"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did he struggle to forget the thought. The atrocious, monstrous desire, once awakened, resisted, refused to recede, to hide, to die in the windings of his brain whence it had arisen. In vain did he repent his villainy, or feel ashamed of his cruel idea, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fervour of true Methodism to be released from it, and enduring fear, loss and anxiety in its continuance, the report of its persistence began to spread abroad, causing a rain of persecutions to fall upon them from all quarters. Old friends looked coldly on them, and strangers circulated the most atrocious ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... departure therefrom of Issa, the Pagans had caused the Israelites to endure more atrocious sufferings than before, and they were ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... and laughed—a great, frank laugh, which broke up the ordinary discontent of the face agreeably. The speaker, M. Alphonse Duchatel, had been already turned out of two ateliers for a series of the most atrocious charges on record. He was now with Taranne, on trial, the authorities keeping a vigilant ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fight, but being outnumbered were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to their death. The inhuman monster whose atrocious act has been described was among the number of the involuntary suicides. Another incident of even greater moment has ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... what, Mrs. Squ"—— he commenced, but she had gone, having slammed to the door behind her with all her force; and Titmouse was left alone in a half frantic state, in which he continued for nearly two hours. Once again he read over the atrocious puffs which had over-night inflated him to such a degree, and he now saw that they were all lies. This is ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... edition, 1801. But George has been worrying about them ever since; if I have heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse proportioned to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the devil would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his "Parriana" has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor George are again wrung, His letter is a ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... chesterfield, R. side. WILLIAM is at L. end.) My dear, you understand that none of us believe—what the Inspector wants us to believe. We know that you have never done anything—that you are no more guilty of this atrocious crime than I am. We all want to help you. We believe in you and trust you and love you. You understand that, ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... forms of life and you will find it in a ridiculously small minority. The fishes know it not, and they get along quite nicely. The ants and the bees, who far outnumber man, sting their fathers to death as a matter of course, and are given to the atrocious mutilation of nine-tenths of the offspring committed to their charge, yet where shall we find communities more universally respected? Take the cuckoo again—is there any bird which ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... jealousy is to all intents and purposes a madman, and should be as such regarded—that a duel between you must lead to the disgrace of all parties concerned—that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had no right in these days, when the most atrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I implored him not ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he had said to himself, "but she can cook and clean and seems to have the kindest heart in the world. She wouldn't be bad looking if only she did not look so all-fired foolish." Even Josie's atrocious make-up couldn't blot ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... collection is a cotton print handkerchief, upon which are recorded scenes from the career of the emperor; the thing must have been of English manufacture, for only an Englishman (inspired by that fear and that hatred of Bonaparte which only Englishmen had) could have devised this atrocious libel. One has to read the literature current in the earlier part of this century in order to get a correct idea of the terror with which Bonaparte filled his enemies, and this literature is so extensive that it seems an impossibility ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... for arousing the worst passions of their kind are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue publishes the following atrocious paragraph: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion will be reached which will ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... the prisoner stands charged is of the most heinous nature and blackest dye, attended with considerations that shock human nature, being not only murder, but parricide—the murder of her own father. But the more atrocious, the more flagrant the crime is, the more clearly and satisfactory you will expect that it should be made ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other—more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelings, of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus having invited the statue-ghost ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... followers it is difficult to write temperately. Most of the dramatic literature of the time is atrocious, and we can understand it only as we remember the character of the court and society for which it was written. Unspeakably vile in his private life, the king had no redeeming patriotism, no sense of responsibility ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... precipitately, but Sudaveh observing him, endeavored to cling round him and arrest his flight. The endeavor, however, was fruitless; and finding at length her situation desperate, she determined to turn the adventure into her own favor, by accusing Saiawush of an atrocious outrage on her own person and virtue. She accordingly tore her dress, screamed aloud, and rushed out of her apartment to inform Kaus of the indignity she had suffered. Among her women the most clamorous lamentations arose, and echoed on every side. The ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... expedition round the Sound in a plunger,—the most atrocious little craft ever constructed. Its character is well expressed by its name. These boats are dangerous enough in steady hands; but, as they are exceedingly likely to be becalmed, the danger is very much increased from the temptation to drink that seems always to assail the captain and men in ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... the ceiling showed patches where the plaster had broken from the battens, rats had eaten holes in the green baize table-cloth, and the whole place smelt of dry-rot. From the wall behind the magistrates' table, in the place where nations more superstitious than ours suspend a crucifix, an atrocious portrait of the late Squire Nicholas surveyed the desolated scene of his former carousals. An inscription at the base of the frame commemorated him as one who had consistently "Done Right to all manner of People after the ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Richard, even though he wrote under Henry the Seventh, who would have suffered no apology for his rival, and whose reign was employed not only in extirpating the house of York, but in forging the most atrocious calumnies to blacken their memories, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... which the present subject belongs. The traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the Old Testament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters has been quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deeds seemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them. Writers of orthodox repute now say that the Thus saith the Lord, with which Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must be understood subjectively, as an expression of the prophet's belief, not objectively, as a divine ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... he said, on hearing it. "It would be a most atrocious murder. Every Protestant in the settlement must unite, and insist on having his life spared. It would be useless to petition; we must ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... man speak up boldly. A man of these principles has a right to be heard. We live in a time of damnable innovations, and of most atrocious attempts to overturn the altar, the state, and the public trusts, and the sentiments of such a man are like ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... cruelty was just then beginning to exercise on my imagination. My mind secretly embraced the fearful sweetness of the newly discovered sensation, surrounding the performance of the function with all sorts of atrocious and bizarre inventions. For a time my intellect hung back from accepting this as the central and most fiery secret of the male attraction; but shortly afterward, when out walking with my father, I saw him perform the same act; I was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to the mill, he came to confession; and this commenced with a kiss, and ended with the fact that Rudy was the sinner; his great fault was, that he had doubted Babette's fidelity; yes, that was indeed atrocious in him! Such mistrust, such violence could bring them both into misfortune! Yes, most surely! Thereupon Babette preached him a little sermon, which much diverted her and became her charmingly; in ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... of citizens? I think not, Gentlemen, and I will therefore avoid the cruelty and poignancy of chaining the thoughts for a long time on such scenes; I will prove that by rendering the drama a little less atrocious, I have only sacrificed imaginary details, which are the envenomed fruits of the spirit ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... however, that a more correct idea may be formed of the wicked policy and atrocious disposition of these Moros, and with a view to do away with the misconceptions of those who are of opinion that incentives to trade, and other slow and indirect means ought to be employed for the purpose of overcoming them, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... axle-tree. In some places three times three persons, in others three times nine, were required for turning round by turns the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty of murder, adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction, they applied a species of agaric which grows on old ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... himself irrevocably driven from his possessions, without having been even heard before the tribunal which condemned him — a privilege which the law allows to the meanest subject, and even to the most atrocious criminal. ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... word," said his master, "not a cry. Just answer that question. Do you wish to be made sure of this man's atrocious guilt and ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... scourgings will be universal, lettres de cachet an institution. Why not? Where the god has no sense of justice, why should man? Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of victims will perish at the stake and in the flames in atrocious agony because they are wizards or witches or have had dealings with imaginary devils. Why not? The god does worse than all this. He keeps his victims alive for the sole purpose of glutting his ire and satiating his insatiable vengeance. Nay, things are so ordered that the very happiness of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... hole near the great double entrance-door, and watched over the safety of the whole house. Master Chevassat and his wife were severely "cut" by their colleagues of adjoining houses; and the most atrocious stories were told of both husband ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... had ridden night and day to find the man whom our neighbours thought we had murdered. Our faithful friend Bimjee'—Baji Lal stretched out his hand to the barber—'defied fire and smoke to rescue a defenceless woman from an atrocious death. Neither of you had anything to gain by these deeds of bravery and self-sacrifice. You did them for pure love of us. What do we want with that selfish man's gifts? Chunda Das, give me the paper which binds him to his promise to restore my home, that I may tear it ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... inspires me to say regarding a rascal whom I rescued from poverty, and who nevertheless pursues me with atrocious calumnies; he shall not have one ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... farmers, maltsters, tanners, and millers for miles around. Even those whose premises were not entered, as if they had been Frenchmen, had a brother-in-law, or at least a cousin, whose wooden bars had been knocked up. And the most atrocious thing of all, if there could be anything worse than worst, was that the Captain dined one day, at a market-ordinary, with Farmer, or you might say Squire Hanger—for the best part of his land followed to him from his father—and had rum and water ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the murderer was exposed to nothing but excommunication and ecclesiastical censures; and the crime was atoned for by penances and submission [z]. Hence the assassins of Thomas a Becket himself, though guilty of the most atrocious wickedness, and the most repugnant to the sentiments of that age, lived securely in their own houses, without being called to account by Henry himself, who was so much concerned, both in honour ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... for it is known that I am very fond of figs, and while my poor Dario was tasting them, I jested and told him to leave the finer ones for me to-morrow. Yes, the abominable blow was meant for me, and it is on him that it has fallen by the most atrocious of chances, the most monstrous of the follies of fate. Ah! Lord God, Lord God, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... "By Jove! there she is—on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer's wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a grocer's car! ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Copertino remained for five years without eating bread, and ten years without drinking wine, contenting himself with dried fruits, which he mixed with various bitter herbs. The herb which he used for Fridays had such an atrocious taste, that one of the brethren, by simply putting his tongue to it, was seized with vomiting, and for several days thereafter everything he ate excited nausea. He fasted for forty days seven times every year, and during these periods ate nothing ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... was reduced to poverty and exiled, yet in both poverty and exile he constantly refused the offers of pardon and of favor that were made from many sides and in many ways by the enemy who hated and feared him. Surrounded by assassins, made the target of the most atrocious calumnies, accused of cowardice before the enemy, and charged with the assassination of a wife whom he adored, sometimes regarded with distrust, slandered, and attacked by the very people he was defending,—he bore it all patiently and in silence. He did not swerve ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... he had said, "for your atrocious trade. He's just left old pimple-faced Charlie, who was writing ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... finished, but now in turn the Hymn of Garibaldi and the Hymn of Mameli, historic battle songs of Italian liberty, pealed forth to the stars, loud above the bursting of the shells. And many Italian eyes, from which the atrocious sufferings of this war had never yet drawn tears, wept with a proud, triumphant joy. And as the last notes died away upon the night air, a great storm of cheers broke forth afresh from the Italian lines. The moon was now ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... usual relation to that of the face, and was consequently nearly black. The character of the face was malignant, even satanic, to the last degree; and, indeed, such a combination of horror could hardly be accounted for, except by supposing the corpse of some atrocious malefactor, which had long hung blackening upon the gibbet, to have at length become the habitation of a demon—the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the perpetual villany which then assumed the insulted name of politics; none, of the utter sacrifice of public interests to the office-hunting avarice of all the successive parties; none, of the atrocious corruptibility of them all; none, of that general decay of religion, morals, and national honour, which was the result of a time when principle was laughed at, and when the loudest laugher passed for the wisest man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... man prays, we are told, for a good digestion: let us add to the prayer — and a bad memory. Truly we are sometimes tempted to think that we are the only ones cursed with this corroding canker. Our friends, we can swear, have all, without exception, atrocious memories; why is ours alone so hideously vital? Yet this isolation must be imaginary; for even as we engage in this selfish moan for help in our own petty case, we are moved to add a word for certain others who, meaning no ill, unthinkingly go about to add to humanity's already ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... and the Proconsul did not believe them; but, in order to get at the entire truth, put some of them to the torture, and ultimately adjourned their trial [see ante, pp. 203-205]. The manner in which Greek and Latin writers mention the Christians goes far to show that they were guilty of the atrocious crimes laid to their charge. Suetonius (in Nero) calls them, 'A race of men of new and villainous superstition' [see ante, p. 201]. The Emperor Adrian, in a letter to his brother-in-law, Servianus, in the year 134, as given by Vospicius, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... ought to have been financed, if at all, out of current revenue. It is true, also, that crimes have been committed, as in the case of the Putumayo horrors, when the money of English shareholders has been invested in the exploitation of helpless natives, accompanied by circumstances of atrocious barbarity. Nevertheless if we compare the record of finance with that of religion or international politics, it stands out as by far the cleanest of the influences that have worked upon the mutual relations of the various groups of mankind. International Finance makes ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions—to no avail; and although she had long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with him, it troubled her none the less. And because Michael came the ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... illustrated not only in this case, but in many parallel cases in the course of this history. A far more dreadful wrong was the identifying of the religion of Jesus Christ with a system of war and slavery, well-nigh the most atrocious in recorded history. For such a policy the Spanish nation had just received a peculiar training. It is one of the commonplaces of history to remark that the barbarian invaders of the Roman empire were themselves vanquished by their own victims, being converted ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... into which they were admitted generally without much inquiry into their antecedents. On this account they were shunned by the decent inhabitants, a course which they repaid with savage animosity. Perjuries the most atrocious and crushing, especially to the respectable poor, became the order of the day. Hundreds of innocent persons were committed to gaol and the infamy of convict servitude, without the possibility of escape from, or even mitigation of, their ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... very common among the ancients. The stern and rigid virtues of the Romans allowed this among many other customs, that were more unnatural than amiable, and such as in civilized societies of the present day would have been considered among the most atrocious of moral crimes. A Roman father, if his infant was meant to be preserved, lifted it from the ground in his arms; if he neglected that ceremony, the child, it would seem, was considered as doomed to exposure in the highway. Thus, in the Andrian of Terence, where, though the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... have heard the Catholic repreached with envy, duplicity, licentiousness, avarice—what was the Calvinist? He attempted the most atrocious of crimes in the Christian code, viz. suicide—and why? because he was to be examined whether he was fit for an office which he seems to wish to have made a sinecure. His connection with Mrs. Unwin was pure enough, for the old lady was devout, and he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... colored the picture strongly, in his usual indignation when the wrongs of the Indians are in question; yet, from all concurring accounts, and from many precise facts which speak for themselves, the scene must have been most sanguinary and atrocious. Oviedo, who is loud in extolling the justice, and devotion, and charity, and meekness of Ovando, and his kind treatment of the Indians; and who visited the province of Xaragua a few years afterwards, records several of the preceding ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... in Boston on the evening of the next day after his atrocious deed, and Friday morning, followed by a hooting mob, he was taken to the Eastern depot. At every station along the route crowds were assembled, and there were fierce cries for vengeance. At the depot in Portsmouth a dense crowd of thousands of both ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Caletes, and other Belgic cantons took part in this struggle; the brave king of the Atrebates Commius, whose accession to the insurrection the Romans had least of all forgiven, and against whom recently Labienus had even directed an atrocious attempt at assassination, brought to the Bellovaci 500 German horse, whose value the campaign of the previous year had shown. The resolute and talented Bellovacian Correus, to whom the chief conduct of the war had fallen, waged warfare as Vercingetorix had waged it, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... struck the unhappy Marshall. A single breath blew all his mock-judicial array into air and smoke. In a tone of insulted majesty and reinvigorated spirit, Mr. Adams then said, in reply to the audacious, atrocious charge of 'high treason:' 'I call for the reading of the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Read it! read it! and see what that says of the right of a people to reform, to change, and to dissolve ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... 1089,—the ablest churchman of the century next to the great Hildebrand, his master. It was through his influence that England was more closely allied with Rome, and that those fetters were imposed by the popes which the ablest of the Norman kings were unable to break. The Pope had sanctioned the atrocious conquest of England by the Normans—beneficially as it afterwards turned out—only on the condition that extraordinary powers should be conferred on the Archbishop of Canterbury, his representative in enforcing the papal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... justice to the scene which Moses depicts in one word: "Cain rose up against his brother?" Many descriptions of cruelty are to be found on every hand, but could any be painted as more atrocious and execrable than is the case here? "He rose up against his brother," Moses writes. It is as if he had said, Cain rose up against Abel, the only brother he had, with whom he had been brought up and with whom he had lived to that day. But not only the relationship Cain ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... we have seen, in the summer of 1793. The king of France had been put to death on the 21st of January in that year; and in less than a month afterwards the convention had declared war against England. The murder of the king, alike imprudent as atrocious, had in fact united the princes of Europe against the revolutionary cause; and within France itself a strong reaction took place. The people of Toulon, the great port and arsenal of France on the Mediterranean, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the abuv noat, I confess, is atrocious; but ke voolyvoo? I was only eighteen, and hadn then the expearance in ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... weeks on the unsubstantial memory of this meeting. What might have followed could not be known, for at the end of that time an outrage—so atrocious that even the peaceful Minyos were thrilled with savage indignation—was committed on the outskirts of the village. An old chief, who had been specially selected to deal with the Indian agent, and who kept a small trading outpost, had been killed and his goods despoiled ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... "but we are well armed. It may be, as Mark says, some kind of monkey. They can make atrocious noises. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... atrocious mockery as a great cat gifted with speech might have done while playing with the ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... in the proper place, should be precluded. In doing this they have used, or sanctioned the use of, arguments which may he applied with equal or even greater force to the carrying of any measure whatever, no matter how atrocious in its character or destructive in its consequences. They have appealed directly to the argument of the greater number of voices, no matter whether the utterers were drunk or sober, competent or not ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... services; for him In vain were prayer and promise; forth he went, Spoiled of the livery that till now had made him Enviable with the vulgar. And in vain He hoped another lord; the tender dames Were horror-struck at his atrocious crime, And loathed the author. The false wretch succumbed With all his squalid brood, and in the streets With his lean wife in tatters at his side Vainly ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... such the robust heartiness of his enjoyment of life, that honorable men who knew his faults best loved him to the last,—not in spite of them, but partly in consequence of them. What in another man they would have pronounced atrocious, appeared in him a kind of graceful ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... After the Judge had perused them, he ordered an indictment to be drawn up against Peter Riot: "For that he meanly and clandestinely and with malice aforethought had broken three panes in the window of Widow Careful with a certain instrument called a top, whereby he had committed an atrocious injury upon an innocent person, and had brought a disgrace upon the society ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... might do what they would with their bodies, but their spirits they could not break, nor overcome their indomitable pride. By the brave manner of their death it remained for them to make amends for the atrocious manner of their lives, and such a glamour did they shed upon themselves by the same brave manner, that it compelled sympathy and admiration of those that beheld them, and made upon humanity an impression deep enough to erase the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... lounge, scarce able to control the feelings of pity and indignation that agitated her. For almost the first time in her life she was fired with vindictiveness; she burned to see some swift and terrible retribution overtake the perpetrators of this atrocious deed. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... been looking into the subject. "You see, Tom," he observed, "until the slave-trade can be altogether abolished on shore, we do all we can to put a stop to it afloat. The atrocious Arabs are the cause of all the misery and suffering the slaves endure. It is impossible to return them to their homes; indeed, in most instances, those homes have been utterly destroyed; but if they were not, the poor creatures would run the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... avoided the errors into which they have been betrayed. Though they can bear with crimes, therefore, they cannot reconcile themselves to punishments; and have an unconquerable antipathy to prisons, gibbets, and houses of correction, as engines of oppression, and instruments of atrocious injustice. While the plea of moral necessity is thus artfully brought forward to convert all the excesses of the poor into innocent misfortunes, no sort of indulgence is shown to the offences of the powerful and rich. Their oppressions, and seductions, and debaucheries, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... encounter," he said to his new friends, "such atrocious villains as those men? and if you do encounter them, how do ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... But, get the horse. These billet-heads will suspect mischief if they see us talking together, particularly whon they behold your conceited action. This political landlord will surmise that you are a second Aaron Burr, about to beat up recruits to conquer California. Your big whiskers—what an atrocious pair!—with your standing collar, will ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... at the commencement of the reign of Ivan IV. The Glinskys were in high favor, and easily persuaded the young emperor to gratify all their desires. Laden with honors and riches, they turned a deaf ear to all the murmurs which despotism, the most atrocious, extorted from every portion of the empire. The inhabitants of Pskof, oppressed beyond endurance by an infamous governor, sent seventy of their most influential citizens to Moscow to present their grievances to the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... spite of their long and zealous literary services, under the very best-conducted and truly liberal Radical newspapers, which they have filled, with persevering ingenuity, day after day, with eloquent descriptions of the awful state of feeling in the country on this most atrocious subject. Where, patriotic, but most imaginative gentlemen! where have been the great meetings summoned to condemn the principle of the tax? The great landholders, the great capitalists, the great merchants, are pouring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a par, if not above that of the white man. And I had scarcely recovered from my surprise, at such conduct, as a private individual, when, as a magistrate, I was still more astonished at the great amount of not only petty offenses, but of crime of the most atrocious dye, perpetrated by so small a body of strangers compared with the great bulk of the white population: and such still continuing to be the unabating case, Session after Session, Assize after Assize, it at length became ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... disengaging itself from its Latin idioms, had become the language of legislation; it was that of the Assises, or laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The poetry of the troubadours had perished in the atrocious crusade against the Albigeois, but, "north of the Loire, the trouveres were still composing the chansons de geste, veritable epic poems which were translated or imitated by Italy, England, and Germany. So that we are quite justified in saying that, from the twelfth century, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... played, he drew the bow across with a swift jerk, thrust it back with another, threw his shoulders from one side to the other in abrupt time to the music. And the music! Thorpe unconsciously shuddered; then sighed in pity. It was atrocious. It was not even in tune. Two out of three of the notes were either sharp or flat, not so flagrantly as to produce absolute disharmony, but just enough to set the teeth on edge. And the rendition was as colorless as that of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... follow each other in dreams, from the moment when he had gone to the Convent hospital with Monsignor Saracinesca till the brougham drove away in the dark, taking Angela back. He understood for the first time how men whom every one supposed to be of average uprightness could commit atrocious crimes; he shuddered to think what must have happened if a mere chance had not changed his mood, making him ask Angela's forgiveness and prompting him to let her go. She had touched him, that was all. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... recalled the presence of the woman of the world. D'Arthez was dumbfounded. In his eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggravated robbery, or for putting a wrong name to checks, were saints compared to the men and women of society. This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies, and steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been poured into his ears with the inimitable accent of truth. The grave author contemplated for a moment that adorable woman lying ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... she clung close to her husband, and as she looked up to him as if for protection, the moon-beams shining on her beautifully fair countenance showed it paler than usual with terror, while tears glittered in her fine dark eyes. "O caro mio!" would she murmur, shuddering at every atrocious ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... escape the impending death, and save a life which—his good name being utterly blasted and gone, could have been but a prolonged shame—he conceived and hatched a plan, in its ingenuity, its wickedness, and atrocious baseness, of a piece with his whole character and life. In the handwriting of the Emperor, which he could perfectly imitate, he drew up a list of some of the chief officers of the army—by him condemned to death on the following day. This paper, as he was at about ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... not sleep well that night. He had taken Miss Bessy's bedroom, at her suggestion, there being but two, and "Dad never using sheets and not bein' keerful in his habits." It was neat, but that was all. The scant ornamentation was atrocious; two or three highly colored prints, a shell work-box, a ghastly winter bouquet of skeleton leaves and mosses, a star-fish, and two china vases hideous enough to have been worshiped as Buddhist idols, exhibited ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... glad surprise. After all, there is no reason why the old-established houses should not go on doing a good business on a Volstead basis. It has never been so much a question of what a man drinks as the atmosphere in which he drinks it. Atrocious cleanliness and glitter and raw naked marble make the soda fountains a disheartening place to the average male. He likes a dark, low-ceilinged, and not too obtrusively sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... resolved on, it was requisite, by degrees, to make the parliament adopt it, and to conduct them from violence to violence, till this last act of atrocious iniquity should seem in a manner wholly inevitable. The king, in order to remove those fears and jealousies, which were perpetually pleaded as reasons for every invasion of the constitution, had offered, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... ground for believing that the character of Richard the Third was not so atrocious as is generally ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... Vendal Velhas, or the old inn, formerly the haunt of the celebrated robber Sabocha. This Sabocha, it seems, had, about sixteen years since, a band of forty ruffians at his command, who infested these wilds, and supported themselves by plunder. For a considerable time Sabocha pursued his atrocious trade unsuspected, and many an unfortunate traveller was murdered, in the dead of night, at the solitary inn by the wood's side, which he kept; indeed a more fit situation for plunder and murder I never saw. The gang were ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... gentler ending. The Memoirs of M. de la Rochefoucauld appeared. They contained certain atrocious and false statements against my father, who so severely resented the calumny, that he seized a pen, and wrote upon the margin of the book, "The author has told a lie." Not content with this, he went to the bookseller, whom ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... her be examined by a magistrate," said Richard; "but, even then, woe betide her! When I think that Alizon Device is liable to the same atrocious treatment, in consequence of her relationship to Mother Demdike, I can ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tendency to Orientalism in the fashion of their garments. The women's head-dresses were arranged with much taste, consisting generally of a large handkerchief, or shawl, folded turban-wise, with hanging ends; but the heads of the men were surmounted by an atrocious machine, in the shape of a hat, which, with its broad, rolled brim, its expanded top, and numerous braidings and pendants, could be nothing less than an heirloom in a family. We marched some twenty-five ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Baltimore, the cook. The idea took mightily, and I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a fellow of a literary turn; and an immense quill, plucked from a distended ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... chivalrous feeling led him to intervene with the following letter to Professor Holmgren, of Upsala University, which was published in The Times of April 18, 1881. "I thought it fair," he wrote, "to bear my share of the abuse poured in so atrocious a manner ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... true that there is in blasphemy a certain outlet which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it was a poor, wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. Who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees all things, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were marked by the most atrocious ferocity and vandalism. The city was given up to indiscriminate pillage, attended by outrages of every kind, and in the end was set on fire by Morgan's orders and burned to the ground, much of its great wealth being utterly ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... such confidence in his friend's voluble cleverness that he had no doubt Offitt would "talk him free" in a few minutes. He was confused a little by his opening words, not clearly seeing his drift; but as the story went on, and Offitt's atrocious falsehood became clear to his mind, he was dumb with stupefaction, and felt a strange curiosity wakening in him to see how the story would end. He did not, for the moment, see what object Offitt could have in lying so, until the thought occurred to him: "May be there's a reward out!" ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... mitt, or sort of glove with amputated fingers, and gave me a stately, "I hope you are well, sir," that rather made me feel sick. She looked full at me in her steady and commanding way, as much as to say, "Well, you have committed no atrocious crime yet, I suppose; but I am rather ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... these prisoners have forfeited their lives to outraged law and humanity. Experience has proved that they are dangerous and can not be trusted. This is true not only of those who on the warpath have heretofore actually been guilty of atrocious murder, but of their kindred and friends, who, while they remained upon their reservation, furnished aid and comfort to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Independence. Another such affair, which I had a short time afterward, near the Bowery lane, and in which I shot a Captain Appleby's ear off, was attributed by my mother to the same cause; but the real reason was that the fellow had uttered an atrocious slander of Philip Winwood in connection with the departure of Phil's wife. This was but one of the many lies, on both sides of the ocean, that moved me at last to attempt a true account of ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... prostrate bodies of her foes; her horse has all four feet off the ground, his means of support, a bronze rod as a sort of fifth or middle leg, being more practical than artistic. "The rider's position in the saddle," as Archie says, "would turn any circus performer green with envy." An altogether atrocious piece of sculpture is this, with an element of grotesqueness in its conception quite unworthy of one of the most serious characters in all history, the Maid to whom, as Carlyle says, "all maidens upon earth ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... do not share the belief that the outbreak of the World War and its, in many ways, lawless and atrocious conduct have proved the futility of the work of the Hague Conferences. Throughout these anxious years we have upheld the opinion that the progress initiated at the Hague has by no means been swept away by the attitude of lawlessness ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... Thessaly; and at last even to Macedonia, from the premature and atrocious violence of the Pacha of Salonika. Apprehending a revolt, he himself drew it on, by cutting off the heads of the Christian merchants and clergy (simply as a measure of precaution), and enforcing his measures on the peasantry by military execution. Unfortunately, from its extensive plains, this country ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... alkali and rattlesnakes and general dryness. Constantly we drove, checking off the landmarks in the good old fashion. Our driver had immigrated from Maine the year before, and by some chance had drifted straight to the arid regions. He was vastly disgusted. At every particularly atrocious dust-hole or unlovely cactus strip he spat into space and remarked in ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Life and limb are held of such small value that severe mutilation is the penalty of absurdly slight transgressions, or is imposed at the arbitrary displeasure of the master, while more serious offenses are punished by death in atrocious form: as when the victim is buried alive with stakes driven through his quivering body.[16] The institution is of course a difficult one to uproot. But among the natives in the more thickly settled portions ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... island of Muck, an unpleasant-sounding name. To the north is the curious island of Eig, the southern side of which is perfectly flat, but in the north rises a lofty perpendicular rock, called the Scuir of Eig. Within it is a large cavern, which was the scene of one of those atrocious acts in "the good old days" when might made right. Two hundred Macdonalds, fugitives from a superior number of Macleods, had taken refuge in the cavern, when, unfortunately for them, one of their party, having left the mark of his footsteps in the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the said small sins to be 'greater than great ones.' But then ... if you look on the world altogether, and accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater ... things do not look quite so bad; because the conduct which is atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, may be no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... visible shape. Two palace revolutions were brought about by a national reaction against the predominance of this foreign influence, which was resented by the people not merely because it was alien, but largely also because of its unscrupulous and ruthless character. Some of the most atrocious cruelties which students of Russian history associate with court and political life in the Tsardom, during the best part of two centuries, had their sources in the sheer malignity of Teuton Ministers who spoke and acted in the name of the autocrat of the moment. It is characteristic that the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the example, which was followed by Scood, and, as the boat glided off, yielding to the stream and the impetus, a miserable yelp came from the rocks above, followed by two dismal howls in different keys. Then there was an atrocious trio performed by the three dogs, each of which raised its muzzle and its eyes skyward, and uttered an unmusical protest against being ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... another these insults from the canaille fell upon the ears of William. That slanders so atrocious could soil ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... July revolution. Yesterday a woman twenty years of age ran away to Montpelier with her lover; to-day, here is another, in Lyons, who poisons her husband and kills herself afterward. If I were superstitious, I should say that the world was coming to an end. What do you think of such atrocious ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... consider presently. Indeed, I should rather that you strove to relieve your mind of the problem. You have enough to do without that. Leave it to those professionally trained in such mysteries. If a man is responsible for this atrocious thing, then it should be within the reach of man's wits to find him. We failed before; but this time no casual examination of this place, or the antecedents of your son-in-law's life, will serve the purpose. We must go to the ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... that Lady Halifax had ever been so silently, surely, and swiftly damned before. In the fraction of an instant that followed Kendal glanced at the dismantled tray and felt that the situation was atrocious. He had just time to put his foot upon his half-smoked cigarette, and to force a pretence of unconcern into his "Come in! Come in!" when the lady and her daughter entered with ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... days, before the repeal of the Corn Laws had mitigated a little the sufferings of the dependent masses; and had expressed some human sympathy with all this fruitless pain, and a manly indignation at some forms of atrocious wrong. But there was nothing in his teaching of the people which should have given offence to the veriest conservative. The main burden of it was that "workingmen must emancipate themselves from the tyranny of their own vices before they could be emancipated from the tyranny ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... The State should no longer postpone making suitable provision for these unfortunate people. The treatment they receive in the infirmaries and jails is always of necessity unsuited to their condition, and is often atrocious. To provide for them, I would not recommend an increase of the number of asylums for the insane. It is believed by those best acquainted with the subject, that both economy and the welfare of the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... first and ruling principle of human nature, alarming our fears, has made us jealous and perhaps severe in our threats against delinquents. Besides, if we attend to the history of our penal laws relating to slaves, I believe we shall generally find that they took their rise from some very atrocious attempts made by the negroes on the property of their masters or after some insurrection or commotion which struck at the very being of the colonies. Under these circumstances it may very justly be supposed that our legislatures when convened were a good deal inflamed, and might ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... lover had left her, leading there for forty years the dead existence of a nun, broken by terrible nervous attacks. But the other shock was to finish her, to overthrow her reason, and Pascal recalled the atrocious scene, for he had witnessed it—a poor child whom the grandmother had taken to live with her, her grandson Silvere, the victim of family hatred and strife, whose head another gendarme shattered with a pistol shot, at the suppression of the insurrectionary movement ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... this dire superstition was checked; but it again burst forth; * and not only spread itself over Judaea, the first seat of this mischievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who were seized discovered a great multitude of their accomplices, and they were all convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city, as for their hatred of human kind. They died in torments, and their torments were imbittered by insult and derision. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "Atrocious, sir! I give you my honour, as a real gentleman, sir. Why, would you believe it, Captain Truck, the steward is a downright nigger, and he wears ear-rings, and a red flannel shirt, without the least edication. As for the cook, sir, he ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... The same feelings animated the lower orders whenever the feudal tie was broken. The same ages which witnessed so many heroic acts of self-devotion on the part of vassals for their lords, were stained with atrocious barbarities, exercised from time to time by the lower classes on the higher. It must not be supposed that this mutual insensibility arose solely from the absence of public order and education; for traces of it are to be found in the following ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... enshrouding the streets, concealing for the time their grey and mournful air of poverty and hidden suffering, and the black masses of cloud gathering so menacingly in the tempestuous sky, seemed typical of the Nemesis which was overtaking the Capitalist System. That atrocious system which, having attained to the fullest measure of detestable injustice and cruelty, was now fast crumbling into ruin, inevitably doomed to be overwhelmed because it was all so wicked and abominable, inevitably ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... rejoined, "his manner was atrocious! I could not—I would not if I could—give you any idea of its animality; yes, that is the very word! it makes my blood creep ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the innocency of the inner sanctuary of my home, the company of friends of the highest probity, a father-in-law revered at once for his pure character and his active beneficence, shield me from the very suspicion of sacrilege. Yet—atrocious as it is—they even draw credence for this charge from thee; I am like to be thought implicated in wickedness on this very account, that I am imbued with thy teachings and stablished in thy ways. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... made for controversies of this description. The existence of such a body as this gigantic corporation, this political monster of two natures, subject in one hemisphere, sovereign in another, had never been contemplated by the legislators or judges of former ages. Nothing but grotesque absurdity and atrocious injustice could have been the effect, if the claims and liabilities of such a body had been settled according to the rules of Westminster Hall, if the maxims of conveyancers had been applied to the titles by which flourishing cities ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quote but one more paragraph, which, by reason of its monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these atrocious deeds. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... opposite the town, where I sat down by the fire exhausted in an old woman's shaky dwelling, and fed on aged sardines and hot rice (atrocious mixture), there is a plain extending for twenty li to Yuen-nan-i—flat as country in the Fen district. The road was good (in wet weather, however, it must be terrible), and I would drive a motor-car across, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to the history of the United States. Yet is it pertinent thereto, as showing of what enormities the English of that age were capable. Their entire conduct during this French war was dishonorable, and often atrocious. Forgetting the facts of history, we often smile at the grumblings of the Continental nations anent "Perfidious Albion" and "British gold." But the acts committed by the English government during these years fully justify every charge of corruption, treachery and political ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... south-easter greeted us here, and I could not go out all the afternoon. The inn was called 'Railway Hotel', and kept by low coarse English people, who gave us a filthy dinner, dirty sheets, and an atrocious breakfast, and charged 1l. 3s. 6d. for the same meals and time as old Vrow Langfeldt had charged 12s. for, and had given civility, cleanliness, and abundance of excellent food;—besides which, she fed Sabaal gratis, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... to do with his halting there. On the contrary, he has turned up the Alamo, and is bivouacking on its bank, for a purpose so atrocious that no one would give credit to it unacquainted with the military life of Mexico in the days of the Dictator Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. This purpose is declared in a dialogue between the lancer colonel ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... expected daily; that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to dwelling-houses while the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... bamboozling me when I was most on my guard! I wasn't to be taken in by any of his silly occult tricks and catch-words; but it never occurred to me he was going to victimise me financially in this way. I expected attempts at a loan or an extortion; but to collar my signature to a blank cheque—atrocious!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... sold the boots and shoes which had been given him. They ought to have a share, they maintained. This atrocious injustice had induced the old grandmother to go immediately with little Jonas to the two good gentlemen, and relate how little the poor lad had received of flint which they had ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... laws, and here the Territorial Judges held their courts, which were a burlesque on the very name of a civilized and Christian jurisprudence; and here, also, were kept the treason prisoners, while atrocious murderers were not molested, because they were "sound ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... source of all the irrational systems that have ever prevailed; they have given birth to the most revolting practices, currency to the most absurd customs. History abounds with details of the most atrocious cruelties, under the imposing name of public worship; nothing has been considered either too fantastical or too flagitious by the votaries of superstition. Parents have immolated their children; lovers have sacrificed the objects ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, "Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it's nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely. "And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!—and for a whole month I've been...." But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... those days, twenty years ago, the decoration of the Pullman parlor-car was atrocious. Colors were in riotous discord; every foot of wood-panelling was carved and ornamented, nothing being left of the grain of even the most beautiful woods; gilt was recklessly laid on everywhere regardless of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... that Poverty took him by the hand and explained patiently and with diagrams the hardness of the world, the atrocious position of the declasse, who has never studied the art of roguery so as to make a living by it, and the utter uselessness as friends of those good fellows who sat in the cafes and walked the boulevards ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... natural affection, and all relative duties, were extinguished. Whole families were destroyed; and the empire was a scene of anarchy and wild contention. He, who felt himself capable of the most atrocious deeds, declared himself a BLUE, and the GREENS were massacred with impunity. Montesquieu, Grandeur et Decadence ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... head as a useless beast. If it were not for Mrs. Armitage and her little son, I would like to kill the sweep. His treatment of that poor fellow Amona, who is so devoted to the child, has been most atrocious." ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Abimelech thus became king, and extended his authority Over central Palestine. But his success was short-lived, and the subsequent discord between Abimelech and the Shechemites was regarded as a just reward for his atrocious massacre. Jotham, the only one who is said to have escaped, boldly appeared on Mount Gerizim and denounced the ingratitude of the townsmen towards the legitimate sons of the man who had saved them from Midian. "Jotham's fable'' of the trees who desired a king may be foreign to the context; it ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... times brutal superstition, disguised as religion, dwarfed men's minds, punishing, with atrocious cruelty, the crime of independent thought and apparently making impossible any mental growth in the face of ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... conduct against one another; and in drawing gentlemen into base and nefarious practices by sinister and insidious arts. And by these wretched and depraved lords he is held most dear and best rewarded whose words and deeds are the most atrocious, to the great reproach and scandal of the world of to-day; whereby it is abundantly manifest that virtue has departed from the earth, leaving a degenerate generation to wallow in ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... or State prison of the capital. Ill as were the accommodations of prisoners of war, the treatment of their own unoffending citizens by the Rebel government was ten times more infamous. We could not repress indignation, nor by any philosophic or charitable effort excuse the atrocious tyranny which here lashed, chained, handcuffed, tortured, shot, and hung, hundreds of people whom it could not stultify or impress. We may grant that the Confederacy had become a government; that, in its perilous ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... for me, you naughty girl. Well, well, times have changed since when, in the eyes of the august peers of our motherland, it was considered 'an atrocious crime' ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... described, and would probably have continued in full submission had not very severe treatment in respect of tithes, united with a great speculative rise of rent about the same time, blown up the flame of resistance; the atrocious acts they were guilty of made them the object of general indignation; acts were passed for their punishment, which seemed calculated for the meridian of Barbary. This arose to such a height that by one they were ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... begins with a stifled moan, like the moan of a bad dream,— mounts into a long, long wail, like a wailing of wind,—sinks quavering into a chuckle,—rises again to a wail, very much higher and wilder than before,—breaks suddenly into a kind of atrocious laughter,—and finally sobs itself out in a plaint like the crying of a little child. The ghastliness of the performance is chiefly—though not entirely—in the goblin mockery of the laughing tones as contrasted with the piteous agony of the wailing ones: an incongruity that makes ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... concealed. This led to a great many cases of cruelty in the treatment of them by the government. The government pretended often that they were richer than they really were, while they themselves pretended that they were poorer than they were, and the government resorted to the most lawless and atrocious measures sometimes to compel them to pay. The following extract from one of the historians of the time gives an example of this cruelty, and, at the same time, furnishes the reader with a specimen of the quaint and curious style of composition and orthography in ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and that they had no prospect before them but a lingering death by famine, or one more dreadful still upon the altar of sacrifice, made their situation a very trying one. The coming of their comrades was therefore doubly welcome. As an explanation of his atrocious act, Alvarado declared that he had but struck the blow to intimidate the natives and crush an intended rising of the people, of which he had received information ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Chichester, "is the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... excelled the productions of his mature genius. "As far," he said, "as versification goes, it is good; and on looking back at what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times" [September 23, 1820]. The opinion of J. C. Hobhouse that the 'Hints' would require "a good deal of slashing" to adapt them to the passing hour, and other considerations, again led Byron to suspend the publication. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... heretic, a sorcerer, who has bewitched the king. They will seize you to-morrow, or the day after. The king is in a terrible mood. The Nuncio openly asked him whether it was true, that he had been offered an atrocious insult in your studio. Is everything ready? ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... poet we agree in thinking ridiculously underrated by recent fashions, my boat is on the shore and my bark is on the sea; but before I go, Tom Moore (if I may so by a flight of fancy describe you), I feel impelled to send you this hurried line to thank you, so far as this atrocious hotel pen will allow me, for the wonderful time I have had in Palestine, which is so largely owing to you. There is also something even more important I want very much to discuss with you; because of certain things that have been touched on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... sedition began to manifest itself in furious cries. They then began to regard one another with ferocious looks, and to thirst for one another's flesh. Some one had already whispered of having recourse to that monstrous extremity, and of commencing with the fattest and youngest. A proposition so atrocious filled the brave Captain Dupont and his worthy lieutenant M. L'Heureux with horror; and that courage which had so often supported them in the field of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... her knees beside it. Nicholas buried up to his neck, according to the atrocious Tartar custom, had been left in the steppe to die of thirst, and perhaps by the teeth of wolves or the beaks of ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... It should be set down to the credit of the Code of Manu that with all its relentless cruelty toward woman it nowhere gives countenance to the atrocious custom of widow-burning which soon afterward became an important factor in the Hindu system and desolated the homes of India for more ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... and its altars, for it boasted several, were unspeakable combinations of cheap gaudiness and some little beauty. Common tinsel was cheek by jowl with handsome silver, and while a few of the many mural decorations and paintings were good, most of them were atrocious—glorified chromos of simpering saints with preternaturally large eyes, more nearly resembling advertisements for a hair dye or complexion bleach than ecclesiastical subjects. Around the main altar stood armoured soldiers of Biblical antiquity, squat, inelegant figures that had ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... regarded it with intense satisfaction. It is true that the colors were crude, for James Martin would have screamed at any Liberty tints. But the carpet was good of its kind, the pictures on the walls not too atrocious. Although they were in gilt frames, the large mirrors over the mantelpiece and at one end of the room were first rate; in short, the drawing-room was fairly presentable, and Mrs. Martin had some traces of her old life still lingering about ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... Guido's lovely Cleopatra. In the gallery there is a Judith and Holofernes which irresistibly strikes the attention—if any thing would add to the horror inspired by the sanguinary subject, and the atrocious fidelity and talent with which it is expressed, it is that the artist was a woman. I must confess that Judith is not one of my favourite heroines; but I can more easily conceive how a woman inspired by vengeance and patriotism could ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... that, feeling himself mortally wounded, he called his armour-bearer to him, and said, "Draw thy sword, and kill me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him." His monarchy ceased with him, and the ancient chronicler recognises in the catastrophe a just punishment for the atrocious crime he had committed in slaying his half-brothers, the seventy children of Jerubbaal.* His fall may be regarded also as the natural issue of his peculiar position: the resources upon which he relied were inadequate to secure to him a supremacy in Israel. Manasseh, now deprived of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero |
