"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decorum and attention on the part of an altered husband, which betrays to the world no dereliction of morals but what its easy code passes over as a right, is no substitute for love. Not unfrequently there is something almost appalling in the sense of solitude, which on occasions of sickness or retirement oppresses a young woman, who to all appearance is overwhelmed with attendance. The hand is not there that would render every other superfluous. A voice is wanting, whose absence leaves the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... blocked his vision. He went forward. The snow on which he walked became hard ice, and instead of sloping upward ran ahead almost in a horizontal line. Suddenly, however, it narrowed; Hine became conscious of appalling depths on either side of him; it narrowed with extraordinary rapidity; half a dozen paces behind him he had been walking on a broad smooth path; now he walked on the width of the top of a garden wall. His knees began to shake; he halted; he reached out vainly into emptiness ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... however, deflected markedly from its course by the force of the blast, so that instead of striking the Forlorn Hope in direct central impact, its head merely touched the apex of the mirror-plated wedge. That touch was enough. There was another appalling concussion, another blinding glare, and the entire front quarter of the terrestrial vessel had gone to join the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... murdered, or if it were Advent, Christmas, or Easter, a tradesman shout from the gallery, "We will now sing to the praise and glory of God a hanthem!" when a motet would be sacrificed to incompetency with every circumstance of barbarity attending the execution. Mr. Newman in language of appalling force, written a year after his conversion, has described the Anglican service as "a ritual dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken piecemeal; prayers clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled about at pleasure, until the meaning of the composition perished, and offices which ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... leaned across the table toward the incognito Royal Duke, "the desire of Your Royal Highness—pardon me, I mean, of 'Lord Denton'—is of course to see England victorious in this contest; but that may mean years of fighting and an appalling loss of men and money. Such true patriots as yourself and 'Mr. Karlbeck' must see that it would be far better to end the war now, provided that a lasting peace can be ensured, and that I think I can guarantee with my discovery. I should be delighted, therefore, to co-operate ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... comparatively a small one, the colony then being so thinly settled. But this, to Master Raymond's eyes, gave a new horror to the scene. If there had been a crowd like that when London brought together its thousands at Tyburn, it would have seemed less appalling. But here were a few people—not alienated from each other by ancestral differences in creed or politics, and who had never seen each other's faces before—but members of the same little band which had fled ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough chess games. When dark came we decided ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the face in which it was exhibited, as on a frightful vision; until, passing his handkerchief a moment across his countenance, this mysterious man relaxed at once the look which had for me something so appalling. 'The young man will no longer deny that he has seen me before,' said he to the Justice, in a tone of complacency; 'and I trust he will now be reconciled to my temporary guardianship, which may end better ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... I lay shivering in my blanket and could not get warm. The guns were continually crashing out. Shells were bursting just outside with appalling regularity. Suddenly they seemed to quieten down, as if by some means the Germans had got to know of our great plans and were preparing for the blow. Presently everything was comparatively quiet, except for ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... by the Puritans for witchcraft. Under pressure, fifty persons there confessed themselves to be witches. Italy, Spain, and Portugal had their victims too. At one period the execution of witches exceeded those in England, though the number put to death in the latter country was truly appalling. In 1646 two hundred persons were tried and executed for witchcraft at the Sussex and Essex assizes. The last persons put to death for witchcraft in England were, some say, in 1664, while others ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... struck down the avenue, of which the snow was broken only by his own and his father's footsteps and the wheels of Bessie's car, he bared his head to cool his forehead and the hot masses of his hair. He breathed hard; he was aching; his distress was like that of being roused from a weird, appalling dream. He had not yet got control of his faculties. He scarcely knew why he had come out, except that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... now stand your prettiest towns and villages, was then a howling wilderness. Instead of the tinkling of the cow-bells and the merry whistle of the farmer-boy as he calls his herd to the fold, might be heard the wild cry of the panther, the howl of the wolf; and the equally appalling yell of the aborigines. These were "times to try men's souls;" and it was then the heart of oak and the sinews of iron which commanded respect. Let me describe to you some scenes in which such men were the actors; scenes which called forth all the energy of man's nature; ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead once again stirred—and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... firing on the fleeing enemy. The present European War has greatly increased the prestige and importance of this arm of the service. The amount of artillery on the Western front and the amount of ammunition consumed daily is appalling. ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... that all religious theories and all creeds are nothing more than the desperate and pathetic attempts of humanity, conscious of an instinctive horror of suffering, and of an inalienable sense of their right to happiness, to provide a solution for the appalling fact that many human beings seem created only to suffer and to be unhappy. The mystery is a very dark one; and philosophy is still not within reach of explaining how it is that a sense of justice should be implanted in man by the Power that ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Hindu. Let England lose India, and she loses five-sixths of the British Empire. By refusing admission to the Hindu, Canada is endangering British dominion in India. Moral conditions there are appalling, of course; but say the missionaries—give these people a chance, and they will become as good as any of us. Are we not sprung from the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... never be amazed, Knew you the zeal with which the pile was raised; Nor even here your smiles would be represt, Knew you the rival flame that fires our breast, 10 Flame! fire and flame! sad heart-appalling sounds, Dread metaphors that ope our healing wounds— A sleeping pang awakes—and——But away With all reflections that would cloud the day That this triumphant, brilliant prospect brings, Where Hope reviving re-expands her wings; Where generous ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... tall form and horrid looks of Daaga were almost appalling. The looks of Ogston were sullen, calm, and determined; those of Coffin seemed ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... passing from comparative darkness into a brilliantly lighted room. He had a strong sense that it was full of people. He even thought he heard a murmur of sympathy, which was, however, instantly suppressed. Everard's was not a nature to be cowed by any circumstances, however appalling. He meant to show this rascally crew that an Englishman never loses his pluck, and, in spite of the ropes that bound him, he stepped forward with all the courage and pride ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... and follower of the Marechal, whom he commanded to proceed with all speed to Burgundy, and to inform his lord that if he did not forthwith obey the royal summons, the sovereign would go in person to bring him thence. This threat was sufficiently appalling; and the rather as Sully, by his authority as grand-master of artillery, had taken the precaution, on pretext of recasting the cannon and improving the quality of the powder in the principal cities of Burgundy, to cripple Biron's resources, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Church to see the wedding, leavened by a sprinkling of the very rich and a dash of the ultrafashionable. Unfortunately, the inside tips didn't pan out ... absurd and dazzling fortune was succeeded by appalling and irretrievable failure. Starratt, senior, was too young a man to succumb to the scurvy trick of fate, but he never quite recovered. Gradually the Starratt family fell back a pace. To the last there were certain of the old guard who still remembered ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... What appalling evidence in every direction of the ignorance and madness of his predecessors! An exchequer empty, exactly at the moment when it ought to have been fullest, in order to support our tremendous operations in the East and elsewhere: in fact, a prospect of immediate national insolvency; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... was often one of sick despair. It is so hard for the young to learn simply to wait; and poor Sara felt that, to make the outlay necessary for the reception of summer boarders, would actually impoverish them, and then—what if the boarders never came? The thought was appalling! ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... Washington, humbly confessing their dependence upon Almighty God who rules all that is done for human good, make haste, at this informal meeting, to express the emotions with which they have been filled by the appalling tragedy which has deprived the Nation of its head and covered the land with mourning; and in further declaration of their sentiments ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... instructed Hossain to go into the bazaar and buy up all the fresh fruit he could find. The sales for the day were over; but Hossain hunted up the fruit sellers and bargained so successfully that when he returned he was accompanied by a whole gang of coolies, bearing what seemed to Desmond an appalling quantity of melons, all ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... An appalling hush fell, for a few heart-beats, all over the field. Then from different quarters appeared uniformed attendants, racing and shouting frantically to divert the bull's attention. From fleeing groups black-coated men leapt forth, armed only with their walking-sticks, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Curtis speak at Saint James Hall, Buffalo, on Civil-Service Reform—a most appalling subject with which to hold a "popular audience." He was introduced by the Honorable Sherman S. Rogers, a man who was known for ten miles up the creek as the greatest orator in Erie County. After the speech of introduction, Curtis stepped to the front, laid on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... young white man of South Carolina, was in 1844 sentenced to death for aiding a young slave woman, whom he loved and had married, to escape from slavery. In pronouncing the sentence Judge O'Neale addressed to the prisoner these words of appalling blasphemy: ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "Then suddenly, a most appalling thing happened. The district in which the old don lived was swept by a plague of unusual virulence. De Leon succumbed before he had time to make any disposition of his property, even write a line to his daughter. His ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... last words he uttered to whom were:—"God bless you, Blackwood; I shall never see you more." He had a presentiment that, while he was certain of victory, it would, nevertheless, be gained at the price of his own life. Yet, with this prospect before him, appalling as it must have been to his mind, he was calm and serene. His whole attention was fixed on Villeneuve, who was wearing to form the line in close order upon the larboard tack, thereby to bring Cadiz under his lee, and to facilitate, if necessary, his escape into that port. This induced Nelson ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... only open to condemn; not that mouth, quivering and human, that had smiled and trembled and bent down from the Cross to kiss poor souls that could not hope, nor help themselves, that had smiled upon Isabel ever since she had known Him. It was appalling to this gentle maiden soul that had bloomed and rejoiced so long in the shadow of His healing, to be torn out of her retreat and set thus under the consuming noonday of the Justice of this Sun ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... It's a beastly shame you should be allowed to leave school while I must go slaving on at Miss Gordon's. Ugh! How I hate the place! The idea of going back there to-morrow! It's simply appalling. A whole term of dreary grind, and only a fortnight's holiday at the end of it. Miss Gordon gives the stingiest holidays. If my fairy godmother could appear and grant me a wish I should choose never, never, never to see St. Osmund's ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... was originally anticipated." At the same time, Lord Milner points out that, with Kimberley and the Rand, the "main engines of prosperity," virtually undamaged, the economic consequences of the war, "though grave, do not appear by any means appalling." ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... An appalling silence reigned on the ground. It seemed as though life were suspended in each of the crowd; and many eyes had been closed so as not to behold the final catastrophe. Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans had again become the prisoners of the redoubtable Robur. Now he had recaptured ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... curved and fretted choir-chapel especially dedicated to the Virgin, there lighting up with a warm glow the famous alabaster tomb known as "Le Mourant" or "The Dying One." A strange and awesome piece of sculpture truly, is this same "Mourant"!— showing, as it does with deft and almost appalling exactitude, the last convulsion of a strong man's body gripped in the death-agony. No delicate delineator of shams and conventions was the artist of olden days whose ruthless chisel shaped these stretched sinews, starting veins, and swollen eyelids half-closed over ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... terribly appalling in the struggles of the silent monster, as it writhed and twisted itself into knots; then unfolded with the rapidity of lightning, and waving its tail in the air, again beat down the bushes and luxuriant ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... golden valley, silent for centuries, now strident with human cries, vehement with human strife. There was the timbered basin of the Klondike bleakly rising to mountains eloquent of death. It was dominating, appalling, this vastness without end, this unappeasable loneliness. Glad was I to turn again to where, like white pebbles on a beach, gleamed the tents of the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... divided opinion when men took heart to survey the appalling scene of moral desolation that the cataclysm of '93 had left behind. We may admire the courage of either school. For if the conscience of the Liberals was oppressed by the sanguinary tragedy in which freedom and brotherhood and justice had been consummated, the Catholic ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... still the same, with this difference, that not only must she have every thing, but she got tired of every thing almost as soon as she had it. There was an accumulation of things in her nursery and schoolroom and bedroom that was perfectly appalling. Her mother's wardrobes were almost useless to her, so packed were they with things of which she never took any notice. When she was five years old, they gave her a splendid gold repeater, so close set with diamonds and rubies, that the back was just one crust of gems. In ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... and soap. He had contributed nothing to civilisation except a loathsome science of sensuality, and the taint of decay was in his bones. In the days of Spion Kop the Boer was an unlaundered savage, fit only to be a target for pig-stickers. His ignorance seemed the most appalling thing in the world until one remembered his hypocrisy and his cowardice. The newspaper which led the campaign of denigration against France has come to another view. Its proprietor now divides his time between signing L10,000 cheques ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... turn, making the now dense darkness more terrible with their harsh, sinister cries. Little by little as the night deepens, bellows, roars and howls resound upon every part in a slow crescendo until they are fused into a general and appalling uproar which could not be more awful if the gates of Hell were to ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... holiday, but she felt it had been worth waiting a lifetime for. There was something infinitely pathetic in her ecstasy of enjoyment and the gratitude for the simple pleasures that came to her. Only one thread of anxiety ran through her days, the thought of the appalling expense she was incurring, for she had made up her mind that the cost was to be paid out of her own ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... their opinion, there was an appalling silence, which seemed to last for several minutes, and then General Lee, rising erect in his stirrups, said, "Gentlemen, we will not cross the Potomac to-night. You will go to your respective commands, strengthen your lines; send two ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the speaker will be affected for good or for evil by the words that escape his lips. This fully accords with the discovery of modern science, so eloquently and poetically enunciated by Babbage, of the indestructibility of force or energy when once applied. How appalling is the sanction (which is not a myth) under ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... no doubt, in its gaunt, gray, prisonlike way. And, too, it had a moat and a miniature portcullis that rather tickled his boyish fancy. The furnishings, however, had an appalling grimness that took the very heart out of one. Chairs which seemed to have grown in their places for centuries crowded the corners of hallway and stairs like gigantic nightmares of their original prototypes. Monstrous curtains of ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... big, clumsy house expensively overdecorated in the appalling taste of forty years ago, now screened by forests of palms and vast banks of flowers; and they saw a number of people popularly identified with the sort of society which newspapers delight to revere; and a few people of real distinction; and a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... armed his guards with any unique weapon, but has merely left them to watch us. And the Orconites don't know how to fight! Think of the ease with which I got away with Hargrib last night. When it comes to dealing destruction with scientific weapons, their power is appalling. When it comes to a slugging match, they are only so many sheep. And Leider's forgotten to take that ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... guilt. His quietness now was in the oddest contrast. It was as though he had been sobered by his realization of the difficulty of convincing an outsider of his innocence of a foul crime in which he was deeply entangled by an appalling web of circumstance. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... he spoke she came down with the most appalling crash on to something hard and nearly jarred the senses out of us. Next the saloon was whirling round and round and yet being carried forward, and we felt air blowing upon us. Then our senses left us. As I clasped Tommy to my side, whimpering and licking my face, my ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... meetings," since so called, though the method—and the music—were different. The results in winning sinners, so far as they owed anything to the hymns and hymn-tunes, were apt to be a new generation of Christian recruits as sombre as the singing. "Lebanon" set forth the appalling shortness of human life; "Windham" gave its depressing story of the great majority of mankind on the "broad road," and other minor tunes proclaimed God's sovereignty and eternal decrees; or if a psalm had His love in it, it was likely to be sung in a similar melancholy key. Even in ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... fact that such an appalling catastrophe had befallen one battleship fell upon the minds imperfectly informed in naval matters, and already possessed by various exaggerated impressions, loosely picked up from time to time. Men knew not what to think, and so thought the worst—as we are all apt to do when in the dark. ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... it had expressed and would have conveyed to the mind of any one not utterly incapable of love, all that it might have betrayed even to this man who was her friend and talked of being her brother. She realised with terrible vividness the extent of her own passion and the appalling indifference of its objet. A wave of despair rose and swept over her heart. Her sight grew dim and she was conscious of sharp physical pain. She did not even attempt to speak, for she had no thoughts which could take the shape of words. She leaned ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... no novice at shooting rapids, though never before could he have undertaken such a fierce fight as the one in which he was now engaged, for the combination of the elements made it simply appalling. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Thid fled, spurred by the knowledge that his life was forfeit. For a time, he was naturally thought dead. Who could survive unprotected the extremes of heat and cold? And if by a miracle he triumphed over the elements, how survive the appalling enmity of the Termans, whose ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... brought there, or what force had guided that elfish cradle to his very door, he could not determine; but it must have been left early, for it was quite warm, and its clothing almost dried by the blazing morning sun. To wrap his coat about it, to run to his cabin with it, to start out again with the appalling conviction that nothing could be done for it there, occupied some moments. His nearest neighbor was Trinidad Joe, a "logger," three miles up the river. He remembered to have heard vaguely that he was a man of family. To half strangle the child with a few drops from his whisky ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... head-masters, and the rest of the girls furnished the novices with the necessary variety of partners, practiced "leading," and incidentally got better acquainted. On Friday evening, as they sat in the parlor resting and discussing the progress of their pupils and the appalling length of the Livy lesson for the next day, Eleanor broached the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... muscle that had nothing to do with any man's regular breathing, twitching away steadily. The whole thing was a careful reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that one read about sometimes and the voice was as clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one could wish to hear. All this time the head was "lip-lip-lapping" against the side of the basin, and speaking. It told Suddhoo, on his face again whining, of his son's illness and of the state of the illness ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that these sufferers are children, in the schools, and are thus handicapped in their work of education—in their efforts to fit themselves for the struggle of life—it assumes even larger proportions and becomes truly appalling. ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... by the indignation it had aroused, sent an embassador to London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On 15 mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! But his horror was still more increased ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... protesting against too hasty attempts to guide public opinion on these refined matters; and this tremendous eugenic reform, which awaits the emergence of some courage somewhere, is left altogether out of account. There was no allusion to the existence of venereal disease, far and away the most appalling of what I have called dysgenic forces, in any official eugenic publication until April, 1909, when in the Eugenics Review we dared to make a cautious and half-ashamed beginning; half-ashamed to stand up against syphilis and gonorrh[oe]a. When one thinks ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... sketchy on Sunday, in—well, in these days of the cleaned slate. But you see, Lionel Gordon, of the Twentieth Century Theatre, was to tell me, this afternoon, what decision he had come to about the engagement I have been spelling to get. He is an appalling mongrel, three-parts German Jew and one part Scotchman—sweet mixture of the Chosen and Self-Chosen people! He never was pretty, and increasing years have not rendered his appearance more enticing; but he's the cleverest manager ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... disagreeable. The night was cold and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of hail was falling,—each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... to the next teepee. Here we witness a scene almost as appalling. "Iron Arms," one of the most valiant warriors of the band, is stretched in the agonies of death. Old Spirit Killer, the medicine man, is gesticulating by his side, and accompanying his motions with the most horrid noises. But all in vain; the spirit ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... April twenty-second is one that I can never forget. It was frightful, yes. Yet there was a grandeur in the appalling intensity of living, in the appalling intensity of death ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never by to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the moment we have a Shakespeare, a Garrick or a Siddons, I assert confidently that we own dramatists and players able, if rightly used, to make our theatre worthy of our country and also that the misuse of them is appalling. For very many years the history of the English stage has been chiefly a record of waste, of gross commercialism and of honest efforts ruined by adherence to mischievous traditions: the Scottish and Irish stage have been mere reflections of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... adding to our starvation rations, I went out among the thorns at the foot of Caesar's Camp to shoot birds and hares. But the thorns are fast disappearing as firewood, and the appalling rain almost drowned me in the rush of the spruits. So we dined as usual on lumps of trek-ox thinly disguised. Talking of rain, I forgot to mention that the deluge on Friday night drowned six horses of the Leicester Mounted Infantry, carried away twenty-seven of their saddles, broke ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... aching heart, thinks of the cherished friends his streaming eyes will never more behold in an agony of soul dwells upon the faithful affection of an adored wife, who will never again repose her drooping head upon his manly bosom; grows wild with the appalling remembrance of beloved children, his wearied arms will never more encircle with parental fondness; then sinks for ever, the unhappy victim of circumstances that fill with glee the fluttering bird, who sees ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... libraries. Nourse was a great help to her here. He came to see her now and then; and though he still had his discouraging moods, at other times he was friendly and kind. Enjoying this conspiracy with the charming young Mrs. Lanier, he expressed his gallantry by bringing her books of appalling size. But some had beautiful illustrations that set her to imagining. Eagerly she groped her way deep into the history of the building of cathedrals and palaces in times gone by. And the long majestic story of man's building on the ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... the Atlantic terminus, as Panama was the Pacific terminus, of the treasure trail across the Isthmus of Darien. The Spaniards, knowing nothing of Cape Horn, and unable to face the appalling dangers of Magellan's straits, used to bring the Peruvian treasure ships to Panama, whence the treasure was taken across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios by recuas, that is, ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... effect! It was difficult to decide, without due consideration, which was the more interesting. Bildad, a huge, gnarled old Viking, with matted gray hair, bushy eyebrows, a flowing beard, and leathery face, a fierce-looking giant, was appalling to behold, but so was Caesar Napoleon, an immense bulldog, cruel, bloodthirsty, his massive jaws working convulsively, his ugly fangs gleaming, as he set his great body against the leash, and gave evidence of a sincere desire to make free lunch of the Bannister youths. As Buster Brown afterward ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... progressed, and the individual condition of the people, and heard their statements as to the inconveniences, loss, and suffering attending it, we are satisfied that the amount of it will involve in the aggregate consequences appalling and heart-rending. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... news produced a profound sensation in the Union. Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings. Eight months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy: ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... The accent of New York is harsh, grating, jarring. The rattle of the elevated railroad, the whir of the cable cars, the ringing of electric-car bells, the rumble of vehicles over the hard stones, the roar of the traffic as it reechoes through the narrow canyons of down-town streets, produce an appalling combination of discords. The streets of New York are not more crowded than those of London, but the noise in London is subdued. It is more regular, less jarring and piercing. The muffled sounds in London are due partly to the wooden and asphalt pavements, which deaden the sounds. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... equal importance which received so much information and which was so ill-informed. At a bureaucratic Simla dinner-party the abysses of ignorance that yawn below the company on every Indian topic are quite appalling! ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life—"Here! tak' it awa', and bring me a piece of bread and kebbuck!" he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering without disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious disregard. Once ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chose to stack wood for the steamboat companies, and their only amusements (save the mark) would be drinking bad rye whiskey—for Alaska is a "prohibition" country—and poker-playing. For men with a soul above such delights, the heart-breaking monotony of a northern winter would be appalling, and it is only to be understood by those who have had to endure similar experiences themselves on ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a more direct way—followed the broad, rippling course of the Canary, the stream that supplied the life of Myrtle Forge. He automatically avoided the breaks in the rough trail; his mind, a dark and confused chamber, still lighted by appalling flashes of memory. A thing as slight, as incalculable, as a loose flint had been all that prevented.... He wondered if Fanny and Thomas Gilkan were right in their shared conviction; Fanny half persuaded, but the elder with a finality ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... beginning to arrive. Fortunately some commodious caravans had arrived from England, only a few days before, and these were now entering the gate. They were filled principally with Brunswickers and Highlanders; and it was an appalling spectacle to behold the very soldiers, whose fine martial appearance and excellent appointments I had so much admired at the review, now lying helpless and mutilated—their uniforms soiled with blood and dirt—their mouths ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... their appeal. Using every symbol, every ceremony, every art taught her as a child, she had swayed them, vanquishing with mystery, conquering, triumphing, as an Oneida, where a single false step, a single slip, a moment's faltering in her sweet and serene authority might have brought out the appalling cry of accusation: ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... evident that we had in some manner drifted completely away from the island. The appalling conviction could no longer be resisted. There we were, lost and helpless, on the open ocean, in our chip of a boat, without provisions for a single day, or, to speak more definitely, without a morsel of bread ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... over and above these slow irresistible changes there has been a vast destruction and defacement of the living world by the uncalculating reckless procedure of both savage and civilised man which is little short of appalling, and is all the more ghastly in that the results have been very rapidly brought about, that no compensatory production of new life, except that of man himself and his distorted "breeds" of domesticated animals, has accompanied the destruction of formerly ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... discussed the material, and calmly lifted my dress to examine my high riding-boots, a great curiosity to them, as they nearly all wear the peculiar skin shoes already described. The odour of fish not only from the barrel on which I was seated, but also from my admiring crowd, was somewhat appalling as they stood around, nodding and chatting to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... for which I could entertain a wish? This be alone my prayer; may Indra with seasonable showers render the earth bountiful of grain; may the presiding Brahmans secure the favour of the gods by acceptable sacrifices; may the association of the pious confer delight until the end of time, and may the appalling blasphemies of the ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... excited tone. "Do not torture me by showing the appalling gulf which separates us. Strange that a heart so tender as yours to all mere human miseries should yet be adamant against the Saviour's loving touch. This has been my cruel cross, and my only safety lies in flight, wretched ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... to profess his conversion, and how God had been pleased to work "in the inward parts of his soul," when he was not absolutely certain that he had indeed been visited by the Spirit. And it is no exaggeration to say that to sensitive natures the initiation was appalling. The applicant had first to convince the minister of his worthiness, then his name was openly propounded, and those who knew of any objection to his character, either moral or religious, were asked to give notice to the presbytery of elders. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but AEschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will have AEschylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of man aspiring up to the immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in complexity and gloom, according as Christianity elevated ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... glared as if insane. Her eyes blazed, too. She could not hear the appalling clamour of his thoughts. She suspected in him a sudden regret, a fresh fit of jealousy, a dishonest desire of evasion. She shouted ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... past, a desire for expiation, than radical belief that this was the right and only thing for him to do. And when, some time after, he bade Ruth good-bye, as she went with her father, it came to him with appalling conviction that his life had been a mistake. The twist of a great wrong in a man's character distorts his vision; and if he has a tender ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moving coach, surrounded by a filthy, yelling mob, was a new and appalling thing; to Raymond Latour it was a very ordinary matter, a necessary evil that France might be thoroughly purged from its iniquity. When he laid his hand upon Barrington's arm, he had no idea who the prisoner in the coach was. Had he ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the blank familiar room, where the only tokens to greet him, that show any interest in his personal welfare, are the Christmas bills, which are lying in wait for him, amicably spread out on his reading-table. Add to these scenes an appalling picture of bachelor's illness, and the rents in the Temple will begin to fall from the day of the publication of the dismal diorama. To be well in chambers is melancholy, and lonely and selfish enough; but to be ill in chambers—to pass nights of pain and watchfulness—to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... committers of hara-kiri. Even today, no man more quickly wins the popular regard during his life or more surely draws homage to his tomb, securing even apotheosis, than the suicide, though he may have committed a crime. In this era of Meiji or enlightened peace, most appalling is the list of assassinations beginning with the murder in Ki[o]to of Yokoi Heishiro, who was slain for recommending the toleration of Christianity, down to the last cabinet minister who has been knifed or dynamited. Yet in every case the murderers ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... solemn, appalling, dread, grand, noble, stately, august, dreadful, horrible, portentous, terrible, dire, fearful, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of guilt,—that awful guilt, which the man has carried about with him for many long years, and which he has trifled with,—now proves too great for him to control. It seizes him like a strong-armed man. If he could only believe that the blood of the Lamb of God expiates all this crime which is so appalling to his mind, he would be at peace instantaneously. But he is unable to believe this. His sin, which heretofore looked too small to be noticed, now appears too great to be forgiven. Other men may be pardoned, but not he. He despairs of ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... slept. During the night he had given mysterious orders; thence when morning came there was on this pale face a sort of appalling serenity. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trap-door, a hiss like the ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... morning to you, directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your Division, I have received by Amos Rees, Esq., of Ray County and Wiley C. Williams, Esq., one of my aids, information of the most appalling character, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operations with ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... was not, I fancy, of a critical temper, and versions not too credible of well-known contes figure in her quiet kindly pages. There are moreover stories which I should not hesitate to describe as of an appalling banality if they were not concerned with such very nice people. On the whole I don't think it quite fair to the spinster lady to have published her notes. They may well have been painstaking jottings to provide material for polite conversation and ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... all right,' said Mr Martin, with a mollified air. 'Of course it is not to be expected that an old bachelor such as I am should be worried by an infant's screams. The screams of a baby have to me an appalling sound. Do what you think well with the child, ma'am, and let me know in the morning; only I may as well state that I think the workhouse ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... more regard for speed than safety along the veranda roof, and scrambled through the window into the linen-room again. She was trembling with agitation. Such an extraordinary development of the situation was as appalling as it was unexpected. She must have time to think it over. She could not bear to speak to anybody about it at present, not even to Lizzie. No, she must be alone. She ran quickly downstairs, and, before Lizzie had time to find her, dived under the laurels of the shrubbery ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... be overwhelmed. We are witnessing a perfect carnival of insensate materialism. The narratives which fill the columns of the daily press reek with the fierce spectacle of labor and achievement. And yet, in spite of all this appalling outrage upon the sense, we must steadily beware of becoming the victims of the apparent and the transient. Behind the uncharted riot there hides a power whose invisible energy is the real master of the field. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... in the name of my as yet unwritten poems, my masterpieces for which France, for which the whole brotherhood of letters, so anxiously waits, to put a term to this appalling chastisement!" ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Marston Will, and Harry Bell, and a host of out and outers, came up to the scratch, and floored many a youkel with their bunch of fives. It was at this period that the conflict assumed its most appalling feature, for the townsmen were completely hemmed into the centre, and fought with determined courage, presenting a hollow square, two fronts of which were fully engaged with the infuriated gown. Long and fearful was the struggle for mastery, and many and vain the attempts of the townsmen ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... apartments, the most appalling spectacle met their eyes. Seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated, were seen suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn, from one extremity to the other. They had been confined for several months in the situation from which they had thus ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... appalling though they were, did not seem to hold them in check. They were almost over the spot now. Jacques set his jaw firmly and steeled himself to do his duty. It was for France he told himself. He had selected with his eye a spot which he had ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... we recall the vast amount of illiteracy, ignorance, selfishness and degradation which exists among certain classes of our people the task imposed upon us is appalling. There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman. Yet to such classes as these we are asked to take our cause as the court of final resort. We are compelled to petition men who have never heard of the Declaration ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to him now, and her words were words of caution, prayers that he should adventure on naught so vast and appalling to her woman's mind, without due thought and argument in council. A servant entered at that moment, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... tall, gaunt dalesman, with pale gray eyes. Here is Luke Cockrigg, too, of Aboonbeck Bank; and stout John Jackson, of Armboth, a large and living refutation of the popular fallacy that the companionship of a ghost must necessarily induce such appalling effects as are said to have attended the apparitions which presented themselves to the prophets and seers of the Hebrews. John has slept for twenty years in the room at Armboth in which the spiritual ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... than a selfish delight in making her eyes flash, seeing the color come and go in her cheeks, and hearing her charming unstudied exclamations of pleasure—a delight not unmingled with complacency in associating himself in her mind with emotions of delight and admiration. It is appalling, the extent to which spoony young people make the admiration of Nature in her grandest forms a mere sauce to their lovemaking. The roar of Niagara has been notoriously utilized as a cover to unlimited osculation, and Adolphus looks up at the sky-cleaving peak of Mont Blanc only to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... And with what patience wouldst thou sit sewing by a crack in the shutters an inch wide, rejoicing in thy immaculate paint and clear glass! But was there ever a thing of thy spotless and unsullied belongings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness! with what awe I asked for a basket to pick strawberries! and where in the house could I find a place to eat a piece of gingerbread? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a pirate, I always felt when I entered thy domains! and how, from day to day, I wondered at the immeasurable ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The prospect is appalling, for these wild robbers of the desert fear neither man nor devil, and when once they retreat to their hiding-places in the mountains, it is next to folly to dream ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... danger is imminent, is a truth which must not be disguised. Here lies the great peril of the Government. It is not the rebel armies that can ever overthrow the Union. It is the alarming increase of the public debt and expenditures, and the still more appalling depreciation of the national currency, that most ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... edition, 1792), and his Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe (1789). The prisoners, he says, had little food, sometimes a penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no water, no fresh air, no sewers, and no bedding. The stench was appalling, and gaol fever killed more than died on the gallows. Debtors and felons, men, women and children, were huddled together; often with lunatics, who were shown by the gaolers for money. 'Garnish' was extorted; ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... right on going to those blue mountains," said the girl. "It's wonderful, but a bit appalling, to a tenderfoot such as I am. I ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... Chao-yang very sober and thoughtful, for our visit had been a revelation of appalling needs. Swatow seemed a paradise after such a visit. The smiling faces of so many Christians, and the signs of a truly Christian civilization, inspired me with new hope for the future. But our time ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... of your wrongs as on we rushed, 'Mid shot and shell appalling; We heard your voice as it upward gush'd, From the Maryland life-blood falling. No pity we knew! Did they mercy show When they bound the mother that bore us? But we scattered death 'mid the dastard foe Till ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... apparently, into his natural, as well as native, climate. The hotter it was, like a cricket, he chirped the louder, and enjoyed it the more. Young and restless, he was the personification of mischievous humour and sly annoyance. The tales he told of the fever were ominous, appalling, fatal. None could live who had not been seasoned, and none could outlive the seasoning. For myself; I might have been frightened, had I not been so constantly occupied in discussing pine-apples. But the climax was yet to be given to the fears ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... So appalling was the roar of the breakers, that it was with difficulty that the orders could be heard. In the meantime Mynheer Von Stroom lay upon the deck, kicking, sprawling, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a discovery—one which to a girl of honest nature was almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes; his comparative ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... treatment, and this act of Mr. Judson's enraged me beyond all control, and in a moment all the smouldering anger occasioned by his past harshness shot up as it were in a sudden blaze. I have often heard it said, and I believe with truth, that there is something almost appalling in the roused anger of one of those usually quiet and submissive natures. I have often since thought that passion rendered me partially insane for the time being; trembling with anger, I confronted my employer fearlessly, as I said "How dare you burn my book? you bad, wicked ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... leader; whereupon the customary scuffle ensued; for, no matter what their business in hand, personal contact always insured a slight passage at arms. At present, this diverted their thoughts from what might be in store at the will of their mutual enemy, and it came with appalling suddenness. Each small boy was lifted, bidden to shut his eyes and mouth, then plunged downward into a barrel of some cold slippery stuff. Here he was soused vigorously up and down, until every portion of his skin was smeared with the stick mess; after which he was placed ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... the second milestone of the Via Ostiensis was taken, as I have just said, in consequence of the inroads of the Saracens, which, under the pontificate of John, had become so frequent. The atrocities which marked their second landing on the Roman coast were so appalling that the whole of Europe was shaken with terror. Having failed in his attempt to secure help from Charles the Bald, John placed himself at the head of such scanty forces as he could gather from land and sea, under the pressure of events. Ships from several harbors in the Mediterranean met in the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... administrators or for personal friends. The danger for him does not lie in an affectation of genius or in a false order of ideas, but rather in a powerful imagination which he evidently controls with difficulty. The objectivity of his political Judgement is sometimes appalling in its sincerity; but it is the sign of a time of no ordinary need and peril, when it was a hard matter to believe in right, or to credit others with just dealing Virtuous indignation at his expense is thrown away on us, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... is a picture of tyranny and misgovernment sufficiently appalling to justify the resistance of any people, but more especially that of a people which had long been accustomed to even a licentious freedom, which was proud of its national honour and ancient renown; which entertained such a veneration for its laws ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... spite of the appalling waste which has been characteristic of our administration of natural resources, the outlook is distinctly encouraging. Resources used by past generations are gone forever, but at last we are making rapid strides in conserving ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... sitting-room—empty with the ghost in it—filled me with a new and stranger fear. Horrible happenings might occur in that room, and I must be there to see them! Moreover, the ghost's gaze must not fall on nothing; that would be too appalling (without doubt I was mad); its gaze must meet something, otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether: the notion of such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze; my eyes desired those eyes; ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... bees, vainly striving to find or make a passage through it, our men were blazing away with musket and pistol at the black wall of writhing, yelling humanity, and bowling them over by dozens at a time. When at length another port-fire was found and lighted, it disclosed to us an appalling picture of dusky, panting bodies, blazing eyeballs, waving skins and plumes, gleaming spear-points, and upraised war-clubs hemming us in on both sides, from stem to stern, every separate individual glaring at us with demoniac ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... with silver a little in advance, in order to strengthen his position, his right hand grasping a gold-headed cane, his left resting upon the pummel of his sword, his head dressing spiritedly to the right, with a most appalling and hard-favored frown upon his brow, he presented altogether one of the most commanding, bitter-looking, and soldier-like figures that ever strutted upon canvas. Proceed we now to inquire the cause ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... indorsed by fashionable usage. His health came flooding and roaring back in its fullness; and day by day the difficulty of restraining himself from loud laughter and strong, plebeian action became more appalling to him. He would leave the camp, set off at a run as soon as he got safely out of sight; and, when he was sure of seclusion in distance, he would "cut loose"— yell and laugh and caper like a true madman; tear off his superfluous clothes, splash and thresh in some lonely lake like ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the prospect of a future world, into which they were thus to be hurled without a moment's preparation, was black and appalling. Most of them had been careless, and had no hope beyond the grave. Wilson was a professed infidel, and many a time had argued the truth of the Christian religion with me for a half day at a time; but in this awful hour ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... it had ever been before, and in Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland the distress was appalling. ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... the restrictions of an act passed in 1793, soon led to an appalling amount of vice and misery; and in 1808, a committee of the House of Commons urged the suppression of this ruinous mode of filling the national exchequer. The last public lottery in Great Britain was drawn in ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the North German Gazette said that the Alsace elections had strengthened the war party in France. War seems to have been the general anticipation of military men. General Wolseley (February 26) is reported to have said: "I feel sure that a vast, appalling war is certainly in the near future; but this, indeed, everybody may be said ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... apocalypses are apt to appear in times of great calamity, and we have accepted the verdict of later scholarship, that this Apocalypse of St. John appeared about 68 or 69 A.D. Was this a time of trouble in that Eastern world? Verily it was; the most appalling hour perhaps in the world's history. The unspeakable Nero was either still upon the throne of the Roman Empire, or had just reeled from that eminence to the doom of a craven suicide. The last years of his life were gorged with horror. The murder of his brother, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... once, real boys, real girls! How long it was since she had seen any! She capered and jumped in a way which astonished Miss Inches, and her high spirits so infected the rest that a general romp set in, and the party grew noisy to an appalling degree. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... world's war bills mounting into the billions, and the value of the salvage piles an almost negligible amount, the material waste of war is appalling. If it will teach the nations to be as generous toward the great reconstruction program as they were toward the overthrow of that autocracy which threatened the world's freedom, then the waste of war ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... appalling!" said the girl now addressed. "You really oughtn't to keep horrid pets of that sort. And I ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... long parliament had not ventured to grapple with the subject; but this, the little parliament, went at once to the root of the evil, and voted that the whole system should be abolished. But then, came the appalling difficulty, how to dispose of the causes actually pending in the court, and how to substitute in its place a less objectionable tribunal. Three bills introduced for that purpose were rejected as inapplicable or insufficient: the committee prepared ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Arno, sounded a loud reverberation of many voices, an immense outcry mingled with the deep rumbling of carriage wheels, and the fierce neighing of horses. There were sounds like the rush of a great multitude, and cries of terror mingled with one another in appalling confusion. ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... an object so appalling, Collins rested his musket against a tree, and taking the scalp from between the ramrod and the stock, where he had introduced it, knelt by the body, and spreading out the humid skin to its fullest extent, applied it to the bleeding excavation. ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... settle the first question himself," said Aymer, idly drawing appalling pictures of steamrollers on the fly-leaf of a book, "as to the second—" he paused in his drawing, put the book down and turned ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... into silence: the magnificent brilliance of that ancient world, its fulness of speech and action, its copiousness of life, made the contrast more sudden and appalling; and it seems to be only at a later period, when the brightness was a little dimmed and the tide of life did not run so full, that the feeling grew up which regarded death as the giver of rest. With a last word of greeting to the bright earth the dying man departs, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Suddenly an appalling spectacle rose before her. On an elevated spot, a few feet from the greased pole, Snatchet stood poised in view of hundreds of curious eyes. His short stubby tail had straightened out like a stick. His nose was lowered almost to the ground. Each ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the ravages of the torrent and the river-flood, the destruction of the woods exposes human life and industry to calamities even more appalling than those which I have yet described. The slide in the Notch of the White Mountains, by which the Willey family lost their lives, is an instance of the sort I refer to, though I am not able to say that in this particular case the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command, or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the evening of June 13th were crowded with representatives of Society. Lashmar arrived about ten o'clock, and his hostess had soon introduced him to two or three persons of political note, with each of whom he exchanged phrases of such appalling banality that he had much ado not to laugh in his interlocutor's face. The swelling current moved him along; he could only watch countenances and listen to dialogues as foolish as those in which he had taken part; a dizzying ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... chief city of America, shall we have a scene like this repeated—the grandest procession ever seen on this continent, spontaneously evoked to celebrate the foulest crime on record. If any feeling of gratulation could arise in so calamitous a time, it would be, that so soon after this appalling calamity the nation calmly and collectedly rallied about its succeeding rulers, and showed in the same moment its regret for the past and its resolution for the future. To me, the scene in the White House, the street, and the capitol to-day, was the strongest evidence the war afforded of the stability ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... arms, with a glancing motion, with appalling force. They sliced into the close-packed forward ranks of the armored men; cut out of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... family to remain some time longer in Sydney; and from this period may be dated her extraordinary efforts for meliorating the condition of poor female emigrants. What fell under her notice in connection with these luckless individuals was truly appalling. Huddled into a barrack on arrival; no trouble taken to put girls in the way of earning an honest livelihood; moral pollution all around; the government authorities and everybody else too busy to mind whether emigration ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... massive chair, in which Solomon had been pronouncing judgment until 12:15, when the poet had called for it. The appearance of exhaustion observed by admirers of the poet's portrait was due to the chair's appalling weight. As he staggered under it up the steps of the passage des Abbesses, the young man had feared he would expire on the threshold ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... with a disregard to fatigue and danger that is inspiring; the men at the pumps, when the word goes forth that the ship is sinking, work with a frenzy that defies nature; so it is with the leaders of the Independence party. They are fighting against appalling odds, yet they do not stop to question the result. "Work, work, work!" is the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... afforded him in the past. The two first boys of creation were not bad fellows at all, although as was natural, their bringing up resulted in a general condition of pure cussedness that at times became appalling to their parents. The fact that there had never been any other boys in the world before placed Adam and Eve at a considerable disadvantage in rearing these two youngsters. There were no precedents ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... and by the most dreadful contagious diseases. They devote themselves unreservedly to the great cause, and in doing so exhibit the noblest spirit of self-sacrifice, and that on the grandest scale presented in history. Fortitude and courage, contempt of the most appalling dangers, disregard of suffering and privation, wounds, mutilation, and lingering death—these are the habits of soul which our citizen soldiers cultivate, and which tend to strengthen and harden the character, and to give it great moral force. The great qualities thus nurtured ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... up and gathering her pretty kimono about her, a lovely white Japanese crepe embroidered in gold with fire-eating dragons of appalling size. One stretched across the front as she fastened the folds. The girls also rose and put on their dressing-gowns. Unlocking the door, ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... alternative of beating against the tremendous swell of the North Sea that appeared to crowd all its power and vehemence into the mouth of the Fiord, or be shattered to atoms on the perpendicular rocks of the mountains, against which the waves dashed with a roar not less appalling than that of thunder. The intensity of darkness was complete as that of a wall; for standing a foot abaft the mast, we could not see the bowsprit end; and one man had no other order to fulfil but to wait for the flashes of lightning, and mark the position of the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the Atlantic states and the borders of Canada. In this unhappy fratricidal war each side used the Indians to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies, and as a result, in the quiet valleys lying between the Hudson and Ohio and the Great Lakes, there was an appalling destruction of property and loss of life. Brant proved himself one of the most successful of the leaders in this border warfare, and while he does not seem ever to have been guilty of wanton cruelty himself, those under him, on ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... to silence the field batteries whose fire was galling their offensive, had begun to bombard the village. Shells fled shrieking overhead, to break in thunderous bellows. Walls toppled with appalling crashes, now near at hand, now far. The ebb and flow of rifle-fire at the front contributed a background of sound not unlike the roaring of an angry surf. Machine-guns gibbered like maniacs. Heavier artillery was brought into play behind the British lines, apparently at no great distance ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... from the seaward corner of the jungle—the corner which was, unhappily for the rebels, right to windward of them; and although a number of men immediately rushed to the spot and did all in their power to trample or beat out the flames, it was of no avail. The fire spread with appalling rapidity, and five minutes after that incendiary shell had fallen the whole of the outer edge of the jungle was a continuous sheet of flame, the roar of which was plainly audible to the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... destiny was appalling; and though our ideas of destiny were rather vague, we could grasp one dreadful fact: Will had refused to be President of the United States! So we ran crying to mother, and burying our faces in her lap, sobbed out: "Oh, mother! Will says he ain't going to be ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the cholera raged in Milwaukee in a most appalling manner. The whole city was a hospital. For several days together it was claimed there were fifty deaths per day. Though earnestly entreated to leave the city, as many others had done, I declined, feeling that my life ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... a crack. The howl of the storm and the lash of rain was appalling, and it was two or three minutes before she could accustom her sight to the outer blackness. But when she did manage to distinguish something, she was startled to observe not only one, but two dark figures circling ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... long, low-ceiling library she was introduced to Mr. Kingdon, a man of winning personality, a philosopher and a humorist. Ranged beside him were three appalling critics: two boys of nine and seven years respectively, and a little girl of five. They stared at her solemnly and surveyingly while she was presented to ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... known and constant laws of composition, but as they give each other expression and meaning, by particular application, requiring distinct thought to discover or to enjoy: the choice, for instance, of a particular lurid or appalling light, to illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a particular tone of pure color to prepare the mind for the expression of refined and delicate feeling; and, in a still higher sense, the invention of such incidents and thoughts as can be expressed ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin |
