"Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declare myself to Eunice. Miss Ringtop was at least ten years older than I, far from handsome, (but you remember her face,) and so affectedly sentimental, that I, sentimental as I was then, was sick of hearing her talk. Her hallucination was so monstrous, and gave me such a shock of desperate alarm, that I spoke, on the impulse of the moment, with great energy, without regarding how her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... innumerable black-holeings, bread-and-water dinners, summary chastisements, and impossible tasks she inflicted upon me for offences against her too solid possessions. You will see it at Woking. It is a light and graceful cross. It is a mere speck of white between the monstrous granite paperweights that oppress the dead on either side of her. Sometimes I am half sorry for that. When the end comes I shall not care to look her in the face—she will be ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... can easily guess, that excellent Treatise being much of the same nature as Rabelais, of whom La Bruyere says, Rabelais is incomprehensible: His Book is an inexplicable Enigma, a meer Chimera; It has a Woman's Face, with the Feet and Tail of a Serpent, or some Beast more deform'd. 'Tis a Monstrous Collection of Political and Ingenious Morality, with a Mixture of Beastliness; where 'tis bad 'tis abominable, and fit for the Diversion of the Rabble, and where 'tis good 'tis exquisite, and may entertain ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... collections of sermons bring before the eye the last judgment and the region of hell, with its monstrous torments, its wells of flames, its ocean with seven bitter waves: ice, fire, blood ... a rudimentary rendering of legends interpreted in their turn by Dante in his poem, and Giotto in his fresco.[326] The thought of Giotto especially, when reading those sermons, recurs to the memory, of Giotto ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... unsound. It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. And in this particular instance the matter is complicated by the fact that Southern English is not truly a natural dialect; Mr. Jones himself denotes it as P.S.P.Public School Pronunciation, and that ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... Massachusetts politics. At the State House he was the terror of all mean and mischievous members; a sentinel always on the watch to prevent extravagance, fraud, and political chicanery. His persistent opposition to that monstrous abortion the Houssac tunnel, for which our children and grandchildren will be taxed ad infinitum, cost him an election to Congress. Upon this account he had numerous enemies, but even General Butler could not discover the smallest reproach ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... been attractive, but here we were in a paradise. Boats up and down the river; lovers went by, singing. On one shore the scene was quiet, with easy slopes and with houses here and there; but the other shore was wild with bluffs, with tangled vines and monstrous trees that storms had gnarled and twisted. Here a spring gushed out with a gleeful laugh, and lovers paused to listen, and in its flow the city ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... breakfast I read from the New York Independent that "Rum, profaneness and Sabbath breaking always go together." The editor was "sorry to find that the stockholders of the Saratoga railroad still run their cars upon the Sabbath. It is an odious and monstrous violation, not only of the laws of God, but of all the decencies of Christian society. And yet I had noticed ladies traveling in them, thundering into Saratoga on the Lord's Day. Women traveling in a public conveyance on the Sabbath. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Changing wet clothing. Monstrous error—its evils. Clean as well as dry. A lame excuse for negligence. No excuse sufficient ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... of Japanese generosity, the attention of all was suddenly riveted upon twenty-five monstrous fellows who tramped down the beach like so many huge elephants. They were professional wrestlers and formed part of the retinue of the princes, who kept them for their private amusement and for public ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... court-yard, and when she went, all trembling, up to the window, she saw Euergetes himself, and the powerfully knit horse that was led in for him. The tyrant twisted his hand in the mane of the restless and pawing steed, and Klea thought that the monstrous mass could never mount on to the horse's back without the aid of many men; but she was mistaken, for with a mighty spring the giant flung himself high in the air and on to the horse, and then, guiding his panting steed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gorgeous in scarlet and blue, detached himself from out the crowd. His head was hidden beneath the monstrous mask of a cardboard lion, roughly painted in brown and yellow, with crimson for the widely open jaws and the corners of the eyes, to make them seem ferocious and bloodshot. His coat was of bright crimson cloth, with cuts and slashings in it, through which bunches of bright blue paper were ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... every thing were to end here? Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition of another and a better world, I do ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... gigantic lanterns of color, the street lamps were glowing into existence, and she had lost her way. She had lost her sense of direction, and was among unfamiliar streets. She went on from street to street, and all the glory of London had departed. Against the sinister, the threatening, monstrous inhumanity of the limitless city, there was nothing now but this supreme, ugly fact of a pursuit—the pursuit of the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... beggars, Baboushka. He recalled the remark of the Jew, that she befriended this debutante, and he was averse to believing it. That delicious creature and this hideous one in ties of communion! ridiculous, monstrous! ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... his niche, there struggled a convulsive bulk, like some monstrous worm, too large for the bore, yet writhing. Bare feet kicked him in violent rebellion, and a muscular knee jarred squarely under his chin. He caught a pair of naked ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... bottle of whisky, a siphon of seltzer, a tall glass, meat, bread, water—everything, in fact, with which the senses of the starving man could be tormented. And near him, sitting with elbows spread out on the edge of the table, was one of the firemen, grinning continually as if he had just heard some monstrous joke. The expression of Campbell was just as fixed, for his small eyes shifted eagerly, swiftly, from the food to the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... must tell you the truth, though I had rather a thousand times not; but this change in the ship's course is monstrous unpopular!" ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... lately, but I believe without the least foundation, that Crew has lost a monstrous sum to Menil. Almack's thrives, but no great events there. I have ordered the M[arquis] of Kildare to be put up at the young club, at White's. If little Harry is come to town, he shall write to ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... and her children from the fury and longing for revenge, felt by the family of Legoix and by Caboche the skinner. The only question is, where can they be bestowed in safety? I know what you would say, that all this is monstrous, and that it is incredible that the Parisians will dare to take such steps. I can assure you that it is as I say; the peril is most imminent. Probably to- night, but if not, to-morrow the gates of Paris will be closed, and ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... blasphemies, errors, and horrors of the benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to carry them away and sell them across the sea. This they never attempt to justify; "they want them only to cultivate the land, and take care of them as their children." It is the same old story, justifying a monstrous wrong on pretense of taking care of those degraded portions of humanity which can not take care of themselves; doing evil that ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... frightened, and indeed so was I too; but we were both more frightened when we heard one of these mighty creatures come swimming towards our boat; we could not see him, but we might hear him by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious beast; Xury said it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Xury cried to me to weigh the anchor and row away: "No," says I, "Xury; we can slip our cable with the buoy to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... because they are guided by prejudice and habit. Progress comes through the gradual effect of a minority in converting opinion and altering custom. At one time—not so very long ago—it was considered monstrous wickedness to maintain that old women ought not to be burnt as witches. If those who held this opinion had been forcibly suppressed, we should still be steeped in medieval superstition. For such reasons, it is of the utmost importance that the majority should refrain from imposing its will as ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... work, so far as it is not taken from the tales of other travelers, is a diverting tissue of fables about gryfouns that fly away with yokes of oxen, tribes of one-legged Ethiopians who shelter themselves from the sun by using their monstrous feet as ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of a most aggravating kind and the unspeakable cruelties attending its practical execution were followed, in the case of the Jews, by an unprecedented recrudescence of legislative discrimination and a monstrous increase of their disabilities. The Jews were lashed with a double knout, a military and a civil. In the same ill-fated year which saw the promulgation of the conscription statute, barely three months ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... no plan in mind beyond an overwhelming desire to put a bad fright into his roommate in payment for what he considered a monstrous act of duplicity. It would serve Travail right if, once he entered the secondary plane of the shell, he would be forced to stay there a while. A good scare would cause ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... examples of such inhumanity, and he was obliged to tell Mrs. Weldon that such facts, monstrous as they might be, were ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... idea's absurd—monstrous!" Looking at her as she leaned back among her cushions, with her air of delicate distinction, Anstice could hardly believe the story ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Giants, in that very place where the abyss was formerly; the third covereth Neflheim, or Hell, and under this root is the fountain Vergelmer, whence flow the infernal rivers: this root is gnawed upon below by the monstrous serpent Nidhoger. Under that root which stretcheth out toward the land of the Giants, is also a celebrated spring, in which are concealed Wisdom and Prudence. He who hath possession of it is named MIMIS: he is full of wisdom, because he drinketh thereof every morning. One day the Universal Father ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said it I seemed to experience a sense of inferiority—which was absurd and monstrous, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... fancy pictured her poor Prince forced in this monstrous disguise to wander about all night tired and shelterless, her indignation rose beyond her control. She forgot where she was, she forgot the magic power that surrounded her, she forgot everything except ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... big dish-pan; second, a monstrous black pot from which steam arose into the hot night; third, a stout twine, to one end of which was attached a brick; a lump of raw liver dangled at the other. By my directions the pan was balanced upon the shelf where ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... more than a few disconnected groans. He spent most of his time crouched like an animal, and hardly seemed conscious of what took place round him. Another was a deaf and dumb cretin; a third possessed a monstrous hare-lip and a deformed jaw; while two women, dried up and skinny, and a child were badly affected by goitre. For a single family that seemed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Greenwell. Yes! and by to-night, a most exaggerated account of the whole affair will be spread over the whole country, and we will be equally suspected by our own people. Those who spread useless falsehoods about us will gladly have a foundation for a monstrous one. Didn't Camp Moore ring with the story of our entertaining the Federal officers? Didn't they spread the report that Miriam danced with one to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" in the State House garden? What will ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... poem. It has an infinite idea which once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil, impetuously rushing towards ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... side, half-asleep, making nothing of their load of meal-sacks piled high in air; their driver walked beside, half-asleep, too. He was a giant in height (six foot six, Melody, in his stockings! I have measured him myself), and his white clothes made him look something monstrous indeed. Yvon stared and gaped, as this vision came slowly ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... monstrous spectacle, orders the torches to be put out, and turns to leave the dreadful place. When Salome exultingly cries, "I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan!", Herod turns, and seeing her, calls out loudly; "Kill this woman!" The soldiers rush forward, crushing ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... full of consternation at the strangeness of the recent events. This continued till one of the decurions of the palace (which is an office of dignity) came in great haste to the standards of the Petulantes and of the Celtic legion, and in a violent manner exclaimed that it was a monstrous thing that he who had the day before been by their will declared emperor should have been ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... discretion, is founded on the simple fact of a brig seen lying at anchor in a place of common anchorage, suggesting no suspicious appearance, but as to which you are asked to infer that these seventy-six slaves were to be transported into her, and carried to Cuba or elsewhere for sale. What a monstrous imagination! What a gross libel on that brig, her officers, her crew, her owners, all of whom are thus charged as kidnappers and pirates; and all this baseless dream got up for the purpose of influencing your minds against the prisoner! It marks, indeed, with many ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... with difficulty be maintained by his successors. What might have become of his sons Giovanni Maria (died 1412) and Filippo Maria (died 1447), had they lived in a different country and under other traditions, cannot be said. But, as heirs of their house, they inherited that monstrous capital of cruelty and cowardice which had been accumulated from generation ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Georgian town it would be, picturesque but dirty, built, too, with an eye to security from attack. One town is particularly noteworthy—not a very large town, but more important, doubtless, in times past than now. Out of the valley there rises a rocky butte, abrupt almost as though it were some monstrous vegetable growth. On the summit of this natural fortress some old Georgian chief had, in the good old days of independence, built a massive castle, and nestling beneath its protecting shadow around the base of the butte is the town, a picturesque town of adobe ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... instead of the Fourth of July. He says: "Republicans no longer can hail the day as exclusively theirs. Federalism has profaned it. She has formed to herself an idol in the union of Church and State, and this is the time chosen to offer its sacrifice." He sets forth "the long train of monstrous aggressions of the Federalists" under Washington and Adams; declares that they "propose a hereditary executive and a Senatorial nobility for life," and says that the "hand would tremble in recording, and the tongue falter in reciting, the long tale of monstrous aggression. But ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... all the arms! And all the arms I see! The handless wrists! The hands with shattered fingers! The monstrous harvest which a mighty wind Bends me-ward with a curse! Oh! Mercy! Mercy! Old Cuirassier, groaning with outstretched hands— Horrible agonized hands with bloody wrists!— Mercy! Poor little Private of the Guards, Who slowly raise your livid face to mine! Look not ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... came to be, bringing me misfortunes and ruin, as my story will unfold. No doubt it was by my own doing that the wrath of Allah was brought down upon my head. For had not I, a follower of the Prophet, and therefore a despiser of graven images in every shape or form, come to treat this monstrous and misshapen creature, half man, half beast, as a sort of familiar, even greeting him on my entry with the words with which I might have saluted a living unbeliever, 'May your days be peaceful,' spoken in goodnatured ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... by this monstrous and unforeseen obstacle arising at the very threshold of his hopes. He felt so sad, that he determined to revive himself with a sight of Grace Carden. He pined for her face and voice. So he went up to Woodbine Villa, though it was not his day. As he ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... 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
... but said nothing. He shrank from comprehending such an impossible situation, ashamed for himself, ashamed for Athalie, resenting even the exaggerated and grotesque possibility of such a thing—such a monstrous and horrible thing playing any part in ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... For I will not outlive him. He has wound About my heart, I know not how nor why. Not for that he is King; for now his kingdom Rocks underneath his throne, and the earth yawns 180 To yield him no more of it than a grave; And yet I love him more. Oh, mighty Jove! Forgive this monstrous love for a barbarian, Who knows not of Olympus! yes, I love him Now—now—far more than——Hark—to the war shout! Methinks it nears me. If it should be so, [She draws forth a small vial. This cunning Colchian poison, which my father Learned to compound ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... not whether the belief that animals so distant as a man, amonkey, an elephant, and a humming bird, asnake, afrog, and a fish, could all have sprung from the same parents is monstrous, but simply and solely whether it is true. If it is true, we shall soon learn to digest it. Appeals to the pride or humility of man, to scientific courage, or religious piety, are all ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... received them, as men escaped from death. They plied their oars, and set their sails, and when they were got as far off from shore as a voice would reach, Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop: "Cyclop, thou should'st not have so much abused thy monstrous strength, as to devour thy guests. Jove by my hand sends thee requital to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop heard, and came forth enraged, and in his anger he plucked a fragment of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... more monstrous than that we, as we call ourselves, to some extent, an educated, a moral, and a Christian nation—at a moment when an accident of this kind occurs, before we have made a representation to the American government, before we have heard a word from ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... infamies of priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write them down, especially to his son. And why the detail about red ink? If Franklin's son was not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic" from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... does. He, the priest, confesses my sins to the bishop, and the bishop confesses them to the pope, and the pope sees the Virgin Mary every Saturday night, and tells her to speak to God about it." "And you really believe this monstrous story?" "Why shouldn't I? But it is no affair of mine, for, once I have confessed, all my sins are laid on the priest, and he must do the best he can to get rid of them. I am safe." Of such materials is the net composed that holds these people in bondage; and who can marvel ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Kochel to lure Ulrich into the snare. The monstrous thing learned from the lad that day, capped the climax of all he had heard, and might serve as a foundation for the charge, that the heretical Netherlander—and people were disposed to regard all ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his covert flew, To show the world what a Bat could do, By soaring off on a lofty flight, In the open day, by the sun's clear light! He quite forgot that he had for wings But a pair of monstrous, plumeless things; That, more than half like a fish's fin, With a warp of bone, and a woof of skin, Were only fit in the dark to fly, In view of a ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping 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 the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... in that monstrous draught, man; but sit down. You'll find the bottle on the table and a glass ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sky, but light immediately above the horizon as the sun sank down; the appearance of her horse's ears—those ears and that tuft of wayward mane between them of which she had grown so weary; the lighted walls of the London streets; the monstrous shadows of the eaves; the flare of lights; the moving figures—these came first; and then faces—Father Campion's, smiling, with white teeth and narrowed eyes, bright against the dark chimney-breast; Alice's serene features, framed in flaxen hair; and ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the board. The carpenter and the first mate had got their axes ready to cut them away, should such occur. At length a tremendous sea came roaring towards our weather bow. The ship struggled as if to avoid it, but she pitched headlong into the deep hollow just before her, and a monstrous sea, lifting its head half way up to the foretop, came right down on our deck, sweeping up to the main hatchway. Horner and several of the men shrieked out with terror, believing that their last moments were come. I scarcely supposed that the ship would recover ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his large-caped coat, silver-headed cane, and monstrous three-cornered hat. Our modern great ladies, strange to say, seem to have an especial affection for this hat, since they take particular care to have a couple of footmen behind their carriage glorying in this capital atrocity, while on the coach-box they encourage the older ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... delegated everything, instead of looking into the actual state of affairs himself, as his uncle would have done, and as Thiers did under Louis Philippe. More than a third of his regiments were on paper alone, or dwindled in size; the monstrous corruptions of his reign had permeated every part of the country; the necessary arms, ammunition, and material of war in general were deplorably deficient; no official reports could be relied upon, and few ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... not understand what was the matter. For one moment he had an idea that the boat had been attacked by a monstrous whale; the next moment that and every other idea was washed out of him by the dark waters, which ran up his nose and thundered in his ears, as they made him ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... but very near. A moment later, Gloster enters, black as night, hisses his monstrous charge, and before noon of that same day poor Hastings ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... plaguing and tormenting the married of both sexes, fluttering about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body until they have consented to take them under their protection. If this were not so (this at least is what they urge), it would be a monstrous freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo the chances and changes of this mortal life without any option in the matter. No man would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell what frightful misery his doing so may entail forcibly ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... pleasures, was nearly allied to the part which he seemed about to play in the present intrigue; but that Christian, whom he had always supposed a Puritan as strict as his brother-in-law, Bridgenorth, should be associated with him in a plot so infamous, seemed alike unnatural and monstrous. The near relationship might blind Bridgenorth, and warrant him in confiding his daughter to such a man's charge; but what a wretch he must be, that could coolly meditate such an ignominious abuse of his trust! In doubt whether he could credit for a moment the tale ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance than to see a smart fellow within the compass of five feet immersed in a huge long coat to his heels with cuffs to the arm pits, the shoulders and breast fenced against the inclemencies of the weather by a monstrous cape, or rather short cloak, shoe toes, pointed to the heavens in imitation of the Lap-landers, with buckles of a harnass size? I confess the beaux with their toupee wigs make us extremely merry, and frequently put me in mind of my favorite ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... otherwise. For the purpose of suffrage they may, in the theory of our government, be equal—but we haven't yet demonstrated it. We exclude the Japanese and Chinese. We have included the negro, only within the living generation—and it's entirely evident, now, we made a monstrous mistake by doing it. Equal! Equal! ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... family) was Cotton Mather's boon companion, and rode around the gallows with that zealous theologian on that memorable occasion when five young women were hanged at Danvers upon the charge of having tormented little children with their damnable arts of witchcraft. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... ghosts, and genii who were personified in everything about him, religion was the most powerful factor in controlling Fijian life and politics. In fact, it entered deeply into every act the native performed. The gods were more monstrous in every way than man, but in all attributes only the exaggerated counterparts of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... and it exempted the company from taxation. Collateral bills were introduced enabling the company to widen and grade any streets, the favorite "job" of a Tammany grafter. Fortunately for the city, exposure came before this monstrous scheme could be put ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... the nearest hospital without the loss of a single moment's time. Round the monstrous building, with it's spreading maze of pavilions, he went through a court, and stopped at a doorway which opened ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... more 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... matters, I explained to him that I was a member of a Scottish legal body, and had stood the brunt of an examination in the very law in question. Thereupon he looked me for a moment full in the face and dropped the conversation. This is a monstrous instance, if you like, but it does not stand alone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could find, and surveying the amazing scene around them. For the great black storm-cloud was flying up and away, flying into the north-east, and through the torn vapors that followed in its rack a waning moon arose. A tremendous sea was running, monstrous wave breaking on monstrous wave in a mad white frolic far as the eye could see; as one billow bounded along, curling and feathering and swelling on its path, a score leaped round it to powder themselves in a common cloud of spray; and every cloud of spray as it shot upward caught ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... nimbly to their feet and drew the bolts, upon which a monstrous Form entered, exclaiming "We are come to demand the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... method and the warrant for its revision—they mark the impossibility of progress without the guiding and restraining hand of Law. The felt exhaustion of the former method, the want of corroboration for the old evidence, the protest of reason against the monstrous overgrowths which conceal the real lines of truth, these summon us to the search for a surer and more scientific system. With truths of the theological order, with dogmas which often depend for their existence on a particular exegesis, with propositions which rest for their evidence ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... what I said. I declared it monstrous, and not to be thought of for a moment; and then she went on in her fashion that would wile a bird off a bush, declaring that no doubt the proposal was a shock, but if I would turn the matter over, I should see it was for the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gain which after all we are not certain he will receive, that we deprive the city of its certain benefit. Plain good advice has thus come to be no less suspected than bad; and the advocate of the most monstrous measures is not more obliged to use deceit to gain the people, than the best counsellor is to lie in order to be believed. The city and the city only, owing to these refinements, can never be served openly and without disguise; he who does serve ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... question of food," I objected, ignoring his point, which was puerile and without bearing. "The soil must bring forth vegetable life in lavish abundance to support so monstrous creations. Nowhere in the North is the soil so prolific. Ergo, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... grace! O Heaven forgive me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi' you: take mine office. O wretched fool, That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice! Ob monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world! To be direct and honest, is not safe. I thank you for this profit, and from hence I'll love no friend, since love breeds ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... fiend incarnate. Between his red puffed lips his teeth showed needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyes were as evil as a caricature from Simplicissimus, and set deep in his head, while his ears and nose were monstrous with fold upon fold of skinny flaps. It was not a living face, but a mask ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Major. Along the shore there was a narrow line of land, hundreds of miles in length, but less than a quarter of a mile broad, which still rose slightly above the surface of the water, and this land of refuge was absolutely packed with the monstrous inhabitants of the planet who had fled hither on the first warning that the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... Rome played in Roman society. The appalling Sixth Satire, in which he unhesitatingly declares that most women—if not all—are bad, and that virtue and chastity are so rare as to be almost unknown, in which he roundly accuses them of all the vices known to human depravity, reads like a monstrous and disgraceful libel on the sex when one turns to Pliny and makes the acquaintance of Arria, Fannia, Corellia, and Calpurnia. The characters of Arria and Fannia are well known; they are among the heroines of history. But in Pliny there are numerous references ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and supererogatory.—A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis of the political theories of the day and of those which were invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human metal employed. It is found on trial to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... old factory went Tank A. In spite of its ruined condition, some of the walls were still firm, and seemed to offer a big obstacle to even so powerful an engine of war as this monstrous tank. ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... for example, when the offspring reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by accident or culture, or the changes produced by the mixture of species, as in mules; or the changes produced probably by exuberance of nourishment supplied to the foetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs; many of these enormities are propagated and continued as a variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an additional claw and with wings ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... behind the carriage was a very large dog, but possessing a grace and a swiftness of motion unusual to his size. He was not only beautiful, but also intelligent-looking. His coat was of dark brown, and smooth as sealskin, showing every muscle of his body. His broad square head and monstrous jaw reminded the beholder of a tiger. His ears were close-cropped, which gave a compactness to his head that brought into prominence his great changeable eyes: eyes that the Davenports afterwards found so fiery sometimes that they reflected red lights; at other times so mildly ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... Lucius, Our civil discords have produced such crimes, Such monstrous crimes, I am surprized at nothing. —Oh Lucius, I am sick of this bad world! The daylight and the sun grow painful ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... against obstruction sore Tattiana o'er the stream complained; To help her to the other shore No one appeared to lend a hand. But suddenly a snowdrift stirs, And what from its recess appears? A bristly bear of monstrous size! He roars, and "Ah!" Tattiana cries. He offers her his murderous paw; She nerves herself from her alarm And leans upon the monster's arm, With footsteps tremulous with awe Passes the torrent But alack! Bruin ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... soundly throughout the remainder of the night. Strange to say, they felt a sort of security, moored alongside that monstrous mass, which they would not have experienced had their frail tiny craft been by itself alone upon the ocean. It was but a fancied security, it is true: still it had the effect of giving satisfaction to the spirit, and through this, producing ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Man and Wife. Is that enough for you? Are you willing, before this inquiry proceeds any farther to take your husband's hand; to return to your husband's protection; and to leave the rest to me—satisfied with my assurance that, on the facts as they happened, not even the Scotch Law can prove the monstrous assertion of the marriage at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... a glimmering of your monstrous suspicions," he said slowly. "The last man to be kicked out of an English varsity for this sort of thing, so far as I know, was Dr. Dee of St. John's, Cambridge, and that's going back to the ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the LARGE-FLOWERED WAKE-ROBIN, or WHITE WOOD LILY (T. grandiflorum). Under favorable conditions the waxy, thin, white, or occasionally pink, strongly veined petals may exceed two inches; and in Michigan a monstrous form has been found. The broadly rhombic leaves, tapering to a point, and lacking petioles, are seated in the usual whorl of three, at the summit of the stem, which may attain a foot and a half in height; from the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... all Nature's monstrous ills; His eye darts death, more swift than poison kills. All monsters by instinct to him give place, They fly for life, for death lives in his face; And he alone by Nature's hid commands Reigns paramount, and prince ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... to have cleared himself effectually. Still the knocking continued, and night after night the accusation was repeated. He now resorted, therefore, to a radical step to convince the public that he was the victim of a monstrous fraud. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... they begin to circle about Man, imitating in a wild, monstrous fashion the movements of the girls in the white dresses who danced at the ball. At the first musical phrase they circle, at the second they join and part gracefully and ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... is set apart as pensions of considerable amounts to the mistresses of grandees, and persons in high offices of the state, and also in order to political and other purposes, far alien to the objects of the institution. The Roman Catholics of other countries are scarcely able to credit that so monstrous an abuse of the pontifical authority really exists, it not being possible to conceive that, for a paltry sum of money, Christians can remain exempt from an obligation ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... single negro for any other purpose than his immediate emancipation. I shudder when I think that such an insignificant animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... European misjudgment that many followed Brigham Young's doctrine, which never had been Joseph Smith's,—and the present chief, Taylor, had but one. He showed us many cabinet photographs of Salt Lake City, his own family, leading Mormons, and the like: especially of the Old Tabernacle, like a monstrous tortoise, and one from a finished drawing of the new, of even more tasteless architecture, being the most gigantic piece of perpendicular ever perpetrated, and full of unsightly windows. When asked about the golden book,—well he had never seen ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... head. I do not wish to defend it in any way, but I do, for the honour of humanity, wish to offer all that can be said in extenuation of this atrocity: and I think Miss Martineau, when she held up to public indignation the monstrous punishment, was bound to acquaint the public with the cause of an excitable people being led into such an error. This unfortunate victim of popular fury was a free coloured man, of a very quarrelsome and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... though a creditable future lay in store for "The Giant," its monstrous and unwieldy car was condemned, and presently removed to the Crystal Palace, where it was daily visited ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... man is out to-night!' Unless you were a nervous, high-strung brat yourself, you can't imagine the effect of that on me. I crept off to bed shivering, and lay awake half the night. Every time the wind shook my windows, I pictured some monstrous, hoary-headed creature trying to get in and gobble me up!" She laughed a little. "It gives me a grue to think of it even yet. I discovered the explanation of the phrase the next ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... a horror; it set my teeth on edge; it made me think of scrap-iron—heaps, heights, pinnacles of scrap-iron. Don't ask me why scrap-iron! Go and look at that photograph and you will understand. Below those monstrous cliffs the lower roofs were like broken foot-hills; the streets were chasms, gulches, gashes. It looked as if there had been a conflagration, and the houses had been burned into the cellars; and the eye sought the nerve-racking tangle of pipe and wire which ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... antiquity, but she interprets it at her own convenience and by her own authority. We cannot claim exemption from mistakes, from deviations from our own standard and principles, any more than Rome; but while she remains as she is, and makes the monstrous claims of infallibility and supremacy, there is nothing for English Churchmen but to resist her. Union is impossible. Submission is impossible. What we have to beware of for our own sake, as well as for our cause, are false arguments, unreal objections, ignorant ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... say "so-called" not by way of offence, but as a protest against the monstrous assumption that Catholic Christianity is explicitly or implicitly contained in any trustworthy record of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... building up to its maximum speed. The whole laboratory quivered from its vibration. The dynamo hummed and whined and the night silence outside seemed to make the noises within more deafening. Tommy Reames ran his eyes again over the power-leads to the monstrous, misshapen coils. Professor Denham bent over one of them, straightened, and nodded. Tommy Reames nodded to Evelyn, and she threw ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... crane's, and the petticoats were so short as to reach almost above his knees. Shoes and stockings he had none. His long hair was platted and matted with the salt water, and one side of his head was shaved, and exhibited a monstrous, half-healed scar. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... the constraints incident to a young person in such a situation—the situation, namely, of sedentary passiveness, where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, in fact, was all that continued to delight me; and, but for that, I believe I should have had some difficulty in avoiding so monstrous an indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty expression, however, on the spot; not the music only it was, but the music combined with the dancing, that so deeply impressed me. The ball room—a temporary erection, with something of the character of a pavilion about it—wore ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... followed the line of the outstretched hand until they picked up the dark menacing lump in the ground twenty feet away. Sombre, grim, apparently lifeless, outlined against the night sky—it appeared almost monstrous in size to the men who lay on the edge of a shell hole, with every nerve alert. A bullet spat over them viciously, but they did not alter their position—they knew they were not the target; and from their own lines came the sudden clang of a shovel. All around them the night was full of vague, indefinable ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... circumstances produced such an impression upon the French as to deprive them for a moment of the powers of volition and action. Rooted to the ground, they stood aghast with astonishment and indignation at the appalling scene. Was it a dream—a wild delirium of the mind? But no—the monstrous reality of the vision was but too apparent; and they threw themselves among the Indians, supplicating them to cease their horrible sacrifice to their gods, and joining threats to their supplications. Owing to this intervention, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... lack of decorum, are directly traceable to the commercial enterprise which ministers to pleasure in order to drag it into excess because excess is more profitable? To thus commercialize pleasure is as monstrous as it is to commercialize art. It is intolerable that the city does not take over this function of making provision for pleasure, as wise communities in Sweden and South Carolina have taken the sale of alcohol out of the hands of ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... forward to protest to us during the adjournment. "This is monstrous." . . . "Never have I seen evidence so disregarded." . . . "This is a tragic ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the English Church as a whole was unpleasantly varied here and there by instances of grave and monstrous scandal. The system of Pluralities left isolated parishes in a condition of practical heathenism. Even bare morality was not always observed. In solitary places clerical drunkenness was common. On Saturday ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... darted forward, seized three-year-old Johnny and Harry in his arms, stuffed one head-first, the other legs-first, into the monstrous pack. ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W. |
