"Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certainly decreeing but a small measure of the equality in the eye of the law which the Protestants might claim as a natural and indefeasible right. The citizens of the Norman capital, however, regarded the enactment as a monstrous outrage upon society. Charles the Ninth, happened at this time to be passing through Gaillon, a place some ten leagues distant from Rouen, on his way to the siege of Havre; and Damours, the advocate-general, was deputed to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... then another, she stood breathless and following with eyes astrain the figure of her ally, little Belgium, gallant and heroic, which had moved out upon the world arena, the first to offer battle to the armour-weighted, monstrous war lord of Europe, on his way to sate his soul long thirsty for blood—men's if he could, women's and little children's by preference, being less costly. And as she stood and strained her eyes across the sea by this and other sights moved to ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... helpless women became an institution, which is thus characterized by Sumner: "After the refined torture of the body and nameless mental sufferings, women were executed in the most cruel manner. These facts are so monstrous that all other aberrations of the human race are small in comparison.... He who studies the witch trials believes himself transferred into the midst of a race which has smothered all its own nobler instincts, reason, ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... Belgian territory is on a par with the murder of civilians in cold blood, and after admission of their innocence, with the massacre of priests, and the sinking without warning of unarmed ships with their passengers and crews. To regard these things as something normal to warfare in the past is as monstrous an historical error as it would be to regard the reign of terror during the French Revolution as normal to civil disputes within the State. And to appreciate such a truth is, I repeat, of especial moment ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... yes, of course she would follow Annie or any of the rest of them fast enough if she had the opportunity, though she were to die at the end of it; but she ought never to have had the opportunity, it was preposterous to let her. The whole thing is monstrous. I never heard of such rashness. What can Dr. and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the squall shrieked through the palms. They joined hands and staggered up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain all around them. They gained the veranda, where they sat in silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea, where the wildly swinging riding- light of the Minerva could be seen in the lulls ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... infinite variety of irregular under-standing, so the amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found in the moral as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to observe among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth with ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... when he turned to look after him in the bed. He had just secured his situation when the door gently opened, and the man of the house entered with the noiseless tread of a cat, bearing a dark lantern in one hand and a monstrous knife in the other. Stealthily he approached the bed, and then gradually lifted the shade and threw the light around the room to be sure his victim was not out on the watch; then he gently parted the curtains and slowly brought the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... monks dwelling together), that exists now upon the face of the earth, or mayhap that ever did exist." (Ib. p. 354.) He also speaks, like Odoric, of the "cloister at Campsay, in that most famous monastery where they keep so many monstrous animals, which they believe to be the souls of the departed" (384). Perhaps this monastery may yet be identified. Odoric calls it Thebe. [See A. Vissiere, Bul. Soc. Geog. Com., 1901, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... down, up and down, in a fever of restlessness, Avery walked. She felt trapped. The gloomy, tapestried room seemed to close her in like a prison. The whole world seemed to have turned into a monstrous place of punishment. One thing only was needed to complete the anguish of her spirit, and that was the presence of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... off him. But he wore one wondrous garment—a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel—of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the fire as he settled ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... connivance of the court he entirely escaped from all judicial punishment.[58] Yes, torture was long continued in England itself, though not always by means of thumbscrews and Scottish boots and Spanish racks; the monstrous chains, the damp cells, the perpetual irritation which corrupt servants of a despotic court tormented their victims withal, was the old demon under another name.[59] Nay, within a few months the newspapers furnish us with examples of Americans ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... faith, who set about putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old legend. They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously got a bottle of holy water from the priest, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... that neither dread so long either presense nor absence of the Sunne, nor those foggie mists, tempestuous windes, cold blasts, snowes and haile in the aire; nor the unequal Seas, where the Tritons and Neptune's selfe would quake with chilling feare to behold such monstrous Icie Islands, mustering themselves in those watery plaines, where they hold a continuall civill warre, rushing one upon another, making windes and waves give back; nor the rigid, ragged face of the broken landes, sometimes towering themselves to a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in the civilization of the time has already become evident even in the course of these small wanderings in a single province, and if only this transition period is realized in all its meaning, with all the "monstrous and inform" characteristics that were inevitably a part of it, the mystery of this strange sixteenth century in France is half explained, of this "glorious devil, large in heart and brain, that did love beauty only" and would have ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... on which a large "stranger" had formed, cast but a dim light in the immense hovel, the brazier had grown dull, and all those monstrous heads cast misshapen shadows on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... inferred from the allegorical description of Typhoeus, given by Hesiod. Typhon and Typhoeus, were the same personage: and the poet represents him of a mixed form, being partly a man, and partly a monstrous dragon, whose head consisted of an assemblage ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... any kind. His soiled and stained development trays were scattered about a large table amidst dirty cups and saucers and plates and dishes, while at the other end of the table, surmounting a pile of thumbed and greasy magazines and newspapers, lay the monstrous mail-order catalogue with pencilled indications of further ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... this monstrous competition is to continue the directors only know, but the loss must be frightful on both sides. Chaplin and Horne had 10s. a ton for collecting and delivering the goods at the London end of the London and North-Western Railway, and, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... thought about it, the more outraged he became. It was monstrous! He sat up and glared into the black darkness. He talked to himself, he talked to the world outside, to the universe which had forgotten his existence. He stormed, he wept. He got on his feet and flung himself about the cell, which was six feet square, and barely tall enough for him to ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... to the other end of the room, and stood under a Venetian mirror—it shone like a monstrous jewel above her head—looking at him, her hands clenched, her eyes flashing through the tears that ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... domestic; sober of diet, simple of habit, frugal, painful, a good counseller to me, that keeps me from cruelty, pride, or other more delicate impertinences, which are the nurse-children of riches. But let them look over all the great and monstrous wickednesses, they shall never find those in poor families. They are the issue of the wealthy giants and the mighty hunters, whereas no great work, or worthy of praise or memory, but came out of poor cradles. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... asleep among the black pines of its sterile shore. Have you seen Ravenna, Madame? It is an enchanted tomb where sparkling phantoms appear. The magic of death lies there. The mosaic works of Saint Vitale, with their barbarous angels and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the monstrous delights of the Orient. Despoiled to-day of its silver lamels, the grave of Galla Placidia is frightful under its crypt, luminous yet gloomy. When one looks through an opening in the sarcophagus, it seems as if one saw the daughter ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rising amidst its waters, like the island queen of all the loyalty, and industry, and reasonable worship that have made her sons the admiration of past and present time; and before me, to the north, Lough Derg, with its far-famed isle, reposing there as the monstrous birth of a dreary and degraded superstition, the enemy of mental cultivation, and destined to keep the human understanding in the same dark unproductive state as the moorland waste that lay outstretched around. I was soon ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... the day when the strange, and surely monstrous, suspicion first made my head tingle. We had been blown, the three of us, to my rooms by a gust of rain; it was also, I think, the first time Paterson had entered them. "Take the sofa, Mr. Paterson," I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... was clear, he must see Miss Farwell again. She must listen to his explanation and apology. She must somehow understand. For apart from his interest in the young woman herself, there was that purpose of the minister to win her to the church. It was a monstrous thought that he himself should be the means of strengthening her feeling against the cause to which he had given his life. So he had gone to Judge Strong's home early that evening determined to see her. But at the gate, when he saw Dr. Harry turning in as ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... of Venus, far from where Venus then was, so that she scarcely seemed larger to them; Earth was but little bigger than the Evening Star, looking dim in that monstrous daylight. ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... fine, downy, bright yellow little thing, but it had a monstrous big nose and feet, and such an ungainly walk as she knew no other instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but simply unlike the rest. When ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... for him more refined tortures, more exquisite nerve- racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivan screamed. The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter and clapping of hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous thing that had been perpetrated, and began to laugh hysterically. The Indians looked at him in wonderment that he should laugh. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... sail, the tiller broke, and the coxswain who was steering, fell overboard. He was a good swimmer, and struck out for the ship, not thirty yards distant, while the boat fell off rapidly to the leeward. In less than half a minute, a monstrous shark rose to the surface, seized the poor fellow by the body, and carried him instantly under. Two hundred men were looking on, without the power to afford assistance. We beheld the water stained with crimson for many yards around—but the victim was seen no more! ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... his consistency, his strength of will and highmindedness as they deserved, but he was never tired of preaching and demonstrating to Wilhelm that all these admirable qualities had been turned out of their proper course by a disturbing morbid influence. It was monstrous, he contended, that a system of philosophy should arm you for suicide. What if the premises should prove false? Then your voluntary death would be a frightful mistake which nothing could retrieve. One has no right ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... tenderly; and too much like yourself To mean a cruelty; which would make monstrous Your Sex: yet for the loves sake, which you once Pleas'd to pretend, give my griev'd Father leave To urge his own revenge; you have no cause For yours: keep peace ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the monstrous relation that existed between the dominant and the subject nationalities, not in Greece only, but in every part of the Ottoman Empire where Mohammedans and Christians inhabited the same districts. The second great and general evil was the extortion practised by the tax-gatherers, and ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the British army wins what our infamous Press would call a "glorious victory"—then all that is evil in the life of the nation is encouraged and justified. It is then that the diplomatists who lied and schemed to bring on the monstrous event, that all the politicians who exploit and foster the nation's madness and misery to enhance their own reputations, that those who batten on the slaughter, and that those who glorify the carnage at a safe distance ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... monstrous good young man; and as modest and affable, as if he had been bred up a ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... beneath his charge. It is easy for a judge to stand indifferent between a great man and a little when the feelings of the world around him are in favor of such impartiality; but it must have been hard enough to do so when such conduct seemed to the noblest Romans of the day to be monstrous, fanatical, and pretentious. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in this adventure, and would not the generous ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... wretched Barabas! Sham'st thou not thus to justify thyself, As if we knew not thy profession? If thou rely upon thy righteousness, Be patient, and thy riches will increase. Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness; And covetousness, O, 'tis a monstrous sin! ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... unexpected defeat depressed him greatly. "A governor," he wrote, "is really to be pitied in the discharge of his duty to his king and country, in having to do with such obstinate, self-conceited people.... I cannot satisfy the burgesses unless I prostitute the rules of government. I have gone through monstrous fatigues. Such wrong-headed people, I thank God, I never had to do with before."[164] A few weeks later he was comforted; for, having again called the burgesses, they gave him the money, without trying this time ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the top of a high mountain just sticking up out of the water," said Gard, fascinated by the ceaseless rush of those monstrous waves in an ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... matter and another shaped it into verse; but, the personal insolence displayed in this poem to his Sovereign, which was probably the true reason for concealing the writer's -the principles of genuine taste which abound in it—the bitter and sarcastic strain of indignation against a monstrous mode of bad taste then beginning to prevail in landscape gardening, and, above all, a vigorous flow of spirited and harmonious verse, all concur to mark it as the work of our independent and uncourtly bard," The above letter settles the long-disputed point, and fixes the sole ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... story of fears, suppressions, monstrous imaginations, symbolic replacements. I don't remember much of that sort of thing in my own case. It may have faded out of my mind. There were probably some uneasy curiosities, a grotesque dream or so perhaps; I can't recall anything of that sort distinctly now. I had ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... flowers of the intercrossed plants. The tendency to sterility in these same plants was also shown by the first-formed flowers, after they had been carefully fertilised, often dropping off, in the same manner as frequently occurs with hybrids. The flowers likewise tended to be monstrous. In the fourth generation of Petunia, the pollen produced by the self-fertilised and intercrossed plants was compared, and they were far more empty and shrivelled grains ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... there she may tell; I cannot. I stood by the bulwark with my boots full of water, my eyes full of salt spray, and my heart full of the most poignant regret that ever I was born. Alas! was that channel a channel at all? Had it two shores? Was England over there, where I saw nothing but monstrous, leaping, maddening billows, saying, "We are glad of it; we want you; come on here; we are waiting for you; we ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stipulate anything!" he barked. "My clients, here, are victims of a monstrous conspiracy, a conspiracy to conceal the true facts of the death of Silas Cumshaw. They ought never to have been arrested or brought here, and if the prosecution wants to establish anything, they can do it by testimony, in the regular and lawful way. This practice ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... actually on the increase among us there is good reason for a novel like "The Bar Sinister," which tells us the story of certain converts to the peculiar tenets of the saints and introduces us into the every-day life of Salt Lake City. That our families and our institutions are in peril from this monstrous and ridiculous evil it would not be easy for us to believe. Yet it is impossible to read this book without a conviction that the author could easily substantiate his facts by proofs, and that intelligent men and women have been and are still being led ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... torment me a little," he said, smiling, "but the forces arrayed against you are too strong, and you have not a chance on your side. It would be monstrous to suppose that you should go on making me miserable for ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... says Capt. Jones, that the fort on the big hill, or Genundewah, near the head of Canandaigua lake, was surrounded by a monstrous serpent, whose head and tail came together at the gate. A long time it lay there, confounding the people with its breath. At length they attempted to make their escape, some with their hommany-blocks, and ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... her decision, he loved her all the more for her refusal. There was a certain sweet wistfulness on her face that tore at his heart, and at last he realised that he was failing her, and failing her badly. It was a monstrous thing from one point of view that such a sacrifice should be possible—but it came to Vane with cynical abruptness that life abounds in ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... "a monstrous man crushing a tender slug under his clumsy hoofs. Birds I can tolerate. They are not so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... faded away altogether. Then despair seized upon me, and I cared not whether I lived or died. I forgot to eat, and threw myself upon the deck, where I remained for several hours, upbraiding myself for my monstrous, unpardonable folly in neglecting the opportunities which were ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... famous Mohammedan prophecy, respecting the destinies of the East, and the world in general, and everybody in particular. It runneth according to this mighty import: "The Dajal, (‮الدجال‬,) whose name is the Messiah, and who is the son of Said, and who is a monstrous fellow, with one eye, shall come upon the earth, or rather, go abroad upon the earth, and all the Jews shall flock around him, and enrol themselves under his standard, for he is their expected Messiah; and then, armed with their prowess and gold, he shall slay all ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... business understand human nature so well, that in this imperfect world we must not reckon on the wisdom, the good sense of those around us. Therefore you will scarcely be surprised to hear that these monstrous, wicked, and disreputable doctrines are becoming popular; that murder and rapine are eagerly looked forward to under such names as Socialism, revolution, co- operation, profit-sharing, and the like; and that the leaders of the sect are dangerous to the ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,—will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... cause for the drawing towards them of the green atlas. The moves he made, the methods of his ruling, the significance of these methods were the evidence they collected in their frequent arguments. Coombe had early begun to see the whole thing as a process—a life-long labour which was a means to a monstrous end. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that it had grown out of the soil like some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Summis Desiderantes in south Germany, as to the Protestant severities in north Germany, as to the immense number of women and children put to death for witchcraft in Germany generally for spreading storms and pestilence, and as to the monstrous doctrine of "excepted cases," see the standard authorities on witchcraft, especially Wachter, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Strafrechts, Soldan, Horst, Hauber, and Langin; also Burr, as above. In another series of chapters on The Warfare of Humanity with Theology, I hope to go more fully into ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in Antonio, how interesting it will be to hear his opinion of our money-making civilization. It will be as if he rose from the dead to tell us what he thinks of our doings. He has been represented by this critic and by that as a master of affairs, a prudent thrifty soul; now we shall see if this monstrous hybrid of tradesman-poet ever ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... discern the point whereat each successive portion has been purged away. But much has also been gained. To change the figure, it is like the continuous development of living things, amorphous at first, by and by shooting out into monstrous growths, unwieldy and half-organized, anon settling into compact and beautiful shapes of subtlest power and most divine suggestion. But the last state contains nothing more than was either obvious or ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... stopped or spoke until we sunk breathless by the tents, where the little girls had only just arrived. But it was many minutes ere we could tell the frightful scene going on above. We clung together and all drew within the tent, while Smart went to summon the captain. The poisonous breath of the monstrous creature made Serena and myself the victims of successive fainting fits, we had the greatest difficulty in swallowing anything, and only revived under the influence of strong salts, and constant fanning. Our features assumed the paleness of death, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... like it proper well! But, to be sure, now, sir general, you look like a mighty small man to fight them great big tories there, on Pedee. But daddy says as how the heart is all: and he says, too, that though you are but a little man, you have a monstrous great heart." ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... soldier's horror next morning, when, looking up, he found the huge animal standing over him! One step of his monstrous feet, and his life would have been crushed out. If he did not then and there resolve to abjure intoxicating liquor for the future, he deserved to be less fortunate another time. As he crawled out, the elephant evidently perceived the terror he was in, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... bribes which he did not pay, and promises which he did not keep; and Guicciardini tells in a few words what use he made of his holy office, declaring, that, "with his immoderate ambition and poisoned infidelity, together with all the horrible examples of cruelty, luxury and monstrous covetousness, selling without distinction both holy things and profane things, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dozen saints, all in the gayest attire, and covered with artificial flowers. The capitals of the columns are in the true Norman style. Those at St. Georges are scarcely more fantastic, or more monstrous.—Between two of the arches of the choir, on the south side of this church, is the effigy of a man in his robes, coifed with a close cap, lying on an altar-tomb. The figure is much mutilated; but the style of the canopy-work over the head indicates that it is not of great antiquity. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... professions assumed as an excuse for the most vulgar villainy, ambition glozed over by degrading humility, and sensuality all the more disgusting from the saintly robes in which it was paraded and but half concealed. My faith, already enfeebled, died of rapid decline, stifled by these monstrous fooleries. Disenchanted, revolted, disgusted, I resigned my position, and abandoned the Pope ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... directed from the being represented to the true and only God who inhabits eternity, so here the poor Indian still bows before visible representations of saints and virgins, as he did in former days before the monstrous shapes representing the unseen powers of the air, the earth, and the water; but he, it is to be feared, lifts his thoughts no higher than the rude image which a rude hand has carved. The mysteries of Christianity, to affect his untutored ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a dromenon or rite of swallowing we ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... tricked out in the noble trappings of morality, an infamous crime disguised as patriotism. Doubtless, the excellent, God-fearing, law-abiding citizens of the doubtful States who read this and learn how the "System" defeated their will at the polls will cry, "Monstrous! Can such things be in America?" and then will resume their interrupted occupation of "letting well enough alone." However, this ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... of the distinctive aims and character of Gothic. The purpose of a good Gothic builder was to raise, with the native stone of the place he had to build in, an edifice as high and as spacious as he could, with calculable and visible security, in no protracted and wearisome time, and with no monstrous or ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, like the phoenix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... demonstration I'll teach you how to make the water mount, That you may dry-foot march through lakes and pools, Deep rivers, havens, creeks, and little seas, And make a fortress in the raging waves, Fenc'd with the concave of a monstrous rock, Invincible by nature [120] of the place. When this is done, then are ye soldiers, And worthy ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... familiar one; and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the midst of wild movement. All about me was the same movement. I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that was sweeping me I knew not whither. Fresh air was on my cheek and biting sweetly in my lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware of a strong arm around my body under the arms, and half-lifting me and dragging me along. Feebly my own limbs were helping me. In front of me ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... struggle for life, he realized, was with the wind—the roaring wind that hurled its broadsides of frozen snow in monstrous waves across the maddened sky, challenging every living thing. It drove icy knives into his face and ears, paralyzed in its swift grasp his muscles and sinews, fought the stout flow of blood through his veins, and searched his very ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... to believe there is nothing you could do. Go to her as my friend. It isn't such a monstrous thing to ask. Tell her any good you know of me. At present her imagination paints me in all the lurid ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... were three sisters who were gray-haired from their birth, whence their name. The Gorgons were monstrous females with huge teeth like those of swine, brazen claws, and snaky hair. They also were three in number, two of them immortal, but the other, Medusa, mortal. None of these beings make much figure in mythology except Medusa, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... order after the appeal to what were called facts, came a series of arguments, which have been so long bruised and battered round in the cause of every doctrine or pretension, new, monstrous, or deliriously impossible, that each of them is as odiously familiar to the scientific scholar as the faces of so many old acquaintances, among the less reputable classes, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Vishnu absorbed in rapture (introversion) bore in this sleep Brahma, who enthroned on a lotus flower, arose from Vishnu's navel and was carrying the Vedas, eagerly reading them. (Birth of creative thought from introversion.) Because of Vishnu's rapture, however, a monstrous flood overcame the world (swallowing up through introversion, symbolizing the danger of entering into the mother of death). A demon profiting by the danger, stole the vedas from Brahma and hid them in the deep. (Swallowing of the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than two English miles, more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... clad my body in gay garments, And lull myself within a lady's lap, And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. Oh monstrous man, to harbour such a thought! Why, love did scorn me in my mother's womb; And, for I should not deal in her affairs, She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh, And plac'd an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To dry mine arm ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... was to be heard but the rustling of the leaves—the deafened beating of the sea upon the rocks—and, to use the words of Lamartine, "those unknown tongues that night and the wind whisper in the air." The trees were mirrored in the rays of the moon, and the ground, at intervals, seemed strewn with monstrous giants; their hearts beat, not with fear, but with that feverish impatience ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... but would have ten; Nine, I think, was the sum he took,— Not quite certain,—but see the book. By and by the wars were still, But nothing had altered the Parson's will. The old arm-chair was solid yet, But saddled with such a monstrous debt! Things grew quite too bad to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell. What should be done no man could tell, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... none other than a tall kind of men, of that vncorrupt stature and highnesse naturallie incident to the first [Sidenote: Berosus.] age (which Berosus also seemeth to allow, where he writeth, that Noah was one of the giants) and were not so called only of their monstrous greatnesse, as the common people thinke (although in deed they exceeded the vsuall stature of men now in these daies) but also for that they tooke their name of the soile where they were borne: for Gigantes [Sidenote: What Gigantes signifie] signifieth the sons of the earth: the ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... scattered them about and piled up a few for a pillow, was about to throw myself on this quickly-formed couch when I saw, just under the stone, what I at first took for a stick, but which then beginning to move, exhibited itself to me as a monstrous rattlesnake, with its body coiled up and its head erect, its fierce eyes glittering, and its forked tongue moving rapidly to and fro as if eager to bite me. I had disturbed it from its slumbers, and it ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... recovered from their adventure in the blizzard, and the entire party of young folk found plenty of amusement in the snow-bound camp. In one monstrous heap in the yard the boys excavated a good-sized cavern—big enough so that all the girls as well as the boys could enter it at once; and they lit it up at night with candles and held a "party" there, at which plenty of walnut taffy ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... do nothing of the kind!" replied Fanny, with a dignity somewhat impaired by her ebon countenance and monstrous green turban. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... In a separate memorandum-book, Mr Anderson mentions the monstrous animal of the lizard kind, described by the two boys after they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Fifth. You monstrous madcap, does your skin Itch for the third time to try that inn? I've had enough for my ...
— Faust • Goethe
... discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses. Beside this bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... intellectual power. And he hated it,—hated its tremendous and perfectly calculated mechanism; hated its utilitarian stability; hated its conventions, its greed, its blind cruelty, its huge hypocrisy, the foulness of its want and the insolence of its wealth. Morally, it was monstrous; conventionally, it was brutal. Depths of degradation unfathomable it had shown him, but no ideals equal to the ideals of his youth. It was all one great wolfish struggle;—and that so much real goodness as he had found in it could exist, seemed to him scarcely ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... again. The two consuls are branded with infamy." Memmius, the popular competitor, at Pompey's instance, exposed in the Senate an arrangement which the consuls had entered into to secure the returns. The names and signatures were produced. The scandal was monstrous, and could not be denied. The better kind of men began to speak of a dictatorship as the only remedy; and although the two conservative candidates were declared elected for 53, and were allowed to enter on their offices, there was a general ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... spied on a sudden a boat in the lake, made of red sandal wood. It had a mast of fine amber, and a blue satin flag: there was only one boatman in it, whose head was like an elephant's, and his body like that of a tiger. When the boat was come up to the prince and Mobarec, the monstrous boatman took them up one after another with his trunk, put them into his boat, and carried them over the lake in a moment. He then again took them up with his trunk, set them ashore, and immediately ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... shuddered violently when a thick, gorged snake squirmed from under her feet and scrawled like a monstrous slug into a bush. She simply must talk, or drop, she thought, so attempted Jerry ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant, And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's honour, To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,— More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, To be or none or little, though a devil Would have shed water out of fire ere done't; Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death Of the young prince, whose honourable ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... full pardon, Besides the lives of two-and-twenty friends, Whose names are here enroll'd. Nay, let their crimes Be ne'er so monstrous, I must have the oaths And sacred promise of this reverend council, That, in a full assembly of the senate, The thing I ask be ratify'd. Swear this, And I'll unfold ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... in the year 1551, in a city of Savoy, a man who was a monstrous curser and swearer, and though he was often admonished and blamed for it, yet would he by no means mend his manners. At length a great plague happening in the city, he withdrew himself [with his wife and a kinswoman] into a garden, where being again admonished to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... highest peaks a lead-coloured cloud had wrapped itself turban-wise, and even as they looked the cloud turban increased in volume and height, mournful and monstrous as some djin-born vision of ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... was made by Madame Duval, who said, "It's quite a shocking thing to see ladies come to so genteel a place as Ranelagh with hats on; it has a monstrous vulgar look: I can't think what they wear them for. There is no such a thing to be ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... upon the people of the South under the policy of the Republican party, and the senator then stood here and said that the people of Massachusetts extended the public lands to relieve the people of the South from this monstrous burden. What does the senator propose to do to-day? He proposes with one stroke of the pen to double, and more than double, the illiterate suffrage of the United States. The senator says that one-half the people of the United States are represented in this measure of woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... not tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine. People are talking about us. She was right to tell us. It only confirms my own feeling—the position is monstrous." ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... one of them appeared without a ridiculous tie-periwig, in the style of those that usually hang over the shops of twopenny barbers. The straight boots in which the figures had been originally painted, and the other circumstances of attitude and drapery, so inconsistent with this monstrous furniture of the head, exhibited such a ludicrous appearance, that Pickle's wonder, in a little time, gave way to his mirth, and he was seized with a violent fit of laughter, which had well-nigh deprived him ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... mistakes for which they punished men. He felt this with a special force when he read his Ovid. He thought, looking at it in a direct and straight manner, that Niobe had a right to be proud of her children, and for Apollo to slay them because of that pride was monstrous. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and that enchanting Fairy Peri-Banou; he is the true poet alike of Abou Hassan and the Young King of the Black Islands, of Ali Baba and the Barber of the Brothers; to him I owe that memory—of Zobeide alone in the accursed city whose monstrous silence is broken by the voice of the one man spared by the wrath of God as he repeats his solitary prayer—which ranks with Crusoe's discovery of the footprint in the thrilling moments of my life; it was he who, by refraining from ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... meet the magistrates in the church on the Thursday following, for the purpose, as it was worded by the town-clerk, to take into consideration the best means of saving the king and kingdom in the then monstrous crisis of public affairs. ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... there was a fish taken, A monstrous fish, with, a sword by's side, a long sword, A pike in's neck, and a gun in's nose, a huge gun, And letters of mart in's mouth, from the Duke of Florence. Cleanthes. This is a monstrous lie. Tony. I do confess it. Do you ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Williams and her husband. The two couples with them live on Fifth Avenue, and used to be among her exclusive friends. Her husband has just ordered the dinner. I saw him give the directions to the waiter. It is monstrous that they, who only a few months ago failed disgracefully and were supposed to have lost everything, should be going on exactly ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... monstrous massacre, even in the blood-stained history of the Netherlands. It was estimated that, in the course of this and the two following days, not less than eight thousand human beings were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to cast off even the vizard of humanity. Hell seemed emptied of its fiends. Night ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... do when I think of his monstrous claims," cried Wendot with flashing eyes. "Who is the King of England that he should lay claim to our lands, our homage, our submission? My blood boils in my veins when I think of things thus. And yet there are moments when it seems the lesser ill to yield such ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the learned man stand erect upon his head. The chief characteristic of him who lives by his brains is, that he is not only able to talk consecutively upon some subject, but that he actually does so, which, in society, is accounted a monstrous crime against manners. Let him write what he wants to say, and print it; society will either not understand him at all, or will read his works with a dictionary in the secrecy of its own chamber. But if he will hold his tongue in public, society will give him a ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the freedom of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley, assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would certainly be unable to pay.[194] ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... boy give up his faith with its tremor and private laughter. Because a child has a place for everything, this boy had placed the monstrous man in the ceiling, in a corner of the room that might be kept out of sight by the bed curtain. If that corner were left uncovered, the fear would grow stronger than the fun; "the man would see me," said the little boy. But let the curtain be in ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... darkness went out warningly to Smoke's chest, and together they listened to a groan, deep and long drawn, that came from one of the cabins. Ere it could die away it was taken up by another cabin, and another—a vast suspiration of human misery. The effect was monstrous and nightmarish. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... A monstrous dome of smoke hung over the town. Now and then a gust of sea wind tore it apart, and through the rifts we saw the silver cup of the moon and the host of stars. We lay long on the hillock. I suppose the hour and the mighty fates involved made us serious and silent. Far away seventy cannon thundered ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... mid-step. A new and terrible suspicion, too monstrous to name, was creeping up on me. Forth touched a button and the face of Jay Allison, immobile, appeared on the visionscreen. Forth put a mirror in my hand. He said, "Jason Allison, look ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... occurred to me, just then. The one thing that loomed big in my mind's eye was the monstrous injustice of the accusation. Coming right on top of what I'd lately experienced at the hands of the men who had really done that dirty job—my head still tingled from the impact of Hicks' pistol—it stirred up all the ugliness I was capable of, and a lot ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to this reproach Mr. Martin asked that the accounts of the Association should be published. "Publish the accounts!" shrieked the well-paid gang that marred the influence and traded in the politics of O'Connell: "Monstrous!" and they silenced the troublesome purist by suppressing his letters and expelling him from the Association. In the ranks of the Confederates, however, Martin found more congenial society; amongst them he found men as earnest, as sincere, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... that it is nearly as good as finding Daisy to be with her child. But, my dear lass, you will forgive a frank old man asking you a frank question. It's all moonshine about the house being too big for you. These houses are not so very monstrous, to judge by the looks of them. You have three children, so you tell me; if you let two rooms you must be a bit crippled, put as good a face on it as ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... long-sighted man could have discerned that he was a dark fellow, lean; and from continually looking down on the earth from the elevation over which, in another sense, he always hung, his nose, his lips, his chin were pendulous and loose, and drawn down into a monstrous grotesque. ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... dear—except in their charges. I say, that's not bad. No, just put Gentlemen. But that's absurd too. They're not gentlemen, the swine! They're anything but gentlemen, they're blackguards, swindlers, liars. Seriously, Miss Tappit, I ask you, isn't it monstrous? Here am I, an old customer, with burst pipes doing endless damage, and they can't send anyone till to-morrow. Really, you know, it's the limit. I know about the War and all that. I make every allowance. But I still say it's the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... monstrous," Lutchester agreed, "as his daring to raise his eyes to you, although, so far as you are concerned, I believe that he is as honest as the man knows ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... want, was made a factious tool, They got a villain, and we lost a fool. Still violent, whatever cause he took, But most against the party he forsook; For renegadoes, who ne'er turn by halves, Are bound in conscience to be double knaves. So this prose-prophet took most monstrous pains To let his masters see he earn'd his gains. But, as the devil owes all his imps a shame, 370 He chose the apostate for his proper theme; With little pains he made the picture true, And from reflection took the rogue he drew. A wondrous work, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... was so monstrous that I gasped. For this awful dime-novel muck to be tumbled into the middle of my family was too sickening. My sister, running away from her husband with another man and now threatening, in the hearing of ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... rebellion against his authority, at all events; and her hands remained in his clasp until of his own accord he opened his fingers with an exclamation. "Do you wear bracelets for rings, my fair, or what? What!" From the monstrous bauble in his palm, he raised his eyes to hers, and if she had seen their look she might have answered differently. But her gaze was still on the ring; and as she felt him start, that impish dimple ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... that is, a man of exceptional sanity who is in the right when we are in the wrong. However necessary it may have been to get rid of Savonarola, it was foolish to poison Socrates and burn St. Joan of Arc. But it is none the less necessary to take a firm stand against the monstrous proposition that because certain attitudes and sentiments may be heroic and admirable at some momentous crisis, they should or can be maintained at the same pitch continuously through life. A life spent in prayer ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... longest cue in British Columbia. The cue and the dog formed the combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance and tragedy burning. Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in the winter, and Tao alone pulled his sledge and outfit. It was no more than an ordinary task for the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tung subserviently but with hidden triumph passed outfit after outfit exhausted by the way. He had reached Copper Creek Camp, which was boiling and frothing with the excitement of gold-maddened men, and was congratulating himself that he would soon be at the camps west of ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood |
