"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his first year in the Brazilian service. I was curious to see so celebrated a man, and soon found an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with him, which led to a frequent intercourse. His external deportment is repulsive rather than attractive; he is somewhat taciturn; and it is difficult, in ordinary conversation, to discover the intelligence and information which he really possesses. He is turned of fifty years of age, tall and thin: his attitude is stooping, his hair red, his features strongly marked, and the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... dead," the doctor replied. "He's been dying for a week. He was terribly wounded in the stomach, and there was nothing we could do for him. It was a repulsive case to care for, but Sister Mary had full charge of it. She sat with him for hours at a time. In the beginning, to encourage him, she bought a pair of boots he was to wear when he got well. For days, now, he's been out of his head and fancied ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... we have this feeling with regard to vegetable growth, how much more with regard to spiritual growth! To attempt to set up the gradually awakening spirit in an apparatus where it might be the observed of all observers would be at once repulsive and presumptuous. Happily, it is impossible. We may trace influences and suggestions, just as we may note the rain or drought, the heat or cold that affect vegetable growth, but the actual birth is ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and a more repulsive spectacle I never wish to witness. A public punishment at Stonebridge House meant a flogging administered to one helpless boy by the whole body of his schoolfellows, two of whom firmly held the victim, while each of the others in turn flogged him. In the case of an unpopular boy like Smith, ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the tunnel-like entry he stopped by the window of the old clothes dealer's cellar. Old Pipman's tools lay spread out there in the window. So she had got her claws into them too! She was rummaging about down there, scurfy and repulsive to look at, chewing an unappetizing slice of bread-and-butter, and starting at every sound that came from above, so anxious was she about her filthy money! Pelle needed a new heel-iron, so he went in and purchased that ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in stature, but the gauntness of his face made his coarse features stand out so, that he was almost repulsive. But this homeliness was relieved by the big, lustrous, brown eyes—eyes that challenged and beseeched ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... found no peace. All the highest questions of life rushed with fearful force upon his defenseless, wandering soul. Remarkably strong and passionate with him was the necessity of feeling himself in harmony with God and the universe. What theology offered him was all unintelligible, bitter, and repulsive. To his nature the riddles of the moral order of the universe were most important. That the good should suffer, and the evil succeed; that God should condemn the human race to the monstrous burden of sin because a simple-minded woman had bitten into an ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... course of our conversation with Mademoiselle Heger, but the specific causes were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection of the Brontes; her knowledge of them is derived from her parents and the teachers,—presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's letters. One of the present teachers in the pensionnat had been a classmate of Charlotte's here. The Brontes had not been popular with the school. Their "heretical" religion had something to do with this; but their manifest avoidance of the other pupils during hours ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... maniac eye across the counter. I had succeeded. At any rate, this was a tangible horror, and could be grappled with; it was not beyond human reach, a shadowy retribution from the invisible world. To face the circumstances, however repulsive, is less depressing than to await in suspense the coming of their footsteps, and the descent of that blow we know they will inflict. I had always found that policy best which was bravest. I remembered this now. Dropping my high tone, and soothing my excited features, I beckoned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... was even grotesque. Faces, discolored by cold, were covered with a layer of mud, on which tears had made a furrow from the eyes to the beard, showing the thickness of that miry mask. The filth of their long beards made these men still more repulsive. Some were wrapped in the countess's shawls, others wore the trappings of horses and muddy saddlecloths, or masses of rags from which the hoar-frost hung; some had a boot on one leg and a shoe on the ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... Grabowski, all of them poets of more than ordinary talents, give us pictures of this country, alternately sweet and rough, wild and romantic. There must necessarily be some mixture of attractive and repulsive elements here even for native poets; for the common people are Russians, and hate the Polish nobility as their oppressors. Nevertheless Thomas Padura, another of the young Polish school, chose even the dialect of the Ruthenian peasantry for his songs. Another ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... without any clothing, filthy in person, disgusting in manners, and destitute of natural affection; the parent selling his child with no more remorse or repugnance than he would his chicken, yet at the same time, by way of contrast, artless and good humoured. Their appearance is extremely barbarous and repulsive. They rub red clay softened with oil over their heads and bodies, and invariably wear a large semicircular piece of blue glass in the upper and lower lip, with ear-pendants of red wood. They make fetishes like the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... already shewn that the difference of climate and of industry, proceeding from that cause, inseparable from such vast domains, and which under other systems might have a repulsive tendency, can not fail to produce with us under wise regulations the opposite effect. What one portion wants the other may supply; and this will be most sensibly felt by the parts most distant from each other, forming thereby a domestic market and an active intercourse between the extremes ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... metropolitan examinations. It was the custom that the Emperor should give with his own hand a rose of gold to the fortunate candidate. This scholar, whose name was Chung K'uei, presented himself according to custom to receive the reward which by right was due to him. At the sight of his repulsive face the Emperor refused the golden rose. In despair the miserable rejected one went and threw himself into the sea. At the moment when he was being choked by the waters a mysterious fish or monster called ao ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... pound of flesh from the victims of his avarice. He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove into the streets, followed in his path; the children stopped their games and hid until he passed. That repulsive character which haunts the evil-doers of society marked the aged banker as an object of dread and ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... hedge of learning? instead of the milder traits of general affection, and the open qualities of social feelings. I remember, when a youth, I was extremely fond of attending the House of Commons, to hear the debates; and I shall never forget the repulsive loftiness which I thought marked the physiognomy of Pitt; harsh and unbending, like a settled frost, he seemed wrapped in the mantle of egotism and sublunary conceit; and it was from the uninviting expression of this great man's countenance, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... restored to their old allegiance. Besides, murder, plunder, and rapine demoralized your men. They made them less efficient troops for fighting. Doubtless the argument is sound. But it would never have been accepted had not the horrors of savagery been utterly loathsome and repulsive to the nations that ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... burden, the real tragedy and sorrow of our white population in those sections of the country where the Negroes are many,—that they are compelled to dwell face to face, day by day, with an inferior, degraded population, repulsive to their finer sensibilities, obnoxious to them in countless ways inexplicable? Facts are far from furnishing an affirmative answer. However pronounced may be the feeling of personal aversion toward the Negroes in Northern communities, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... a people who, in its whole mass, will be eager to receive the truths of a religion like this of Christianity. It will be repulsive to them. You are right in believing that among the greater part it will find no favor. But all are not such as I have described. There are others different in all respects, who stand waiting the appearance of some principles of philosophy or religion which shall ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the ground-floor, with a window opening on the court, and a hard, narrow pallet against the wall. There was also a little table, with books, sacred pictures, and a bunch of lilacs in water. The walls were whitewashed, and the floor cleanly swept. The chamber was austere, certainly, but in no wise repulsive. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... this voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old, yet of an age that had not outlived the devil of youth. Probably the invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the elements of pleasing, it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft, fluent, polished, but savage license was not far off, hard held by a slender leash; an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The utterance, though somewhat ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... was. Although she had always spoken kindly to Karl, and even endeavoured, by the amenity of her manner, to soften his rude nature, she had from the first moment disliked him exceedingly, and felt his countenance most repulsive; so that, when she saw him entering her room through the window, she did not doubt that he was come for some very bad purpose, probably to rob her, although the booty he was likely to get was small, since her trunks, with all her valuable ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... generally with a frowning countenance, being for the most part silent: when he spoke to those about him, it was very slowly, and usually accompanied with a slight gesticulation of his fingers. All which, being repulsive habits and signs of arrogance, were remarked by Augustus, who often endeavoured to excuse them to the senate and people, declaring that "they were natural defects, which proceeded from no viciousness of mind." He enjoyed a good state ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... is surely that of the binding of law books. A law library is the most repulsive and uninteresting thing in the world. The colour of the leather is unhealthy and disagreeable, and the necessary shading is secured at the expense of grace. Boz characterises it as ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... what danger really is, we form an idea of it which is rather attractive than repulsive. In the intoxication of enthusiasm, to fall upon the enemy at the charge—who cares then about bullets and men falling? To throw oneself, blinded by excitement for a moment, against cold death, uncertain whether we or another shall escape him, and all this close to the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... was a sheet of glancing foam, while the air was filled with the blended sounds of the wash of the element, and the roar of the winds. Still there was nothing chilling or repulsive in the temperature of the air, which was charged with the freshness of the sea, and was bracing and animating, bringing with it the flavour that a seaman loves. After fully fifteen minutes' severe tugging at the oars, the barge ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... song, in which the sentiments, yo! heave! and ho! were most frequently expressed. As he drew near, the gypsy might have been observed to grin a smile that would have been quite captivating but for some obstinate peculiarity about the muscles of the mouth which rendered it very repulsive. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... nature, which Newton stole, as described in the Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1782, p. 329. These laws are illustrated in the whizgig. There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion. The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue. I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, and Swedenborg[583] by Laplace,[584] and Pythagoras by Copernicus,[585] and Epicurus by ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... alms enough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by the servants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognised forthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive donnee (there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed, either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes a rather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even as a poet, all things considered; but he is something very different indeed from despicable ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... first dooms them both to a shocking death, and then sends them, with perfect warrant, from the stake to the altar. Clorinda is an Amazon, the idea of whom, as such, it is impossible for us to separate from very repulsive and unfeminine images; yet, under the circumstances of the story, we call to mind in her behalf the possibility of a Joan of Arc's having loved and been beloved; and her death is a surprising and most affecting variation upon that of Agrican in Boiardo. Tasso's enchantress Armida is a variation ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... is odd all the world knows, but his oddity is far more amusing than repulsive, far more playful than bearish. Yates's picture of him last year was not bad; neither was it good—it wanted the raciness of the original. Let the reader imagine a smug, elderly, sleek, and venerable-looking man, approaching seventy years of age, rather (as novel-writers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... wreckage that it left. She also was seeing fathers staring and mothers weeping. Her experience with the wounded drawing deep on the wells of sympathy, heightened her loathing of war and of all who planned and ordered it and led its legions. A Stransky righting would have been repulsive to her, but a Stransky trying to save a life ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... or habits. It betrays the want of fine moral perceptions. The peculiarities in manner and deportment, which proceed from the selfishness of the great world, when stripped of the illusory influence of their apparent refinement, become grossly offensive. A cold repulsive manner, such as is commonly assumed by persons in high life, is sometimes a necessary shield against the pushing familiarity of underbred persons. Their tasteless imitations of habits and manners which do not belong to their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... return home that night, I lay down to sleep not only with a presentment that my idea would come to nothing, but with shame and a consciousness that all day long I had been engaged in a very repulsive and disgraceful business. But I did not give up this undertaking. In the first place, the matter had been begun, and false shame would have prevented my abandoning it; in the second place, not only the success of this scheme, but the very fact that I was busying myself ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... a question of the world, I believe in fighting it and in having it hate me, even if it breaks my legs. I want the world to hate me, because I can't bear the thought that it might love me. For of all things love is the most deadly to me, and especially from such a repulsive world ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... degradation possible to Christianity until he visited "The Eternal City," with its huge shams and ghastly superstitions. He never saw Hinduism with its myriad inane rites and debasing idolatry half so grotesque, idiotic, and repulsive, as in this city of Benares, where one ought to see the religion of these two hundred odd million people at its best, and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... brought against Lord Byron by some English travellers of being, in general, repulsive and inhospitable to his own countrymen, I have already made allusion; and shall now add to the testimony then cited in disproof of such a charge some particulars, communicated to me by Captain Basil Hall, which exhibit the courtesy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was in truth the mysterious Michael who had planned her abduction, she feared and despised him, yet dared make no public denunciation. As Dawsbergen was too powerful to be antagonized at this critical time, she was constantly forced to submit to the most trying and repulsive of ordeals. Tact and policy were required to control the violent, hot-blooded young ruler from the south. At times she despaired and longed for the quiet of the tomb; at other times she was consumed by the fires of resentment, rebelling against the ignominy to which ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... life. After having fulfilled his engagement with his employer, he spent some three years of mercantile life at the South, but the customs of the country, and the barbarous system of slavery were so repulsive to his feelings that he abandoned that field for the more congenial and prospectively profitable activities of the West, and in December, 1842, landed at Medina, in this State. In the Spring of 1845, a mercantile copartnership was formed with Mr. Augustus ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... 1823, he came, an unheralded stranger, to St. Mary's. No power but God's, it would seem, could have directed his footsteps there. There was everything to render them repulsive. The Indian wabene drum, proclaiming the forest tribes to be under the influence of their native diviners and jossakeeds, was nightly sending forth its monotonous sounds. But he did not come to them. His object was the soldiery and settlement, to whom he could utter truths in the English ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... generally is very simple. Rice is the staple article of consumption. They like fruits and use them moderately. They eat things too, which would be most repulsive to the epicurean taste of an Anglo-Saxon. Even lizards and rats and young dogs they will not refuse. But these things are prepared in a manner to tempt the appetite. After you have partaken of your repast in the Chinese Restaurant, if you request it, ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... distance men cleaning their saddles. Another of the vestibule, with Julian and Edward consulting over some map or other at a table. Another of a "fosse" or coal-pit about a mile away. A coal-pit sounds repulsive, but not so in Northern France. They are away from all houses and surrounded by corn-fields. The coal refuse is the curious part of it. Up it comes from the main shaft and is piled up into a series of large pyramids, visible for miles around. Many of the famous "redoubts" are coal-refuse pyramids ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... type Angela Sovrani had chosen to delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no redeeming point,—a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a priest,—"A servant of Christ," as she called him. The title, united with that wicked and repulsive countenance, was a terribly significant suggestion. For some minutes no one spoke,—and the Cardinal was the first ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... with his repulsive countenance, shambled out of his place into the middle of the room. Mr. Rose swept him with one flashing glance. "That is the boy," thought he to himself, "who has been like an ulcer to this school. These boys shall have ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... were threatened with impeachment and expulsion from the Senate and bombarded by the most furious assaults from the press, which denounced them as infamous traitors, "as mean, repulsive, and noxious as hedgehogs in the cages of a ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment him for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if they had played together when children. But he remembered ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous illness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Commodore J. G. Goodenough, took an interest in the poisonous and stinging fish of the Pacific Islands, and one day showed me, preserved in spirits of wine, a specimen of the dreaded no'u fish of the Hervey Group—one of the most repulsive-looking creatures it is possible to imagine out of a child's fairy book. The deadly poison which this fish ejects is contained in a series of sacs at the base of the spines, and the commodore intended to submit it to an analyist. By a strange coincidence this gallant seaman a few months afterwards ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... submitting to the ordinary process of negotiations and recommendations for a vacant professorship of Esthetics in Vienna is so repulsive to his pride, that the whole matter is at once allowed to drop, notwithstanding that he has been preparing for the place by diligent philosophical studies.[137] The asceticism with which he regarded life in general is expressed in a letter to Emilie ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward, because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome avidity, to any man whatsoever who may choose her, even the most repulsive. Her mates make sport of her and despise her somewhat for this vice, just as though for some treason to their corporate enmity toward men. Niura, with very great versimilitude, mimics her sighs, groans, outcries and passionate words, from which she can ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... to business! This very feeling of discord within me forces me to fulfil your desire not in the way you wish. Lying, acting so disgusting a comedy, bribing the Consistorium, and all those horrors, are intolerably repulsive to me. Vile as I may be, I am vile in a different way, and cannot take part in those abominations—simply cannot! The solution at which I have arrived is the simplest: to be happy, you must marry. I am in the way; consequently I must ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... to understand that war is as natural to one stage of human development as peace is natural to another. My brother has the spirit of revenge. Shall I call him a demon? Is not his spirit natural to his condition? War is not evil or repulsive except to a man of peace. Who made the non-resistant? Polygamy is as natural to one stage of development as oranges are natural to the South. Shall I grow indignant, and because I am a monogamist, condemn my kinsman of yore? ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... alfalfa, and dotted with trees of wild cherry and myrtle, but having that air of sadness and death-like repose so inseparable from a Quitonian landscape. The greater part of this day's ride was over a rolling country so barren and dreary it was almost repulsive. What a pity the sun shines on so much ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... they seemed but yards away, though they were wandering knee-deep in the marshes at the far end of the lake. All their repulsive ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... seat in Parliament. I remember well what politics did for my father, and how much it cost him. But, besides this recollection, the idea of corrupting the minds of the electors and of making drunken animals out of decent and intelligent labourers for two or three weeks is repulsive to me. It is entirely ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Beethoven, making the pantomime of playing on the piano, and shaking his head sadly. Then he seized on Weber's arm, and dragged him away to the Sauerhof, where he was wont to dine. 'Here,' wrote Weber afterward, 'we dined together in the happiest mood. The rough repulsive man paid me as much attention as if I were a lady to whom he was making court, and served me at table with the most delicate care. How proud I felt to receive all this kindness and affectionate regard from the great ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... mistake a heartless indifference for a superiority to more natural and generous feelings. Our ardent and dauntless reformer followed out the moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan into its most rigid and repulsive consequences with a pen of steel, and let fall his "trenchant blade" on every vulnerable point of human infirmity; but there is a want in his system of the mild and persuasive tone of the Gospel, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and yet he knew the man perfectly, and felt that he changed colour as he stood gazing upon the handsome malevolent face that was singularly repulsive despite its regular features and bold beauty. In a moment he recollected where he had seen those very lineaments portrayed with vivid accuracy, even to the sinister smile and the gleam ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... she said. "Nothing of any kind." She closed her mouth and stood regarding him as if he were a particularly repulsive statue. Malone looked past her into the ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... planters that I thought the word "slave" was the most repulsive part of the institution, and I have always observed they invariably shirk using it themselves. They speak of their servant, their boy, or their negroes, but never of their slaves. They address a negro as boy or girl, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... lovely—very lovely, I think; but still there is something, at least to my taste, very unpleasant in her. She is not like my sisters; there is something about her so cold, so almost repulsive." ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... sound sweet and dear to almost every heart. There is nothing repulsive in their tone, but, oh, what strength they give to the weary, waiting soul. The hope of never-ending happiness in a bright celestial world enables us to patiently endure the tortures and afflictions of this sin-cursed, terrestrial sphere. It is not difficult to persuade ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... fascination of his look and tone, caught something of the life of his spirit, and were gradually lifted above themselves. Gentle, affable, ready to communicate, dignified, thorough, patient, and learned, never harsh, never repulsive, he was earnest to meet every want of the student. His whole course was ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... contrary, the manners of the fisherman were those of one to whom the rules of good behaviour might be familiar, but who, either from pride or misanthropy, scorned to observe them. Still I thought of him with interest and curiosity, notwithstanding so much about him that was repulsive; and I promised myself, in the course of my conversation with the Quaker, to learn all that he knew on the subject. He turned the conversation, however, into a different channel, and inquired into my own condition of life, and views in visiting this ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... take others, lightly. For in all human relationships it is "ourselves" that we give and take. It is not what your friend does for you or gives to you that makes him your friend; but what he is to you. It is his personality that you have shared. And so there is something rather repulsive in quickly forgetting or throwing it away. People who make friends and lose them as the trees put out their leaves in spring to shed them in the autumn, are not quite human. The capacity to make friends—to make many friends—is a great power: the capacity ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... that account. This wish of mine never came to utterance; but not the less they were aware, by my manner of salutation, that one person at least, amongst those who might be considered strangers, did not find any thing repulsive about them; and the pleasure they felt was expressed broadly upon their ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... her singularly youthful face grows as old as it ought to be—a vindictive curve round the mouth makes that usually charming feature almost repulsive. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... recital at the moment when the Vicomtesse entered her husband's room, where he was lying on the couch. He signed to her to close the door. The Marquis was the living image of his mother, except that her beautiful regular features became in his face bony and repulsive. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... beautiful provision in the mental and moral arrangement of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may by frequent repetition, become a habit; and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around our neck like a ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... not. I think Miss Betsey Titcomb, good as she is, injures the cause of goodness by making it outwardly repulsive. I really think, if she would take some pains with her dress, and spend upon her own wardrobe a little of the money she gives away, that she might have influence in leading others to higher aims; now all her influence is against ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Reproof riprocxo. Reprove malaprobi, riprocxi. Reptile rampajxo. Republic respubliko. Republican respublikano. Repudiate nei. Repugnance antipatio—eco. Repugnant antipatia. Repulse repusxi, repeli. Repulsive malbelega. Reputable estimebla, sxatinda. Reputation famo, sxato, reputacio. Request peti. Require postuli, bezoni. Requirement postulo, bezono, neceseco. Requisite necesa, bezona. Requisition rekvizicio. Requite rekompenci. Rescind eksigi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to look for but the most repulsive work under the most repulsive conditions? I said there must be surely some change, that wheeling mud forever was not the doom of any man and could ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... letting her go and be d——d to her, I for one had no doubt, nor I think had the authoress, for, although she could never quite forget that Gretchen was her heroine, endowing her with a kind of beauty and even baldly labelling her attractive, it is really, on the whole, a designedly repulsive person she has presented to us. Though an interesting study in Teuton perfidy and certainly better written than the columns of most evening papers, I can hardly recommend the book as a restful change from that class ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... believe that the conviction that she might some day find herself in a position in which she could best free herself from entanglement by some such means had long since lodged in her mind. It was not a strange or repulsive notion to the careful student of the code of morality laid down in "Il Principe." Alva had familiarized her with it, and the civil wars had almost invested it in her eyes with the appearance of justifiable retaliation. She had gloated in secret ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... how she had been hurt. He knew as well as if she had told him, that it had been done in one of her father's fits of drunken passion. He had seen this sort of thing before during his sojourn in the mining districts. But, shamefully repulsive as it had been to him, he had never felt the degradation of it as fiercely as ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was now something which was not repulsive even to her. It was a noble, spiritual face. Dudleigh's features were remarkable for their faultless outline and symmetry, and now the expression was in perfect keeping with the beauty of physical form, for the old hardness had departed, and the deep stamp of sensuality and selfishness ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Christmas as you can only see and feel in Australia; the sky cloudless, the atmosphere breezeless, the temperature one hundred and seven degrees in the shade. With it came the aboriginals in great number, accompanied, as they always are, by crowds of repulsive-looking mongrel dogs. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... admit, my life was a very happy one. Not only were those occasional trances an intoxication, nay, a coveted indulgence, but they cast a consecration over my life. My restored faith rested on the sure evidence of my own experience; my new creed contained no harsh or repulsive feature; I heard the same noble sentiments which I uttered in such moments repeated by my associates in the faith, and I devoutly believed that a complete regeneration of the human race was at hand. Nevertheless, it struck me sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... am kind-hearted, and so I found it beyond me to leave even this hateful and repulsive thing alone in a strange and hostile world. The result was that when I entered the iron mole I took ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that the stranger was trying to secure the boy's confidence, Merriwell continued to regard him with suspicion and aversion. There was something about this person's dark face and sinister aspect that was extremely repulsive to the lad. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... repulsive is this our existence, in which the immoderate, slavish toil of the one-half incessantly enables the other to satiate itself with bread and with ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... It was a repulsive room. One of those characterless rooms which are only found in furnished apartments. To Mike, used to the comforts of his bedroom at home and the cheerful simplicity of a school dormitory, it seemed about the most dismal spot he had ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... scorn and indignation. But it is with human institutions, as it is with men themselves; we are tender with the dead when their power to hurt us has passed away; and as Paganism can never more be dangerous, we have been able to command a calmer attitude towards it, and to detect under its most repulsive features sufficient latent elements of genuine thought to satisfy us that even in their darkest aberrations men are never wholly given over to falsehood and absurdity. When philosophy has done for mediaeval mythology what it has done for Hesiod and for the Edda, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... to escape that repulsive fatality to her lavished care. It was only to be accomplished by being good; and goodness was in the charge of the minister. She saw clearly and at once her difficulty—how could she go to a solemn man in a clerical vest and admit that she was ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... complaisant, a Master, more powerful than myself, restrains me. I cannot give such persons any other place in my heart, than God gives them. I cannot adapt myself to their superficial state, neither respond to their professions of friendship; these are very repulsive to my feelings. ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... but walked mechanically towards the door. There was something heady and oppressive in this beautiful room; something, I thought, almost repulsive in this exquisite woman. She seemed to me, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the aimless manner natural to such indolent people. There were children running and playing among the stumps and dwellings—half naked little knots of humanity, who in a few years would become the repulsive squaws or terrible warriors of the tribe. Three of the youngsters were having a high time with a canoe lying against the shore. They were splashing the water over each other, plunging into the stream and scrambling out again without regard to the wear or tear of their clothing, ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... with a repulsive air, 'if Mr. Glossin will take the trouble to state his object in a letter, I will answer that Miss Bertram pays proper ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... laws are such that some issues are more repulsive to a woman than a man, and you must admit there are heavy arguments could be brought in extenuation of Dawn's attitude of mind when the water slipped out of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... sweeps with devastating force, like a cyclone, through a land. The dead had been removed; there was not a single corpse to be seen in the village streets, and the rain had washed away the blood; pools of reddish water were to be seen here and there in the roadway, with repulsive, frowzy-looking debris, matted masses that one could not help associating in his mind with human hair. But what shocked and saddened one more than all the rest was the ruin that was visible everywhere; that charming village, only three days before ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... tail astronomers might well expect to see the stars displaced, but not a sign of this appears. It is difficult to imagine, therefore, what the tail can be made of. The idea is that the sun exercises a sort of repulsive effect on certain elements found in the comet's head—that is to say, it pushes them away, and that as the head approaches the sun, these elements are driven out of it away from the sun in vapour. This action may have something to do with electricity, ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... which his father lived; the penetrating influences of the damp close air, the mustiness diffused by old tapestries and presses thickly covered with dust had passed into him, and now he stood in the old man's antiquated room, in the repulsive presence of the deathbed, beside a dying fire. A flickering lamp on a Gothic table sent broad uncertain shafts of light, fainter or brighter, across the bed, so that the dying man's face seemed to wear a different look at every moment. The bitter wind whistled through the ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... said the Paladin, "it is easy to say that. Now I will tell you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one moment. I can save France—ah, you may laugh, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... your room, Cornelli, and smooth out your forehead before you come to dinner. Your little horns are protruding quite plainly when you act that way. Just look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself how repulsive you look. If you think that there is anybody in the world who can still like you when you have black horns on your forehead, you are mistaken. Go, now, and ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... looked at him—at his close-set, shifty eyes and repulsive features, she shuddered, for she was convinced that no lofty characteristics could be hid behind so ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to stir up his surveyors and Phil moved off that he might get a better look at Mr. Sully, the owner of the show. Phil found him to be a florid-faced, square jawed man whose expression was as repulsive as it was brutal. Sully wore a red vest and red necktie with a large diamond in it. He gave the Circus Boy a quick sharp look as he passed. "I'll bet he will know me the next time he sees me," muttered Phil. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Laroche, an old laborer, possessed absolutely nothing; he was not, like Tonsard, hot-blooded and vicious,—his motive power was a cold, dull hatred; he toiled in silence with a sullen face; work was intolerable to him, but he had to work to live; his features were hard and their expression repulsive. Though sixty years old, he was still strong, except that his back was bent; he saw no future before him, no spot that he could call his own, and he envied those who possessed the land; for this reason he had no pity on the forests ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... painter went on painting; he saw nothing, thought of nothing, save his "Alcestis." He was indeed an enthusiast. Olive watched how, beneath the coarse, ill-formed hand, grew images of perfect beauty; how, within the body, almost repulsive in its ugliness, dwelt a brain which could produce the grandest ideal loveliness; and there dawned in the girl's spirit a stronger conviction than ever of the majesty ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... this means their physical power at night is nearly exhausted, and they invariably sleep well; where no greater improvement is arrived at, they can in all cases gain cleanly habits, and get entirely rid of that repulsive appearance which an idiot left to himself is almost sure at last to acquire. Active exercises are what they resort to in the first instance; they have a large school-room fitted up with ladders and gymnastic apparatus of all kinds. ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... trait the Prince seems to possess is an affection for flowers. And he especially loves those strange Mexican and South American plants, the cactaceae, which unite the most exquisite flowers to the most grotesque and repulsive forms, covered with great spear-like spines, and which thrive only in barren lands, and on the poorest soil. I have taken advantage of the presence of these plants to construct the hiding-place about which I spoke to you. Here are some which are fifteen feet high. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... bigotries and hatreds, in the artificial transformation of Catholics into anti-English rebels, and Protestants into anti-Irish Loyalists, in the long agony of the land war, the tithe war, the Church war, and the loathsome savageries of the rebellion itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature, visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers |
