coherently with the embodied world. Why, there is the Puddifant ghost—in Lord Puddifant's family, you know: he has been trying for generations to inform his descendants that the drainage of the castle is execrable. Yet he can never come nearer what he means than taking the form of a shadowy hearse-and-four, and driving round and round Castle Puddifant at midnight. And old Lady Wadham's ghost, what a sufferer that woman is! She merely desires ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... little remains to be said further than that the grass was thin and washy, the roads muddy and slippery, and the weather execrable, although May had been ushered in long before we reached the little Mormon town of Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), a few miles above the place where we were to cross the Missouri River. Here my brother Oliver joined us, having come from Indianapolis ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... English person calling himself Hobbs, a baker, to whom Cousin Egbert presented me, full of delight at the idea that as compatriots we were bound to be congenial. Yet it needed only a glance and a moment's listening to the fellow's execrable cockney dialect to perceive that he was distinctly low-class, and I was immensely relieved, upon inquiry, to learn that he affiliated only with the Bohemian set. I felt a marked antagonism between us at that first meeting; the fellow eyed ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Fouquet, becoming more and more excited; "this crime more execrable than an assassination! this crime which dishonors my name forever, and entails upon me the horror ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he deprived them by ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... cried the countess in horror,—"the abbe de Ganges! You are that execrable abbe de Ganges whose very name makes one shudder? And to you, to a man thus infamous, we have entrusted the education of our only son? Oh, I hope, for all our sakes, monsieur, that you are speaking falsely; for if you were speaking the truth I think I should have you arrested this very instant ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... pleases one, my dear father and mother, to be so beloved.—How much better, by good fame and integrity, is it to get every one's good word but one, than, by pleasing that one, to make every one else one's enemy, and be an execrable ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... hand, armed with her "lines," confided her position to the master-mason, her father, and his wife. Burns and his brother were then in a fair way to ruin themselves in their farm; the poet was an execrable match for any well-to-do country lass; and perhaps old Armour had an inkling of a previous attachment on his daughter's part. At least, he was not so much incensed by her slip from virtue as by the marriage which had been designed to cover it. Of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... du Bouriau. "Mere Cognette," who lost her husband about 1835, opened a little cafe at Issoudun during the first years of her widowhood. Balzac was an intermittent and impecunious client of hers; he would enter her shop, quaff a cup of coffee, execrable to the palate of a connoisseur like him, and "chat a bit" with the good old woman who probably unconsciously furnished him ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... swam stemming the execrable concert, but it was overwhelmed. Wilfrid pressed forward to her. They could hear nothing but the din. The booth raged like an insurgent menagerie. Outside it sounded of brazen beasts, and beasts that whistled, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sentiment, and took part in all the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was, in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... mixed up with all those sterile and wanton party movements which discredit our days, uttering over and over again hollow phrases in condemnation of all that is noble and sacred, appealing to the most execrable passions of the multitude"— ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... or tenderfeet. It cost twelve miles of hard travel to reach that camp; and, though we started at daylight, it was past noon when we arrived. The first seven miles could be made on wheels, the balance by hard tramping. The road was execrable; no one cared to ride; but it was necessary to have our loads carried as far as possible. The clearings looked dreary enough and the woods forbidding to a degree, but our old camp was the picture of desolation. There was six inches of damp snow on the leafless brush roof, the blackened brands ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... of France were at this time subjected to the guidance of the execrable Catherine dei Medici. To this woman the religious differences which then agitated Europe were in themselves perfectly indifferent, and on more than one occasion she had allowed it to be perceived that they were so: but a close and dispassionate ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... unceasing traffic of the main streets of Marseilles, but also on the dark, much-worn roads leading out of the city. The roads around Marseilles have never been outstanding for their excellence, and after the war they were indeed execrable. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... of the human reason, was irrepressible. This he did with an air of matured conviction and with the impact of conscious moral authority, but in terms as strikingly eccentric as the thoughts were lofty and inspiring, and in execrable French, the declaimer being known as minus habens in his studies and utterly incapable. All this was the very make-up of folly; and Brother Hecker was no doubt thought a fool. But how holy a fool he was his superiors soon discovered. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... own pen and ink," the Professor expostulated. "If there is anything I detest in the world, it is violet ink. And your pen, too, is execrable. As these are to be the last words I shall leave to a sorrowing world, I should like to write them in my own fashion. Open the bag for yourself, if you will. You can pass me the ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted, especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with the end of his fork into strips as thin ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... power to the multitude, who have changed the entire ecclesiastical order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, not only with respect to the leader but also with respect to doctrine, at the point of causing an execrable schism ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... greater blunder of our civil war. It was forced upon the nation by the slave traders, that they might perpetuate slavery. And now after the infliction of woes which no finite imagination can gauge, these very slave-holders declare with one voice, that nothing would induce them to reinstate the execrable institution. How much misery would have been averted, and what a comparative paradise would our southern country now have been, if before, instead of after the war, the oppressed had ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... accusations against Piso. The populace, which admired her for her fidelity and love for her husband, was even more deeply stirred, and on every hand the cry was raised that an exemplary punishment ought to be meted out to so execrable ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... my mediation is the invaders of any soil that is first dug up and then left for a time to its own resources. We have, in the first rank, the couch-grass, that execrable weed which three years of stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating. Next, in respect of number, come the centauries, grim-looking one and all, bristling with prickles or starry halberds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury, the mountain centaury, the star-thistle and the rough centaury: ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the club proper by a liveried servant, and from the handsome oak-panelled vestibule we passed into a lofty apartment hung with pictures and filled with miscellaneous objects of art. All, without exception, were execrable—miserable daubs of painting, criminal essays in plastic and decorative work, and a collection of statuary that could be adequately matched only by the horrors in Central Park. "Our art gallery, gentlemen," ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... regarded himself as a poet, approved of the sentiment; Dr. Steingass, who wrote execrable verses in English which neither rhymed nor scanned, though they were intended to do both, was no less satisfied; Mr. Ashbee, who looked at matters solely from a bibliographical point of view, dissented; and Mr. Arbuthnot ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... this way, say they, that we should affirm ourselves holy and godly; far be this arrogance and rashness from us: we are miserable sinners; we should be mad, if we should arrogate holiness to ourselves. Thus they mock at true faith, and count such doctrine as this execrable error; and thus try to extinguish the Gospel. These are they that deny the faith of Christ, and persecute it throughout the whole world; of whom Paul speaks: "In the latter times many shall depart from the faith," etc., for we see by these ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... of Saint Mary at Ierusalem on the other part, lately concluded and agreed vpon in these words. In the name of the supreame and indiuisible Trinitie, the Father, the Sonne, and holy Ghost, Amen. Forasmuch as the author of peace will haue peacemakers to be the sons of blessednes, and the execrable enemie of peace to be expelled out of the dominions of Christians: therefore for the perpetuall memorie of the thing, be it knowen vnto all men who shall see or heare the tenour of these presents: that there ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the Tuileries, they coupled the name of Napoleon with Jacobin curses and revolutionary songs. The airs and the words that had made Paris tremble to her very centre during the Reign of Terror—the "Marseillaise," the "Carmagnole," the "Jour du depart," the execrable ditty, the burden of which is, "And with the entrails of the last of the priests let us strangle the last of the kings," were all roared out in fearful chorus by a drunken, filthy, and furious mob. Many a day ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying execrable posters of roosters. Hurrah! hurrah! A flash ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... excited them to a still higher frenzy. The Confederate Senate talked of raising the black flag; Jefferson Davis's message stigmatized it as "the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man"; and a joint resolution of the Confederate Congress prescribed that white officers of negro Union soldiers "shall, if captured, be put to death, or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the court." The general orders of some subordinate ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... I might refresh them with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach of Reason—Predestination, Election, the Co-existences and Co-eternities of the incomprehensible Triad. And with what a holy vehemence would I exclaim and cry out against all forms of doctrinal Error—all the execrable hypotheses of the great Heresiarchs! Then there would be many ancient and learned and out-of-the-way Iniquities to denounce, and splendid, neglected Virtues to inculcate—Apostolic Poverty, and Virginity, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Horace.—In a pamphlet against Pope, entitled, A True Character of Mr. Pope and his Writings, by the author of The Critical History of England, written in May, 1716, and printed in that year, Pope is reproached with having just published a "libellous," "impudent," and "execrable" Imitation of Horace. Twenty years later such a reproach would be very intelligible; but can any one favour me with a reference to any Imitation of Horace, published by Pope prior to 1716, of which any such complaint could ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... asleep. It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet striking the bowlder just above my body. A band of Indians had trailed me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside above. The smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my feet than he was off his and rolling down the declivity. Then I ran ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... but observe that cruel and unheard-of neglect of that enemy to his king and country, the author of this Act, that, when all business, the very life and being of a commercial state, was to be carried on by the use of stamps, that wicked and execrable minister never paid the least regard to the miseries of this extensive continent, but suffered the time for the taking place of the Act to elapse months before a single stamp was received. Though this was a high piece of infidelity to the interest of his royal master, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Hound! Execrable monster!—Back with him, oh thou infinite spirit! back with the reptile into his dog's shape, in which it was his wont to scamper before me at eventide, to roll before the feet of the harmless wanderer, and to fasten on his shoulders when he fell! Change him again into his favourite shape, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... awaking such a din that existence was unbearable within ten feet of them. Philidor went on with his portraits and was so absorbed that for at least twenty minutes he neither saw nor heard what was going on about him. He had been aware of his companion's execrable performance a while ago, and now realized with a suddenness which surprised him that she played no more. He rose and peered about over the shoulders of his rustic admirers. Somebody directed his glance. There ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... covered by the sedan chair porters are remarkable, being sometimes as much as thirty-five miles a day, even on a journey extending over a month. The transport animals—ponies, mules, oxen and donkeys—are strong and hardy, and manage to drag carts along the execrable roads. The ponies are said to be admirable, and the mules unequaled in any other country. The distances which these animals will cover on the very poorest of forage ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... miserable death in the transportation thither, . . . determined to keep open a market where white men should be bought and sold; he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce." ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... newspaper, which he had caught up from a table. "I will run him through the body like that"—Aristide had never handled a foil in his life—"and when he is dead, your beautiful daughter will thank me for having saved her from such an execrable fellow." ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... squire had been as quicksighted as he was remarkable for the contrary, passion might at present very well have blinded him. He thanked Jones for offering to undertake the office, and said, "Go, go, prithee, try what canst do;" and then swore many execrable oaths that he would turn her out of doors unless ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... with it, that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... that execrable man, Williamson; the man who but the other day murdered such a number of Moravian Indians, knowing them to be friends; knowing that he ran no risk in murdering a people who would not fight, and whose only business ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... chef a resolu d'ouvrir le congres avec un discours en francais.... Il a redige une longue oraison, en francais, et il l'a apprise par coeur. Il ouvrira les ecluses demain. L'Europe entiere va se moquer de nous: sa prononciation est execrable. Nous perdrions nos places a vouloir le lui dire: voulez-vous ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Nature, as never to cast an Eye upon the Poor and Needy. The Fellow who escaped from a Ship which struck upon a Rock in the West, and join'd with the Country People to destroy his Brother Sailors and make her a Wreck, was thought a most execrable Creature; but does not every Man who enjoys the Possession of what he naturally wants, and is unmindful of the unsupplied Distress of other Men, betray the same Temper of Mind? When a Man looks about him, and with regard to Riches and Poverty beholds some drawn ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... exemption from such annoyance, by entering Parliament to protect the liberties of the people—an eloquent and resolute champion of freedom in trade, religion, and everything else; and an abolitionist of everything, including, especially, negro slavery and imprisonment for debt[2]—two execrable violations of the natural ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... language common to both, he will not flagitiously and foolishly advert to ancient animosities, nor with rash hand attempt to hurl the brand of discord between the nations." In the same connection he attacks Gallic philosophy and the equality of man, the latter of which he styles an "execrable delusion of hair-brained philosophy." Others might speak of "the Republic of letters;" with Dennie it was the Monarchy of letters. Several articles ran through the Port Folio of 1801 on the sentiment and style ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... was not less than 180 miles from Kohat, the garrison of which station would, on my departure, be reduced to a minimum, and Rawal Pindi, the nearest place from which aid could be procured, was 130 miles still further off, separated from Kohat by an execrable road and the swiftly-flowing river Indus, crossed by a precarious bridge of boats. It had to be taken into account also that the various Afridi tribes were watching their opportunity, and at the first favourable moment, in common with the tribesmen nearer Kuram, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... train there. Some business called me to Mons last week. And you, I presume, like most tourists, are visiting a dozen cities in half as many days," said the duke, in his execrable English. They paused at the side of the Italian's conveyance, and Quentin mentally resolved that the dim light, as it played upon the face of the speaker, was showing to him the most repellent countenance he ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to any we had got at the former watering-place. This will not be the only time I shall have occasion to remark that these people do not know what good water is. We were conducted to two wells, but the water in both of them proved to be execrable, and the natives, our guides, assured us that they had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... was gone. He looked up at the moon, and took it into his confidence to reproach it. "'Twas your white face beglamored me," he told it aloud. "See, how execrable a beginning I've made, and, therefore, how excellent!" And he laughed, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... and is said to have been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence, The Last Day, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land 'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... out a letter of application, couched in admirable business language, which Paul copied, with variations. The boy's handwriting was execrable, so that William, who did all things well, got ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... have discovered the "Popish Plot," was a man of the most execrable character. He was the son of an Anabaptist, took orders in the Church, and had been settled in a small living by the Duke of Norfolk. Indicted for perjury, he effected an escape in a marvellous manner. While a chaplain in the English navy he was convicted of practices not fit to be mentioned, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... ringing Vive le Roi. Only one slight incident disturbed a little our devotions. One of the Flibustiers, taking an indecent posture during the Elevation, was reprimanded by Captain Daniel. Instead of correcting himself, he made some impertinent answer, accompanied with an execrable oath, which was paid on the spot by the Captain, who pistolled him in the head, swearing before God that he would do the same to the first man who failed in respect for the Holy Sacrifice. The cure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ask you, ye intolerable creatures, Why raise this wholly execrable din, O objects of dislike to the discreet? Six hundred persons, also sixty-two (Almost the very number of the Beast) Have voted for you, and defend your gates. Moreover, mark my subtle argument:— When gates are locked no person ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... materially altered for the better. Our allowance of food was more consonant to humanity than at Halifax, much more to the villanous scheme of starvation on board the Regulus, and the still more execrable Malabar. Our allowance of food here was half a pound of beef and a gill of barley, one pound and a half of bread, for five days in the week, and one pound of cod fish, and one pound of potatoes, or one pound of smoked herring, the other two days; and porter and small beer were allowed ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... met with. In Lorraine, the famished nuns quitted their convents and became mendicants: the poor creatures gave themselves up to be dishonoured for the sake of a morsel of bread. No pity, no remorse. An execrable and sanguinary war upon the weak. In the heart of the city of Rheims, a beautiful girl was chased from street to street for ten days by the licentious soldiery; and as they could not catch her, they killed her by shooting her down. In the vicinity of Angers, Alais, and Condom, upon ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Eginhard's agents were in a drunken sleep; and that, while the real relics were in Abbot Hildoin's hands at St. Medardus, the shrine at Seligenstadt contained nothing but a little dust. Though greatly annoyed by this "execrable rumour, spread everywhere by the subtlety of the devil," Eginhard had doubtless comforted himself by his supposed knowledge of its falsity, and he only now discovered how considerable a foundation there was for the scandal. There ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the idea and began to run away as their companions had done. One of them, however, a bolder fellow than the rest, turned and fired at me. He missed by some yards, as I could tell from the sing of the bullet, for these Arabs are execrable shots. Still his attempt at murder irritated me so much that I determined he should not go scot-free. I was carrying the little rifle called "Intombi," that with which, as Hans had reminded me, I shot the vultures at Dingaan's kraal many years before. Of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... prefer the sugar and spice of Italian Opera. I know it is an execrable taste, but as I am a most commonplace person I cannot help myself. I have loved it since childhood, when the dull pages of my Violin Tutor were lit by crystalline fragments of Cherubini and Donizetti, and when the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... greater. The Spanish priests, who had so often blessed this holy crusade and foretold its infallible success, were somewhat at a loss to account for the victory gained over the Catholic monarch by excommunicated heretics and an execrable usurper: but they at last discovered, that all the calamities of the Spaniards had proceeded from their allowing the infidel Moors to live among ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Sir Thomas, and very few would do it," replied Gillespie, as he left the apartment, to fulfil his execrable mission. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton |
