"Execrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's lifeless form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate furies that belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The blood of generations of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in her veins. The spirits of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired her with new fury. She was at this moment like a pantheress that has brought down her prey and stands over ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Hamet, with a severe but composed countenance, 'cease at length to insult the miserable with proposals more shocking than even these chains. If thy religion permit such acts as those, know that they are execrable and abominable to the soul of every Mohammedan; therefore, from this moment, let us break off all further intercourse and be strangers ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... alternatives is necessary or probable in these times, that we are compelled to choose between them, or that we ever shall be compelled; but simply, that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in France,—that semi-Catholic and semi-infidel nation,—there existed on the one hand a most execrable spiritual despotism exercised by the Jesuits, and on the other a boundless ferment of destructive and revolutionary principles, operating on a people generally inclined, and in some cases abandoned, to every folly and vice. This despotism, while it was selfish and unwarrantable, still had in view ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... mail, And special terror weighed upon his frown; His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ground them with inexorable jaw: The luscious fat distilled upon his chin, Exuded from his nostrils and his eyes, While still like hungry death he fed his maw; Till ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... for him did not allow any investigation to be made; but, the villages grieving over the public calamity, and unable to endure their forced famine, men trampled under foot respect and laws, in their judgment that tolerance in so execrable an evil had also vexed and hardened the sky. By common consent they seized father and daughter, and, shutting them up in a cage well weighted with stones, threw them into the sea. In return they experienced from the sky approbation for their avenging zeal, in the heavy rain ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... superstition, opposed to religion." [48] And as far as they made any distinction between Jews and Christians, it was for the latter that they reserved their choicest and most concentrated epithets of hatred and abuse. A "new," "pernicious," "detestable," "execrable," superstition is the only language with which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to notice it. Seneca,—though he must have heard the name of Christian during the reign of Claudius (when both they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, "because of their perpetual turbulence, at the instigation of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Count, or Court, but still he filled and possessed me with new causes of discontentments.' The reading of the statement was set in a more than usually decorated framework of Coke's amenities. Ralegh throughout the trial had been for the King's Attorney an 'odious fellow;' the 'most vile and execrable traitor.' He had been stigmatized as 'hateful to all the realm for his pride,' to which Ralegh had retorted: 'It will go near to prove a measuring cast, Mr. Attorney, between you and me.' With Cobham's deposition ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... anyhow we are having clear, bright weather. Yes, it is all very well—we snow-shoe, sledge, read both for instruction and amusement, write, take observations, play cards, chat, smoke, play chess, eat and drink; but all the same it is an execrable life in the long-run, this—at least, so it seems to me at times. When I look at the picture of our beautiful home in the evening light, with my wife standing in the garden, I feel as if it were impossible ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... thanks of half the kingdom, if you will please to perform the promise you have made of suffering the Craftsman and company, or whatever other "infamous wretches and execrable villains" you mean, to take their vengeance only on your own sacred ministerial person, without bringing any of your brethren, much less the most remote branch of the Royal Family, into the debate. This generous offer I suspected from the first; because there were never heard ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... execrable shape! That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance Thy miscreated front athwart my way To yonder gates? Through them, I mean to pass— That be assured—without leave asked of thee! Retire, or taste thy folly; ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of travelling, even between our main cities, were few, and the roads execrable. The party, therefore, travelled in Virginia style, on horseback, attended by their black servants in livery. [Footnote: We have hitherto treated of Washington in his campaigns in the wilderness, frugal and scanty in his equipments, often, very probably, in little better than ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... world, admitted with equal credulity, and similar abhorrence, the reality of that infernal art, which was able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs, and execrable rites; which could extinguish or recall life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from the reluctant daemons the secrets of futurity. They believed, with the wildest inconsistency, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored locality in the earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry what should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated—it was from the private stores of a Brazilian nobleman with an unrememberable ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Richmond our really rough work began. The roads would have been bad enough at any time, but the hard use by army trains in bad weather and the entire lack of repair had made them execrable. All the ordinary methods of keeping highways in order by local administration were suspended by the war, and the only work done upon them was what each wagon-master could do with his drivers to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of the game. He lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's promise. The most execrable repast that ever was begun being finished, all the crowd insensibly dispersed, except the little Swiss, who still kept near me, and the landlord, who placed himself on the other side of me. They both smoked like dragoons; ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... at cards. Soon after the humour changed, and games of chance came into vogue—to the ruin of many considerable families: this was likewise very destructive to health, for besides the various violent passions it excited, whole nights were spent at this execrable amusement. The worst of all was that card-playing, which the court had taken from the army, soon spread from the court into the city, and from the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... learned about women the farther out of mental reach they seemed to go. Why on earth did she want this execrable daub? "You may have it; but all the same, I'm going to call an oculist and have ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The Greve had then that sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, "a justice and a ladder," as they were called in that day, erected side ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... heart fluttered and sank. For here were plots, possibly dangers, most certainly trepidations. He turned his back as though he had seen nothing, and constraining himself to a slow pace walked towards the door of the villa. But the hawker was now at his side, whining in execrable German and a strong French accent the remarkable value of his wares. There were samplers most exquisitely worked, jewels for the most noble gentleman's honoured sweetheart, and purses which emperors would give ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... by two sisters, his cousins, who were already beginning to take alarm at his abnormal perversity. This pale and fragile being, an incorrigible thief, a consummate hypocrite, and a cold-blooded assassin, was predestined to an immortality of crime, and was to find a place among the most execrable monsters for whom humanity has ever had to blush; his name ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... believed also that many of his comrades, who were taken in that encounter by those Indians, were, as their cruel captain, torn in pieces and burnt alive. Thus ends the history, the life, and miserable death of that infernal wretch Lolonois, who full of horrid, execrable, and enormous deeds, and debtor to so much innocent blood, died by cruel and butcherly hands, such as his own were in the ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... miles east of the Pennsylvania-Virginia state line, in 1773; his son, Joseph Doddridge, was the author of Notes on the Settlements and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1763-83, a valuable antiquarian work. The names of Greathouse and Baker became execrable through their connection with the massacre of Chief Logan's family, in 1774. Leffler and Biggs attained prominence in ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and more especially the bandage around Captain Barker's head, attracted some attention. More than one group turned to stare as the little man began in execrable Dutch to explain his wants to the drawer. The fellow, too, was more than ordinarily dense, and a tempestuous scene was plainly but a matter of a minute or so, when a tall ensign of the guard rose from a neighbouring table, and, lifting his hat, addressed the Englishmen ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ever. Our loyalty to Womanhood is not a little wounded by the humiliations to which poor Mariana stoops, at the ghostly counsels of her spiritual guide, that she may twine her life with that of the execrable hypocrite who has wronged her sex so deeply. That, amid the general impunity, the mere telling of some ridiculous lies to the disguised Duke about himself, should draw down a disproportionate severity upon Lucio, the lively, unprincipled, fantastic ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... shivering as she was with fright and cold, and stretched out both hands to him as he waded forth; and he took them and clasped them, quite as if he needed help. Lord Keppel stood afar off, recovering his breath, and scarcely dared to look askance at the execrable sea. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Monsieur Sandeau, smiling; "he is mortified to death; his play is execrable, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... With execrable taste, he said: "Look here, old man, we are too old for this game. We must leave these capers to the youngsters. Come and have another glass, that is more ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... defence of such execrable duplicity, there can be no question as to its anti-progressive tendency. The majority of men are fools, and if such 'sensible' politicians as our Doctor and the double doctrinising ecclesiastics, for whose portraits we are indebted to Mosheim and Beausobre, shall have the teaching of them, fools ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... manufactured in England; boots and shoes, the former of which are worn chiefly, of Buenos Ayres make; and ready-made garments of linen and poor cloths. The imported liquors and articles of food are principally a small quantity of sugar, lard, wine of an execrable quality, and Hamburg gin, together with a few boxes of candles and some oil and soap. To this list of imports must be added the inevitable Chinese fire-crackers, without which noisy accessories no Paraguayan holiday would be complete. Throughout South America a passion for fire-crackers and fireworks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Many of his comrades had a lot of suffering from cold. But aside from the execrable boot that Sir Shakleton had dreamed into existence, he himself possessed more warm clothing than he liked to carry around with him. But not a few soldiers forgot to look around and take sober stock of their actual situation and fell prey to this sob-stuff. Fortunately for the great ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted, especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor, on the contrary, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... foreordained is indisputable." Again, he says: "In connection with the foregoing statements concerning the crucifixion of the Saviour, let us single out the case of one of the individual actors in that awful tragedy, one whose part was the most perfidious and execrable, and see whether his crime was not before ordained, and he the individual predesignated as its perpetrator." He proceeds to the proof of this proposition. But, when it becomes necessary to meet the palpable and ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is to be with ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... to history. At the celebrated siege of it, in the time of Catharine de Medicis, that execrable princess, distinguished herself by her personal intrepidity. It is said, that she landed here, in a galley, bearing the device of the sun, with these words in greek, "I bring light, and fine weather"—a motto which ill corresponded with ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... necessity for taking this trouble, as they might certainly have done their business without it, since the whole city was so deserted before night, that I believe not a soul remained in it, except those execrable villains, and others of the same stamp. It is possible some of them might have had other motives besides robbing, as one in particular being apprehended—they say he was a Moor, condemned to the galleys—confessed ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Miss Silvester's is a letter of no importance, I am inclined to believe that it is merely lost, and may be found again. If, on the other hand, there is any thing in it that could promise the most remote advantage to any person in possession of it, then, in the execrable slang of the day, I will lay any odds, Blanche, that Bishopriggs ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... were more execrable than Republicans. Westerners of that faith were jealous of Sewall as an Eastern man and rich. Too close union with Democracy threatened Populism with extinction. Rightly divining that their leaders wished such a "merger," the Populist ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... most monstrous of crimes would go oftenest unpunished; since, of all culprits, murderers do most shun the eyes of men in their dark deeds, and so provide beforehand that direct testimony to their execrable crime there shall be none. Only herein I am advised to take a distinction that escaped the learned sergeant. I say that first of all it ought to be proved directly, and to the naked eye, that a man has been murdered; and then, if none saw the crime done, let circumstances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... sun flooded the great halls of the old chateau of the Dukes of Charmerace, lighting up with their mellow glow the spoils of so many ages and many lands, jumbled together with the execrable taste which so often afflicts those whose only standard of value is money. The golden light warmed the panelled walls and old furniture to a dull lustre, and gave back to the fading gilt of the First Empire chairs and couches something ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... not to that end and purpose proposed, that these functions should be opposed one against another, in a hostile posture, or in terms of enmity, than which nothing is more hurtful to the church and commonwealth, nothing more execrable to them who are truly and sincerely zealous for the house of God (for they have not so learned Christ); but the aim is, first, and above all, that unto the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ, the only monarch of the church, his own prerogative ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... morning our party of four, accompanied by a following of black fellows and half a dozen dogs, set out by train. Before reaching San Felipe our bones had a shaking. The roadbed was execrable, the trucks of the cars were without springs, and to me it seemed as if we must leave ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... famous Gregory VII., looked out upon a world distracted by war and sunk in vice. "In Hildebrand's time, while he was studying those annals in Cluny," says Thomas Starr King, "a boy pope, twelve years old, was master of the spiritual scepter, and was beginning to lead a life so shameful, foul and execrable that a subsequent pope said, 'he ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... work,—the savior of his father! Then he became incoherent again. He cursed the baseness of mankind. "It was noble," he said, "to crush a rotten world for revenge, or for justice' sake; but to sell out a trust, for fifty millions of the first plunder, was execrable—it was damnable. It was a shame to have to use such instruments. But the whole world was corrupt to the very core; there was not enough consistency in it to make it hang together. Yet there was one consolation—the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... left him Robert Hall, instead of those execrable Typhons! But would that medicine have suited his case, or must grim Experience write sterner ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... years and a half Wenceslas had produced a statue and a son. The child was a picture of beauty; the statue was execrable. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... gag a maggot. shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing; dreadful, fearful, frightful; thrilling, tremendous, dire; heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening; harrowing, rending. odious, hateful, execrable, repulsive, repellent, abhorrent; horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying; offensive. nauseous, nauseating; disgusting, sickening, revolting; nasty; loathsome, loathful^; fulsome; vile &c (bad) 649; hideous &c 846. sharp, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... this excellent prince was forced to submit to before that odious judicatory, his majestic behaviour, the pronouncing that horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world, the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour, and the circumstances thereof, are all so well-known that the farther mentioning it would but afflict and grieve the reader, and make the relation itself ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... extra baggage, one of them out of me, though my trunk contained only clothing and three or four books. Small business this for a Railroad, though it will do in stage transportation. Our passports were scrutinized—mine not very thoroughly—we (the green ones) obtained an execrable dinner for 37 1/2 cents, and changed some sovereigns for French silver at a shave which was not atrocious. Finally, we were ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... fer of amite, profered to seeke their owne profite, commoditee and wealthe, though it be with ruine, calamitie, miserie, de- struccion of one, or many, toune, or cite, region and countree, whiche sort of men, are moste detestable and execrable. ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... lovers; that the late king was the offspring of such adultery; and that no one of the royal line, except the Protector, could boast of a legitimate birth. He saw those noblemen executed who would not accede to the execrable plot; and the Devil conducted him into the Tower at the very moment when Tyrrell and his assistant murdered the lawful king and his brother, and buried them beneath the threshold of the dungeon. He was a witness of the base submission of the Parliament, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her face. And yet refusing to return without ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... to your father that we are shortly to leave this execrable country and return to Brittany, and that he has great cause for congratulation; but he did not seem to comprehend me clearly, and that woman, who is always intruding her opinions, chose to imagine that he was groaning and crying out on account of what I said. The liberties ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... harmonious prose, for, you must know, "a magician is nothing else but a great harmonist." Here are some eight lines of the magnificent Invocation. Let me, however, warn you, strictly between ourselves, that my translation is execrable. I am sorry to say I am ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... marvelled at the regular, park-like look of the country, as though stamped from one design continually recurring, like our butter at Carvel Hall. The roads were sometimes good, and sometimes as execrable as a colonial byway in winter, with mud up to the axles. And yet, my heart went out to this country, the home of my ancestors. Spring was at hand; the ploughboys whistled between the furrows, the larks circled overhead, and the lilacs were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Edward,—to sympathize with the youth's horror at the sight of this obnoxious husband, "who seems to him," as M. Janin says in his preface, "a hero—what do I say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, la Franaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity can hardly be controlled. It seems as if M. Feydeau, by collecting in one individual all the qualities which most excite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... for every chance which presents itself, a canonry at Tournay, a prebend in England, a bishopric in Sicily, always half jocularly regretting the good chances he missed in former times, jesting about his pursuit of fortune, lamenting about his 'spouse, execrable poverty, which even yet I have not succeeded in shaking off my shoulders'. And, after all, ever more the victim of his own restlessness than of the disfavour of fate. He is now fifty years old and still he is, as he says, 'sowing without knowing what ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... bedroom in one of the cheap little pensiones which shoulder one another along the Riva degli Schiavoni, from the ducal palace to the public gardens, sat three men. All three were smoking execrable tobacco in ancient pipes. Now and then this one or that consulted his watch (grateful that he still possessed it), as if expecting some visitor. The castaways of the American Comic Opera troupe were on the anxious seat ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... we chose a tall Swahili because he grinned better than the others. "Although," as Fred remarked, "what the devil grinning has to do with cooking is more than anybody knows." The man, whose name was Juma, turned out to be an execrable cook, but as he never left off grinning under any circumstances (and it would have been impossible to imagine circumstances worse than those we warred with later on) we never had the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... lying between two lengthy hilly ridges, thickly dotted with the giant forms of the baobab. Kididimo is exceedingly bleak in aspect. Even the faces of the Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... period of her history, was a mere den of execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the interests of the gang, and beneficial to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... one of those warm spring mornings when vital energies flag, that Mr. and Mrs. Vincent toiled up the third flight of stairs; the halls filled with execrable odours of fried ham and cheap coffee; each busy with their own thoughts, possibly of green fields, apple-blossoms, spring violets, tables with damask and silver, cool, inviting rooms, and other equally tantalising suggestions. Faith, at the top, panting and pale as any lily, drew from ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... unruffled. "You have exactly defined the situation, and ours is by far the more disagreeable and thankless part to play. Oh—I am not going to defend all we have done! I only defend what we mean to do. Change of any sort is execrable to the man of taste, unless it is brought about by time—and that is a beautifier which we have not at our disposal. We are half Vandals and half Americans, and we are in a ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... He had a soul, and honor, and remembrance of friendship. He was a genius, superlative and bewildering. We can forget and forgive some things in such a man; but for such a sovereign as Charles V, what can we say, save that he was not so execrable as Philip II, his son? Charles, being Flemish in birth, both Flanders and himself considered him less Spaniard than Belgian. He was Emperor first and King of Spain afterward; and in Flanders he set the pageant ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... year 1648 the ill-fated Charles was brought a prisoner to Windsor, where he remained while preparations were made for the execrable tragedy soon afterwards enacted. After the slaughter of the martyr-monarch the castle became the prison of the Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Duke of Hamilton, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... perhaps spends more than he makes. A good deal of it looked to me like make-believe. There's no doubt about the claret, but the champagne was execrable. A man is a criminal to have such stuff handed round to his guests. And there isn't the ring of real gold about ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... of the Holy See, he robbed the bishops of their patronage, levied a double tithe on the French clergy, and commanded churchmen to surrender to him the contributions they had been receiving for forty years. That he was acting with the Pope's consent made his conduct none the less execrable in the eyes of the French bishops. The episcopal lords resolved to appeal from a Pope ill informed to one with wider knowledge; for they held the authority of the Bishop of Rome to be insignificant in comparison with the authority of the Council. They groaned: the abomination ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... when you axe concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a strange fortnight in that ugly old fortress, with its fine stone-work and the execrable decorations covering every inch of it. The days passed oddly. I did a little writing, and I saw my committee, whom I like. Colonel Dennis is an excellent fellow, and so are Mr. Needle, Mr. Vivian Reece{7}, and Mr. Harrison. A Mr. Howse acted ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... gravest. He could not understand why she desired to be in Bevisham. She must have had execrable dreams!—rank poison to mothers. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... country degenerated into a violent and revengeful sentiment, and took part in all the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was, in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable tribunal, the Inquisition. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... for a man so penetrating as De Witt to foresee to what depths of wickedness and infamy this execrable administration would descend. Yet, many signs of the great woe which was coming on Europe, the visit of the Duchess of Orleans to her brother, the unexplained mission of Buckingham to Paris, the sudden occupation ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (Life, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... orator could do 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 utterly forgot; he forgot ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... for us, with the best intentions, to communicate coherently with the embodied world. Why, there is the Puddifant ghost—in Lord Puddifant's family, you know: he has been trying for generations to inform his descendants that the drainage of the castle is execrable. Yet he can never come nearer what he means than taking the form of a shadowy hearse-and-four, and driving round and round Castle Puddifant at midnight. And old Lady Wadham's ghost, what a sufferer that woman is! She merely desires to remark that the family diamonds, lost many years ago, were never ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... and affection his station in society. The idea of his ultimately resisting that which should be fair and honourable to Lady B. did not come within my view of his character—at least of his natural character; but I hear that, as you intimated, he has had execrable advisers. I hardly know a more painful object of consideration than a man of genius in such a situation; those of lower minds do not feel the degradation, and become like pigs, familiarised with the filthy elements in which they grovel; but it is impossible that a man of Lord Byron's genius ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... inconsiderable cents. This abomination is termed "all sorts" by the publican and his indispensable sinner. It is the accumulation of the drainage of innumerable gone drinks,—fancy and otherwise. The exquisite in the "little goat-gloves" would not hob-nob with me in that execrable beverage; no more would I with him; and yet one of its components may be the aristocratic Champagne. In the social elements of a water-excursion-party may be found the "all sorts" of a particular kind of city-life,—the good of it and the bad of it, with a dash of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... eighty-three years well, like an old drunkard saturated with liquor, whom the alcohol seemed to preserve. At Plassans he had left a terrible reputation as a do-nothing and a scoundrel, and the old men whispered the execrable story of the corpses that lay between him and the Rougons, an act of treachery in the troublous days of December, 1851, an ambuscade in which he had left comrades with their bellies ripped open, lying on the bloody pavement. Later, when ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... her heart shrank from the unholy deed she had been selected to perform; she even prayed that death might come to her before the hour in which she was to do this execrable thing in behalf of the humanity she served. But there was never a thought of receding from the bloody task set down for her—a task so morbid, so horrid that even the most vicious of men gloated in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... joined it, but no dust-spurts leaped from the dune, where now a continual play of fire was leaping out. The Beni Harb, keenly intelligent, sensed either that they were being fired at with blanks, or that the marksmanship aboard the air-liner was execrable. A confused chorus of cries and jeers drifted down from the sand-hills; and all at once a tall, gaunt figure in a brown and white striped burnous, with the hood drawn up over the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... sheriffs and chief officers of all counties to proclaim Charles II King of England, and to cause all writs and warrants from that time on to issue in His Majesty's name. The Assembly of March 1661, taking into consideration the fact that the colony, by submitting to the "execrable power" of the Parliamentary forces, had thereby become guilty of the crimes of that power, enacted that January 30, the day Charles I was beheaded, should "be annually solemnized with fasting and prayers that our sorrowes may ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... feet high. The mountains are effectively arranged, and imposing by their massiveness, height, and rugged grandeur. Some of the roads are tolerable, those made by Mr. Balfour being by far the best. Others are execrable and dangerous in the extreme, and in winter must be almost impassable. Sometimes they run along a narrow ridge which in its normal condition was of barely sufficient width to carry the car, and it often happens that part of this has fallen ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... west of the settlement, and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn't find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Any way, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... time! Thirty years previous, when Louis was dauphin, the emperor had tried to turn the Swiss against him. Had not God, knowing the hearts of men, inspired the brave mountaineers, Louis would have been a victim of execrable treachery. The outcome had been wonderful, for an eternal friendship had sprung up between him and the Swiss which must ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the Canaanites. He conceives also, that a justification of Jael's conduct might be found in the character of Sisera, pleading that we are not required to keep good faith, or to show lenity to those execrable persons who only avail themselves of our regard to these virtues, to violate them in their conduct to others, to falsify their promises, and carry blood and carnage wherever they go. Under this impression, he prays that Providence may never raise up among us Jabins ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... should be thought to speak with uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly gives Euphues a story to tell in which the chief character describes the effect of traveling upon himself. 'There was no crime so barbarous, no murder so bloody, no oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readily recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the peculiar crime of every particular country, city, town, village, house, or chamber.' Here, indeed, is no ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... is the invaders of any soil that is first dug up and then left for a long time to its own resources. We have, in the first rank, the couch grass, that execrable weed which three years of stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating. Next, in respect of number, come the centauries, grim looking one and all, bristling with prickles or starry halberds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury, the mountain centaury, the star thistle and the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... composed the audience, and these were principally civilized Indians of the Tagalo tribe, a fine-looking race. They were remarkably well behaved, and listened with much attention and apparent pleasure, to some most execrable music, elicited by scraping "the hair of the horse over the entrails of a cat," to wit: fiddling! which, ceasing at last, at a given signal, up rose the curtain, and with it Apollo took flight, and ascended ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... of light from the kitchen door disappeared; the voices departed; the stillness of the dark descended, and with it that unreasonable sense of pathos which night in the country brings to the heart of a wanderer. Then, out of the lonely silence, there issued a strange, incongruous sound as an execrable voice essayed to produce the semblance of an air odiously familiar about the streets of Paris some three years past, and I became aware of a smell of some dreadful thing burning. Beneath the arbour I perceived a glowing spark ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... relented, and even offered to assist him in his search, but he waved her away, and going upstairs sat down and looked drearily round the shabby little room. An execrable ornament of green and pink paper in the fireplace had fallen down, together with a little soot; there was dust on the table, and other signs of neglect. He crossed over to the window and secured two or three of the blooms, and was drying the stalks on ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... pleasant folk, those Altrurians," said the Captain, "although rather given to boasting. And they have really little enough to brag about, after all. Their climate is execrable—I find it ever windy hereabouts, and when I get in sight of that bank of fog, I always look out for squalls. I don't know just what the population is now, but I doubt if it is growing. You see, people talk about moving there to live, ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... to that execrable man, Williamson; the man who but the other day murdered such a number of Moravian Indians, knowing them to be friends; knowing that he ran no risk in murdering a people who would not fight, and ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... ascended the stairs I heard a fellow belonging to the Right, whose back only I could see, say to another: "Louis Blanc is execrable, but Victor ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Taste was issued to the town, A few Greek verses in the text set down Were torn to pieces, mangled into hash, Doomed to the flames as execrable trash,— In short, were butchered rather than dissected, And several false quantities detected,— Till, when the smoke had vanished from the cinders, 'Twas just discovered that—THE ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... whose execrable way Was darkly shadow'd out in Milton's lay, When the sad fiends thro' Hell's sulphureous roads Took the first survey of their new abodes; 10 Or when the fall'n Archangel fierce Dar'd through the realms ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cambric frills, were all here displayed; while upon shirt-fronts, wristbands, and neckties, upon every finger, even upon the very ears, they wore an assortment of rings, shirt-pins, brooches, and trinkets, of which the value only equaled the execrable taste. Women, children, and servants, in equally expensive dress, surrounded their husbands, fathers, or masters, who resembled the patriarchs of tribes in the midst of their ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... me how my Irish horses should be shod, or what was the best bit for a "borer."' He saw, besides, that the game of politics was a game of compromises: something was deemed admirable now that had been hitherto almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he pronounced the whole thing an 'imposition and a humbug.' 'I can understand a right ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... said the president, now turning his attention to the worthy Hugh, "profane and execrable wretch!—we have said, that in consideration of those rights which, even in thy filthy person, we feel no inclination to violate, we have condescended to make reply to thy rude and unseasonable inquiries. We nevertheless, for your unhallowed intrusion upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... years of age, was met with. In Lorraine, the famished nuns quitted their convents and became mendicants: the poor creatures gave themselves up to be dishonoured for the sake of a morsel of bread. No pity, no remorse. An execrable and sanguinary war upon the weak. In the heart of the city of Rheims, a beautiful girl was chased from street to street for ten days by the licentious soldiery; and as they could not catch her, they killed her by shooting her down. In the vicinity of Angers, Alais, and Condom, upon all the highways ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c. (malevolent) 907. unadvisable &c. (inexpedient) 647; unprofitable &c. (useless) 645; incompetent &c. (unskillful) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for us before sunset. Our friend paid us like a banker, but treated us like a prince. We sat up for him till midnight. Under the stern awning bearded Jackson jingled an old guitar and sang, with an execrable accent, Spanish love-songs; while young Hollis and I, sprawling on the deck, had a game of chess by the light of a cargo lantern. Karain did not appear. Next day we were busy unloading, and heard that the Rajah was unwell. The expected invitation to visit him ashore did not come. We sent friendly ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... thrust splinters of reeds into his eyes, and having dragged him into one of the suburbs, stoned him to death. The next person they seized was a Christian woman, called Quinta, whom they carried to one of their temples to pay divine worship to the idol. She loaded the execrable divinity with many reproaches, which so exasperated the people that they dragged her by the heels upon the pavement of sharp pebbles, cruelly scourged her, and put her to the same death. The rioters, by this time, were in the height of their ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... does not accept appears to him, not only ridiculous and grotesque, but criminal. He flatters himself that he alone is in possession of the absolute truth. Of this he is so entirely sure that everyone who contradicts him seems to him an execrable monster and a public enemy. He does not suspect for a moment that after all his personal views are only hypotheses, and that he is all the more laughable for claiming a Divine right for them precisely because they deny divinity. Or, at least, they profess to do ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... the same execrable barren prairie offering no clew by which to guide our way. As we drew near the hills an opening appeared, through which the Indians must have gone if they had passed that way at all. Slowly we began to ascend it. I felt the most ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... stranger. tre, to be, exist; — , to belong to. tude, f., study. evanouir (s'), to vanish; to faint. veiller, s'—, to wake. vnement, m., event. viter, to avoid. xces, m., excess; — d'honneur, passing great honor. xciter, to urge. excrable, execrable, hateful. excuter, to carry out. exemple, m., example. exercer, to wield. exiler, to exile. expirer, to expire. expliquer, to explain. exposer, to expose, reveal; s'—, to risk one's life, exprimer, to express, describe. exterminer, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... Law against Lovers, and into which he introduced, with grotesque effect, the characters of Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado about Nothing. But it is more to Pepys's credit that he bestowed a very qualified approval on an execrable adaptation by the actor Lacy of The Taming of the Shrew. Here the hero, Petruchio, is overshadowed by a new character, Sawney, his Scottish servant, who speaks an unintelligible patois. "It hath some very good pieces in it," writes Pepys, "but generally is but a mean play, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... in contempt of common humanity, delivered up above twenty men of the garrison to the Indians in lieu of the same number they had lost during the siege; and in all probability these miserable captives were put to death by those barbarians, with the most excruciating tortures, according to the execrable custom ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... least, from their accursed fortune, while my poor brother, who promised little, was left, by a partiality I will not stop to examine, to pass as the inheritor of our infernal privileges— Nay, pardon, dearest Adelheid, I will be more cool; but death has saved the youth from the execrable duties, and I am now the only male child of Balthazar—yes," he added, laughing frightfully, "I, too have now a narrow monopoly of all the honors ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... got the most charming country-house YOU CAN IMAGINE: it is QUITE SHUT IN by trees, and so retired that, though only thirty miles from London, the post comes to us but once a week. The roads, it must be confessed, are execrable; it is winter now, and we are up to our knees in mud and snow. But oh, Eliza! how happy we are: with Thomas (he has had a sad attack of rheumatism, dear man!) and little Bobby, and our kind friend ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interesting habit, evidently borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff. Almost every man carries a supply of coarse snuff in a little sheepskin wallet or dried bladder; at short intervals he rubs a pinch of this villainous stuff all over his teeth and gums and deposits a second ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... These execrable wretches, who aimed at nothing less than the total overthrow of Venice, or at least of her government, looked towards the completion of their extravagant hopes with the greater confidence, since a new but necessary addition to the already ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... Friday Evening.—That execrable aristocrat and knave Richardson has given me an absolute refusal of leave! The poor man cannot guess at my disappointment. Is it not hard, "this dread dependance on the low bred mind?" Continue to write to me tho', and I must be content—Our loves ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... called Vin Huet—and is the last wine which a traveller will be disposed to ask for. When Henry IV. passed through the town, he could not conceive why such excellent grapes should produce such execrable wine. I owe this intelligence ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Harleston, and the old gentleman's temper grew more execrable every day. Again the bank directors met, and again at his request—this time avowedly on account of McMurtagh's illness—the reorganization and examination were postponed. And at last, the very day before the ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Your English is very weak; your Latin terribly deficient; your writing execrable; and your mathematics absolutely hopeless. There, go back to your place and work hard, ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... commenced, when Ali was abandoned by almost the whole of his partisans, in mere hatred of his execrable cruelty and tyrannical government. To Ali, however, this defection brought no despondency; and with unabated courage he prepared to defend himself to the last, in three castles, with a garrison of three thousand men. That he might do so with entire effect, he began by destroying ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... do Leo justice. His tyranny was merciful. I was soon expert in preparing his breakfast. I used to fetch him hot dishes from the shop. My own cooking was not good, and I made, so he said, the most execrable coffee, which led him to fling the contents of the pot at me one morning, ruining my shirt, trickling hot and wet down my body under my clothes, and giving me infinite trouble in cleaning his carpet. (As to his coffee, and the salad dressing he ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... without the mask of honesty, Retain his primeval meanness When possessed of ten thousand a year: And having daily deserved the gibbet for what he did, Was at last condemned for what he could not do. Oh! indignant reader! Think not his life useless to mankind! Providence connived at his execrable designs, To give to after ages A conspicuous proof and example Of how small estimation is exorbitant wealth In the sight of God, By his bestowing it on the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus, we should create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Constitution either are, or affect ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... are pushing me in a way that is not mine. You are weakening and chaining me. France looks for me and does not find me. Public opinion was excellent: now it is execrable. France is asking what has come to the Emperor's arm, this arm which she needs to master Europe. Why speak to me of goodness, abstract justice, and of natural laws? The first law is necessity: the first ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... warfare of the CHRISTIAN KING of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insiduous recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary defence. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to informing you that I shall—unless ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of the officers was explained a little later. They had been searching for an interpreter, so that I might be put through another inquisition. This interpreter was about the most incompetent of his class that one could wish to meet. His English was execrable—far worse than Chinese pidgin—and he had an unhappy and disconcerting manner of intermingling German and English words, while either through a physical defect or from some other cause, he could not pronounce ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... on to tell Serafino, that Thomas Jefferson, when drafting the Declaration of Independence, had condemned George III who had forbidden the American Colonies "to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce"; but that the clause was stricken out by South Carolina and Georgia. Therefore that the Declaration did not mean negroes when it said "all men." Serafino looked at me with quiet, comprehending eyes which said: "It's the same struggle ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... education is so excellent, that every person is learned—more or less acquainted with Greek and Latin. There is one thing, however, connected with them, which is a great drawback—the horrid jargon which they speak. However learned they may be in Greek and Latin, their English is execrable; and yet I'm told it is not so bad as it was. I was in company the other day with an Englishman who has resided here many years. We were talking about the country and its people. 'I should like both ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Jeroboam he had indulged in excessive cruelty; he ordered the corpses of the enemy to be mutilated, and permitted them to be buried only after putrefaction had set in. Such savagery was all the more execrable as it prevented many widows from entering into a second marriage. Mutilating the corpses had made identification impossible, and so it was left doubtful whether their husbands were ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of repair. Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious subjects and execrable drawing always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then—But am I but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... was not lively, and the Duke, they say, made a most execrable speech. The fact is that he is not up to a great speech on a great question; he wants the information and preparation, the discipline of mind, that is necessary, and accordingly he exposes himself dreadfully, and entirely lost all the advantages he had gained by the excellent speeches he ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... certain stern politeness (I suppose he thought I had not caught the drift of his previous uncivil mutterings), and in a jargon the most execrable that ever was heard, "Meess——, play you must: I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... peculiarity of the manner nor that stately poetical phraseology by which sentiments mean in themselves, like the blacksmith's [138] apron converted into a banner, are so easily gilt and embroidered into consequence. Then as to the versification it was, to say no worse of it, execrable: it had neither the copious flow of Ferdosi, the sweetness of Hafez, nor the sententious march of Sadi; but appeared to him in the uneasy heaviness of its movements to have been modelled upon the gait of a very tired dromedary. The licenses too in which ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gradually heard him, too, and scholar after scholar bounded from his chair, seized a piece of chalk, and began to write. Only one was left, who stood at his place, pouring forth the most execrable ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... those who have read the dismal story of his cruelties, and settled their ideas of his tyranny and usurpation, I declare I am not going to write a vindication of him. All I mean to show, is, that though he may have been as execrable as we are told he was, we have little or no reason to believe so. If the propensity of habit should still incline a single man to suppose that all he has read of Richard is true, I beg no more, than that that person ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... of a newspaper, which he had caught up from a table. "I will run him through the body like that"—Aristide had never handled a foil in his life—"and when he is dead, your beautiful daughter will thank me for having saved her from such an execrable fellow." ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Charles, by the fact that "it was not done in a corner," and that those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. "That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour," forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... with an egg," he said proudly. "Will you pour, Signorina, while I cut this? That's genuine canned cream—none of your execrable Continental hot milk for me! And I like my cream first with ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... The Spanish priests, who had so often blessed this holy crusade and foretold its infallible success, were somewhat at a loss to account for the victory gained over the Catholic monarch by excommunicated heretics and an execrable usurper: but they at last discovered, that all the calamities of the Spaniards had proceeded from their allowing the infidel Moors to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... are the merits?" "which has the law and the facts on his side?" but "who is likely to be on the jury?"—thus obviously placing the composition of the jury before either law or evidence. Systems may have a very fair appearance on paper and as theories, that are execrable in practice. As for juries, I believe the better opinion of the intelligent of all countries is, that while they are a capital contrivance to resist the abuse of power in narrow governments, in governments of a broad constituency ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... for the sake of its own character would explode these doctrines with all the marks of odium they deserved; and that all parties would join in giving a death-blow to this execrable trade. The royal family would, he expected, from their known benevolence, patronize the measure. Both Houses of Parliament were now engaged in the prosecution of a gentleman accused of cruelty and oppression ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson |
