"Horrid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and I confess, horrid as the thought may seem, I despised him for thinking of supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling. In the meantime, Clara, who was dead white but still possessed her faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door. Another moment, and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the nights my thought compel: In gloom I bide with fire that flames below my ribs, * Whose lowe I make comparison with heat of Hell: I'm plagued with sorest stress of pine and ecstasy; * Nor clearest noon tide can that horrid pain dispel." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... goose or turkey or hen, or a part of a bullock or sheep or goat, he might, according to his creed, be eating the temporary organism of his grandmother. The poet Pope wrote in the true Brahminical spirit, when he said,—"Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with cries of creatures expiring, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up there. It gives one an image of a giant's den in romance, bestrewed with the scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... on lay poor Sherwood, butchered by the brutal savages, and near him the lifeless body of her whom he had died to protect. Close by her side lay a soldier mortally wounded, who had just strength enough left to say: "I fought—for her—till the last,—Lieutenant,—and have saved her—from the horrid scalping-knife." Poor, distracted Montgomery threw himself on the ground beside her, calling despairingly upon her, imploring her to speak one more word to him, but all in vain; and when the troops from the fort, who had taken the alarm, arrived at the dreadful spot, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... many lots. Lieutenant Halleck had bought one of each kind, and so had Warner. Many naval officers had also invested, and Captain Folsom advised me to buy some, but I felt actually insulted that he should think me such a fool as to pay money for property in such a horrid place as Yerba Buena, especially in his quarter of the city, then called Happy Valley. At that day Montgomery Street was, as now, the business street, extending from Jackson to Sacramento, the water of the bay leaving barely room for a few houses on its east side, and the public warehouses ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... look at those horrid papers!' Mrs. Barton whispered to her husband. 'We must pretend not to see them. I wonder how Father Shannon can allow such a thing, making the house of God into—into I don't know what, for the purpose of preaching robbery and murder. Just look at the country-people—how sour and wicked ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... absolutely terrifying since she had heard the dark and menacing insinuations used by Blassemare. The evening that followed that scene, the night, and the ensuing morning, seemed endless, filled with horrid images, and haunted by the hideous thought that the catastrophe might possibly anticipate the hour of escape, or that some one untoward chance might defeat the entire scheme, and leave her at the mercy of a more than ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... never. Mrs. Hume and Miss Myra have noticed it in the house on other nights, and one of the maids, too. It was very strong, I'm told, last night. Well, sir, as they stood by the door they heard a horrid kind of choking scream. They both rushed to Sir Michael's ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... exhausted troops on the right—that John a Cleeve found himself actually climbing the log-wall toward which he had been straining all the afternoon. What carried him there—he afterwards affirmed—was the horrid vision of young Sagramore of the 27th impaled on a pointed branch and left to struggle in death-agony while the regiments rallied. The body was quivering yet as they came on again; and John, as he ran by, shouted to a sergeant ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... light blue domino, and Mrs. Bowen chose a purple one; even where their faces were not to be seen they considered their complexions in choosing the colours. If you happened to find a friend, and wanted to unmask, you would not want to look horrid. The shop people took the vividest interest in it all, as if it were a new thing to them, and these were the first foreigners they had ever served with masks and dominoes. They made Mrs. Bowen and Imogene go into an inner room and come out for ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... bear, and the tail of a serpent. Now this dragon swallows a maiden every day, and now the lot has fallen on Menechella, the daughter of the King. So there is great weeping and wailing in the royal palace, since the fairest creature in all the land is doomed to be devoured by this horrid beast." ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... introduced upon the earth: from hence has flowed that sacred fury which has frequently deluged it with blood: here is the cause of those inhuman persecutions which have so often desolated nations: in short, all those horrid tragedies which have been acted on the vast theatre of the world, by command of the different ministers of the various systems, whose gods they have said ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... if——He looked forward. He imagined he could hear the crash, see the great bow sinking; he could hear the splintering of the bulk-heads, the screams of the people tumbling up the companionways, the panic and pandemonium, the mad rush for the boats, the horrid, slow subsidence. But it was not to be; the danger had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... spirits, and gave them a quicker flow. Yet, for some minutes, I never ceased looking, now to the right, now to the left, up at the dark beams, and down the long passages, where the pavement, broken up in several places, and earth newly strewn about, seemed to indicate that something horrid was concealed below. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... hair," she murmured. "Ah, how I love it! I love black hair. How it shines, how soft it is! I hate grey hair. It is horrid. No, I have not killed him. He will wake again when we have sailed and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... very odd in my feeling nervous when I happen to lie awake and get listening for sounds. Just keep your ears open any time after midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone attic of a dark night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things seem to be alive. Crack! That is the old chest of drawers; you never hear it crack in the daytime. Creak! There's a door ajar; ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the guests at the Livery Dinner—(ugh! horrid expression! Yet I dare say the dinner wasn't more livery than any other City banquet)—of the Spectacle Makers' Company, were not to be found AUGUSTUS DRURIOLANUS, quite the best spectacle maker in London, and that from among the list of toasts as reported, Art, Literature, and the Drama were omitted? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... resumed, "it went away in a chaos of coal-pits, and snow-storms, and eyes not like yours, Molly! I was tossed about for ages in heat and cold, in thirst and loathing, with now one now another horrid draught held to my lips, thirst telling me to drink, and disgust making me dash it on the ground—only to be back at my lips the next moment. Once I was a king sitting upon a great tarnished throne, dusty and worm-eaten, in a lofty room of state, the doors standing ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... horrid, rattling little volleys, fear cascaded into the room and filled it, smashing like so much colored glass all the bright barriers of words Effie had raised against it. For no dreams can stand against the Geiger counter, the Twentieth Century's ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... But European nations have had no such training for self-government, and every effort to establish it by bloody revolutions has been, and must without that preparation continue to be, a failure. Liberty unregulated by law degenerates into anarchy, which soon becomes the most horrid of all despotisms. Our policy is wisely to govern ourselves, and thereby to set such an example of national justice, prosperity, and true glory as shall teach to all nations the blessings of self-government and the unparalleled enterprise ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... of the sweet-smelling stuff are tossed about our persons. Neglect the duty and you must walk alone. For to neglect conventionality is like going abroad without clothes; the naked man appears. Now, nothing can be more utterly horrid to our senses than a stark woman or stark man walking down the street. We should certainly pull aside the blind to have a peep, and the more we could see of the nakedness the further would we crane ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the truth of this assertion, but what becomes of their boasted uninterrupted apostolical succession? Baronius, the Popish annalist, confesses that Pope Sergius III. was "the slave of every vice, and the most wicked of men." Among other horrid acts Platina relates that he rescinded the acts of Pope Formosus, compelled those whom he had ordained to be re-ordained, dragged his dead body from the sepulchre, beheaded him as though he were alive, and then threw him into the Tiber! This Pope ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... this saucy little creature back into its proper place that, at the time of the great revolution in favor of natural classification, the conclave of professors assembled at the Botanical Gardens in Paris inflicted this horrid name of Cheiroptera on the bat, ejecting it contemptuously from the overthrown dynasty of ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen, while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung—the pianist, too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... confused roaring in his ears, a horrid sense of suffocation for a moment. But he had learned to swim when he was a boy at school, and he freed one hand from its grip on Mona and set to paddling with much vigor and considerably less ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... "What a horrid man! I am always relieved when he departs, and yet one meets him everywhere. He told me that frightful scandal about Lady B—— (and no doubt it is true, unfortunately) as if he enjoyed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... That would be the best way to treat him; the way to show him that I am not the miserable slave he thinks me. Why can I, who know so well how to manage all other men, never manage the one man whose love I want? That horrid old man was right—he does not want me—he never did. Oh, if I only could be proud, and pretend I do not care! But I can't, I can't—there is always this miserable sickening pain at my heart for him, and he knows it. I ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... make light of it," she whispered. "It is so like some horrid dream, and I am trembling yet." I put my hand upon hers, and ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... in fine Horatian measure of the contempt in which poetry was held; his fellow-monk orders him to let his pen, accustomed to writing poetry, rest. Consuming envy forces him to give up making verses. A horrid barbarism prevails, the country laughs at the laurel-bringing art of high-seated Apollo; the coarse peasant orders the learned poet to write verses. 'Though I had mouths as many as the stars that twinkle in the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... people that he was false; while the Consul Claudius, continuing to countenance such as daily seized and imprisoned some of the indebted people, had still new and dangerous controversies with them, insomuch that the commonwealth was torn with horrid division, and the people (because they found it not so safe or so effectual in public) minded nothing but laying their heads together in private conventicles. For this Aulus Virginius and Titus Vetusius, the new Consuls, were reproved by the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... horrid way of scrubbing, being none too careful about soap in people's eyes, and Peter came out dreadfully clean. Feeling that he needed comforting of some sort, he looked about for Mittens and discovered him at last, taking a much needed nap behind the sofa. Squeezing the weary cat carefully under one ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... of me was scandalous. He was constantly taking my teeth for the purpose of knocking around the spigot in the bath-tub at night when the baby wanted a drink, and only last week he took both sets after I had gone to bed, propped them apart, baited them with cheese, and caught two horrid mice before morning. I was so hurt by his behavior that I drank some laudanum for the purpose of committing suicide, and then Mr. Fogg borrowed a pump in at Knott's drug store and pumped me out twice in such a rude manner that I have ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... laid hold of by cavillers as carrying down my Castra to the time of Theodosius, sent by Valentinian into Britain as late as the year 367, or thereabout. No, my good friend, I appeal to people's eye-sight. Is not here the Decuman gate? and there, but for the ravage of the horrid plough, as a learned friend calls it, would be the Praetorian gate. On the left hand you may see some slight vestiges of the porta sinistra, and on the right, one side of the porta dextra wellnigh entire. Here, then, let us take our stand, on this tumulus, exhibiting ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... said Melissa; "because Grandpa wasn't sure he heard it the first time. He looked everywhere. Finally he saw it. It was perched right there on his knee—a awful, horrid, bluggy head with its moustache twisted up like Swanson's ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... waited upon me even in the course of my ministering to him, I heard from that time no more remonstrances; and I am sure Preston never wrote his letter. A testimonial of a different sort was conveyed in his whispered request to me, not to let that horrid Yankee spinster come ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... cold, where hunger frequently stalked, where travel was by canoe on the noble St. Lawrence, the swift Ottawa, the Richelieu, the lesser streams and lakes, and by snowshoe or moccasin through the heavy forests; where the Indians rarely failed to torture their captives in manner too horrid to relate; and where the only white people were 300 French soldiers, fur-traders, laborers, priests and nuns, mainly at Quebec, and new Montreal, on the St. Lawrence, and the little trading-post of Three Rivers, ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... the lands which may lie to the south will never be explored. Thick fogs, snow storms, intense cold, and every other thing that can render navigation dangerous, must be encountered, and these difficulties are greatly heightened by the inexpressibly horrid aspect of the country; a country doomed by nature never once to feel the warmth of the sun's rays, but to lie buried in everlasting snow and ice. The ports which may be on the coast, are, in a manner, wholly filled up ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... breath, glanced upward. That ghost of evening's twilight, the sad gray of dawn, had retreated, but not before the crimson rays of sunrise. The unflecked arc above was a hard and steely blue. It looked as if marsh lights would play over its horrid surface presently, and then come crashing down as the pillars ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... cannot talk German, and I think that our language, especially our dear Viennese dialect, sounds by far better than that horrid English. I don't know why the doctor likes the abominable noise, and why he suffers the bird to disturb his ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... convinced, that, whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war." [Footnote: The General Council of the International Working-Men's Association on the War, (London, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... cold without them; to part with them would be the death of him. So! don't go too near—don't let us alarm them; for, in truth, they have had insults, and met with impertinences of late years, and have grown fretful and cantankerous in their old age. Nay, horrid radicals have not hesitated, in this wicked generation, to aim sundry deadly blows at them; and it has been all that the old squire has been able to do ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Hippe, with a savage accent. "I hate him, and he shall die this horrid death. Ah! how the little fellows will leap upon him, when I bring him in, bound and helpless, and give their beautiful wicked souls to them! How they will pierce him in ten thousand spots with their poisoned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... breakfast by lamplight, and the red nursery carpet that had an oblong track worn away round the table by the frequent game of "Little Men Jumping." She heard the voice of Kew clamouring against the voice of Nana because he would not eat his bacon-fat. On those days there was a horrid resurrection at luncheon of the bacon-fat uneaten ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... cried Jennie. "That's what I came in for, Madame. These horrid girls—Rathmore and her tribe—have just hounded Nancy so that she wanted ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... night passed somehow—the baby squalled, the parrots verbally expostulated, a hen in one corner of the room let her presence be known, a horrid cat under one of the beds joined in the performance, and the fleas grew more than lively, but the most potent factor was that too long-dead one which appealed to another sense than that ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... emancipation, and in the meanwhile his old age was come, and he was about to die. He pictured to himself his sons dragged from market to market, and passing from the authority of a parent to the rod of the stranger, until these horrid anticipations worked his expiring imagination into phrensy. When I saw him he was a prey to all the anguish of despair, and he made me feel how awful is the retribution of Nature upon those ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... For it makes me feel as if I was horrid; and if Hebe would just say, 'Yes, it is awfully tiresome,' I'd feel I had a sort of right to be vexed, and when you feel that, the vexedness ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... like my poor wife's favorite jewels, for old remembrance' sake. These I took from their repository when the attraction of my watch showed signs of failing. The child pounced on them with her chubby hands, and screamed with pleasure. And the hangman was waiting for her mother—and, more horrid still, the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... declaring that he was put to death in retaliation for some of their number, who, they said, had suffered a similar fate. Taking up the matter promptly, Washington submitted it to his officers, laid it before Congress, and wrote to Clinton demanding that Captain Lippencot, the perpetrator of the horrid deed, should be given up. The demand not being complied with, Washington, in accordance with the opinion of the council of officers, determined upon retaliation. A British officer, of equal rank with Captain Huddy, was chosen by lot. Captain Asgill, a young ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... my filching this blood-stained cotton from the outraged negro, and your standing by, taking it from me? What's the difference? You, yourselves, say, in your abstractions, there is no difference; and yet you daily stain your hands in this horrid traffic. You hate the traitor, but you love the treason. Your ladies, too,—oh, how they shun the slave-owner at a distance, in the abstract! But alas, when they see him in the concrete,—when they see the slave-owner ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... the wretched slave, Who with a body filled and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread, Never sees horrid night, the child of Hell, But like a lackey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium.... The slave, a member of the country's peace, Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots What watch the king keeps ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... There was nothing alive in sight; some prone black objects I saw, with a start, were only a few fisher-boats drawn up on the sand, and none too safe. I looked out to sea; the tide was making, and, where the strait drew in toward the Cat's Teeth, the waves fought and clamored with a horrid vigor, like living monsters. Their huge voices outdid the winds, and, as one after another made forward, towered, and broke upon the reefs, the Teeth disappeared in a welter of foam. Hereabout we found the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Malays and other people in the East, who, being mostly prohibited the use of wine, double upon Mahomet by indulging in other intoxicating matter, as if the manner of doing it cleared off the crime of drunkenness. This horrid stuff gives the maddening excitement which makes a Malay run amok (which see).—To bang is colloquially used to express excelling or beating rivals. (See ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... liberation drew near, the horrid conviction that circumstances would perhaps compel me to return to prison haunted me, and so helpless did I feel at the prospects that awaited me outside, that I dreaded release, which seemed but the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... one of the first instances of the use of the word romantic is by the diarist Evelyn in 1654: "There is also, on the side of this horrid alp, a very romantic seat."—English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Thomas Sergeant Perry, p. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... every branch of history. In the mean time, without being too confident of the facts, I venture to suggest that it came in with the romantic movement about the beginning of this century, when mountains ceased to be horrid and became picturesque; when ruins of all sorts, but particularly abbeys and castles, became habitable to the most delicate constitutions; when the despised Gothick of Addison dropped its "k," and arose the chivalrous and religious Gothic of Scott; when ghosts were redeemed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds today, and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New Year's Eve a slate fell on my head and killed me, and—Nora (putting her hands over his mouth). Oh! don't say such horrid things. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... white face and fixed eyes with a grim kind of curiosity. The Count sputtered, and cursed the horrid taste of the punch still; but he presently took the box, and made ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... endearments is nearly as horrid as those of Titania to Bottom are absurd. They are not paired, and all through the play you never can get quit of the disagreeable idea of the blubber lips. If he could be made into a noble statue in mahogany, (not ebony,) a Christianized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the news arrived of the death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lord instantly secured the appointment for my dear husband. It was intended as a surprise for him—he was to see it in the papers to-day. Even after that horrid arrest took place (the expenses of which Lord Steyne generously said he would settle, so that I was in a manner prevented from coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was laughing with me, and saying that my dearest Rawdon would be consoled when he read of his appointment in the paper, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seiz'd by heaven's angry hand, Which fil'd our hearts with fears, with tears our eyes, Wailing his fate, and our own destinies. I've seen from Rome an execrable thing, A Plot to blow up nobles and their King, But saw their horrid fact soon disappointed, And Land Nobles say'd with their annointed. I've Princes seen to live on others' lands; A royal one by gifts from strangers' hands Admired for their magnanimity, Who lost a Prince-dome and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Sauntered down to look at the Gang sitting in front of the Occidental Hotel, hoping that the Real Thing would be there. But she always saw the same old line of Four-Flush Drummers from Chicago and St. Louis, smoking Horrid Cigars and talking about the Percentages of ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... pail in hand, she made her way up the path to the cabin. "Whee! but it's a relief to feel that I won't have to ride these hills peering behind every tree and rock for a lurking assassin. And I won't have to carry that horrid heavy old gun, either." ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... eye-witnesses. The missionaries having heard rumours that the king had sent for some men belonging to a refractory town not far from the capital, with the intention of killing them, and afterwards feasting on their bodies, they went to the old king to urge him to desist from so horrid and barbarous a repast, and warned him that a time would come when he would be punished for it. The king referred them to his son; but the savage propensities of the latter rendered it impossible for them to turn the savage from his ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Hunter reflected. Elizabeth had not seemed to take much offence, and was perfectly good-natured this morning. She did not intend to interfere with the affairs of her son and his wife. Elizabeth seemed submissive, and promised well. She hoped that this horrid gossip would die down. That was a nasty thing to be mixed up with. Mr. Hunter had never had anything like that happen to him before, and she was devoutly glad they were away out here in Kansas where no one who had ever known them would hear it. Elizabeth would be all ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... me to write of him. For his sake, poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It is ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames without making him ridiculous? Or rather, how am I to hush up the horrid fact that he WAS ridiculous? I shall not be able to do that. Yet, sooner or later, write about him I must. You will see, in due course, that I have no option. And I may as well get ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... "will be mad—raging mad. She's always at me because things will tear my clothes. Horrid nuisance clothes are, aren't they? But Cattersby doesn't think so of course. She ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... North, I tell you this practise of controlling elections in the South by force and fraud is contagious! It spreads with alarming rapidity and unless eradicated, will overtake and overwhelm you as it has your friends in the South. It showed its horrid head in Maine, and came very near wresting that State from a lawful majority. Employed in the South first to drive Republicans from a few counties, it has grown from "autumnal outbreaks" into an almost perpetual hurricane and, gathering force as it goes, has violently seized State after ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... thrust there. What was the meaning of this knife? It seemed to tell of a violent death. Yet the flowers must surely be a mark of honor. A violent death with honor, and the embalmed remains—these things suggested nothing else than the horrid thought of a human sacrifice. I looked away with eager and terrible curiosity. I saw all the niches, hundreds upon hundreds, all filled with these fearful occupants. I turned again with a sinking heart to Almah. Her face ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... their Arms. Did the Members of that hereditary House of Lords, who constituted those repeated majorities, then possess the spirit of Nobility? Not so, I think: That Spirit resided in the illustrious Minorities in both Houses. But "by Nobles" who have prevented "one hideous Despotism as horrid as that of Turkey from falling to the lot of every Nation of Europe"; you mean not peculiarly an hereditary Nobility, or any particular Modification, but "the natural, and actual Aristocracy among Mankind;" The existence of which, I am not disposed to deny. Where is this Aristocracy ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... with renewed fury. The concussions are like the impact of artillery. Hail rattles on the roof. Trees and roofs crash against one another in mid-air. Suddenly the house springs and rocks. Simultaneously there is a long horrid shriek from the negroes in ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... his hand through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet green. What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... she, returning his smile indeed, but faintly, and without heart, "that horrid letter! I felt I must talk of it to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... sounds it was guilty of! Up and down it jumped and flourished, careering about in a manner as far as possible removed from that of a sober, well-conducted scale. Bass notes and treble notes ran against each other; high notes and low notes played leap-frog—they groaned, shrieked, and wheezed in a horrid discord, which could not have been worse if a thousand imps had been let loose in ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... burghs. When this was cried by the bellman through the streets of Tergou, a thousand mouths opened, and one heart beat—Gerard's. He told his family timidly he should try for two of those prizes. They stared in silence, for their breath was gone at his audacity; but one horrid laugh exploded on the floor like a petard. Gerard looked down, and there was the dwarf, slit and fanged from ear to ear at his expense, and laughing like a lion. Nature, relenting at having made Giles so small, had given him as a set-off the biggest voice on record. His very whisper was a bassoon. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... are there, There shrubs and thorns run wild: Dhao, Sal, Bignonia, Bel, are found, And every tree that grows on ground: How is the forest styled?" The glorious saint this answer made:— "Dear child of Raghu, hear Who dwells within the horrid shade That looks so dark and drear. Where now is wood, long ere this day Two broad and fertile lands, Malaja and Karusha lay, Adorned by heavenly hands. Here, mourning friendship's broken ties, Lord Indra of the thousand eyes Hungered and sorrowed many a day, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... expression, "I was like 'Paddy in the catharpins'—a man on occasions. I performed the duties of captain's aid, quarter-gunner, powder-boy, and, in fact, did everything that was required of me. I shall never forget the horrid impression made upon me at the sight of the first man I had ever seen killed. He was a boatswain's mate and was fearfully mutilated. It staggered and sickened me at first; but they soon began to fall around me so fast that it all appeared like a dream and produced no effect upon ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... streets made no cheerful impression upon her. The people, the hurrying footsteps, and the curious Pembrokeshire accent, gave her the impression of having travelled to a foreign country, all was so different to the peaceful seclusion of the Berwen banks. It was a "horrid dull town," she thought and with the consciousness of the angry white harbour which she had caught sight of on her arrival, her heart sank within her; but she bravely determined to put a good face on her sorrow. On the second morning after her arrival she was sitting ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... same public-house in Maryborough drinking, observing that he had money and learning the road that he was to travel, conspired to rob and murder him, and waylaid him in this lonely spot for that horrid purpose. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... them back voluble, turning again, Exclaiming these, "Why holdest thou so fast?" Those answering, "And why castest thou away?" So still repeating their despiteful song, They to the opposite point on either hand Travers'd the horrid circle: then arriv'd, Both turn'd them round, and through the middle space Conflicting met again. At sight whereof I, stung with grief, thus spake: "O say, my guide! What race is this? Were these, whose heads are shorn, On our left hand, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... very, very, very nice," she said approvingly, "and it will make a lovely place to come and hate in when everybody is horrid. You can draw the curtains and shut the door, and light your lantern and sit here hating as long as you like, for no one can get up when ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... to the river. It is cool, sweet water. Oh! I must drink. What! A horrid cliff! No; I will not go down there. I can descend more easily here. Who are these forms? Who are you, sir? Ah! it is you, my brave Moro; and you, Alp. Come! come! Follow me! Down; down to the river! Ah! again ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... dreadfully tormented with those horrid mosquitoes, and you might help us to get rid of them. You smoked ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... in Arms before the House, begin to act as if they were ingaged with an Enemy, having such Arms as I described. Only one acts at a time, the rest make a great Ring of 2 or 300 Yards round about him. He that is to exercise comes into the Ring with a great shriek or two, and a horrid look; then he fetches two or three large stately strides, and falls to work. He holds his broad Sword in one Hand, and his Lance in the other, and traverses his Ground, leaping from one side of the Ring to the other; and in a menacing posture and look, bids defiance to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... which rests in the well-joining, cementing, and coagmentation of words; whenas it is smooth, gentle, and sweet, like a table upon which you may run your finger without rubs, and your nail cannot find a joint; not horrid, rough, wrinkled, gaping, or chapped: after these, the flesh, blood, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... looked at every window, including that of No. 13, and had tried every door, also including that of No. 13, only to find that all was safe. Blinders declared on oath that he had not on Christmas Eve the slightest suspicion of the horrid tragedy which had taken place in the Silent House during the time he was ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... and from raging lips Foamed out the latest wrath of all his life. And all they praised the gods with mightier heart, Zeus and all gods, but chiefliest Artemis, Seeing; but Meleager bade whet knives and flay, Strip and stretch out the splendour of the spoil; And hot and horrid from the work all these Sat, and drew breath and drank and made great cheer And washed the hard sweat off their calmer brows. For much sweet grass grew higher than grew the reed, And good for slumber, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... carnage of the officials aforesaid; every one of whom, from the president to the water-boys, ought to suffer the extremest penalty of the law. It doesn't say that they ought to be hung. No! capital punishment was the most benighted characteristic of barbarism. It is a horrid atrocity to bring it down to the present day. Nobody ought to be subjected to it but the slimy reptiles ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "At least, nearly everybody. Larry went to a horrid old medical convention at Chicago, and can't be here for the play; but he's coming to commencement. Of course, Granny isn't able to travel and Aunt Margery couldn't come because the kiddies have been measling, but Ted is here, and Uncle Phil—bless him! He brought ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... like dead men's heads,' he whispered, shudderingly, 'only they are too small. They are dreadful. This collector man is a devil. I should like to kill him.' He glared with horrid fascination at the little dry preparations—there were eight in this box, each in its own little black velvet compartment with its number and date on the label. I opened the second box—also containing eight—and he stared into that with the same ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... sounded the clash of Bellona's armor, and the harsh stir of palm-boughs rustled by a hot wind of the desert, and vibrant with the dying clangor of gongs, and shouts of worshipping crowds reverberating through horrid temples of grinning and ghastly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... face—only that nobody would think her plain who knew her, for everybody loves her—she saw quickly enough that I did not like it: and then she was so sweet, looking so disappointed, and yet ready to give up the horrid thing if I wished, that I hardly knew what to do. Tabitha works on one in a way that I believe nobody else can. She has such a generous, warm heart, and is so responsive, and so quick to understand, and then she is so easily ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... also, wore long locks, as the lovely portrait of William Penn shows. But by 1675 wigs had become common enough to be denounced by the Massachusetts government, and to be preached against by many ministers; while other ministers proudly wore them. Wigs were called horrid bushes of vanity, and hundreds of other disparaging names, which seemed to make them more popular. They varied from year to year; sometimes they swelled out at the sides, or rose in great puffs, or turned under in heavy rolls, or hung in braids and curls and pig-tails; they were made of human ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Sometimes it seemed as if the whole sash would give way before the fiercer blasts, as though a giant had set his knee against it, and was striving to force an entrance. Now and again, when the wind lulled for a moment while it gathered strength for a fresh assault, the horrid shriek of an owl would be heard above the dashing of the rain that was falling ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... introduced to a child dressed in a kilt; and I was to speak to him; and I suppose I was to be profoundly moved when I heard him speak to me in my own tongue in this out of the world place. My own tongue! The horrid little wretch ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the health of the whole region. Now that the waters are fast shrinking back from the horrid work of their own doing and are uncovering thousands of putrid and ill-smelling corpses the fearful danger of pestilence is espied, stalking in the wake of more ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... "You horrid thing!" she said, tragically, to the chicken. "I hate you—all slippery and bloody. Ugh! Why won't your old windpipe come out? How anybody can eat you who has got you ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... with metallic scintillations. Anon came some yawning cleft or an assemblage of dizzy rock-needles, fused into whimsical tints and attitudes, spiky, distorted, over-toppling; then a bold tufa rampart, immaculate in its beauty, stainless as a curtain of silk. And as the boat moved on he looked into horrid dells which the rains had torn out of the loose scoriae. Gaping wounds, they wore the bright hues of corruption. Their flanks were blotched with a livid nitrous efflorescence, with flaring sulphur, unhealthy verdure of pitchstone, streaks of arsenical vermilion; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... than two hours that little wretch, with his orderly, packed up his blankets and I saw him or them no more. I had never dressed a thigh stump, but must dress a good many now; I rolled that one in a wet cloth, and covered it carefully, to let the man get time to rest, while I got rid of his horrid tormentor. When there was so much to be done, I would do the most needful thing first, and this was ridding the wounds of worms and gangrene, supporting the strength of the men by proper food, and keeping the air as ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... over all right," he said loudly, and he began to whistle as is the instinct of boyhood, whether facing the possibility of a parental caning; screwing up courage to ring her doorbell; or turning a gloomy corner in the moonlight where something horrid and shapeless may ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... about twenty Swiss guards, with drums, into her chamber, who roused her from her first sleep by their horrid din. Another time—and these scenes were always at Marly—they waited until very late for her to go to bed and sleep. She lodged not far from the post of the captain of the guards, who was at that time the Marechal de Lorges. It had snowed very hard, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... hurrying to the gate, shaded her eyes with the shapely hand and gazed intently. 'Twas nearing eight,—nearing breakfast-time. But some one was coming. Horrid! Captain Chester, of all men! Coming, of course, to see papa, and papa not yet down, and mamma had a headache and had decided not to come down at all, she would breakfast in her room. What girl on earth when looking and longing and waiting for the coming of a graceful ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... library; and you must ring for everything you want, just as you would in an inn, and make yourself comfortable. I have selfish reasons for wishing to make you happy, because I want you to stay with me, and not fulfil your horrid threat of running away ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... trying to make up for being horrid about Don Carlos, Tony dear," explained Myra. "Now I have come to my senses, I am going to let the delightful man make love to me as much as he likes, and play him at his own game... Let's sit the next dance ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... here or there?" she cried. "I'll feel like this for a little and then die alive. Did you ever notice an old woman, Lee? She is like a horrid joke. There is something unconquerably vain and foolish about old men that manages to save them from entire ruin. But a woman shrivelled and blasted and twisted out of her purpose—they either look as though they had been steeped in vinegar or filled ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... NOT WANT THIS DEAD THING. But there is something I would say to him, something that I must say. Something that no one must hear but the good God who knows how much he has hurt me. I want to say it close to those grey, horrid ears. Who knows? ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... am extremely sorry to inform your Lordship, that that fever of which I informed you in my letter No. 1 has proved a very malignant one, and has carried off an incredible number of our people, especially the blacks. Had it not been for this horrid disorder, I am satisfied I should have had no doubt of penetrating into the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... indeed, though they are foolish enough, as effects of a mad, inconsiderate rage, are yet English; as when a man swears he will do this or, that, and it may be adds, "God damn him he will;" that is, "God damn him if he don't." This, though it be horrid in another sense, yet may be read in writing, and is English: but what ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... it is not a desert island?" asked the widow; "I remember that my poor Mr. Budd always spoke of desert islands as horrid places, and spots that every ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... a fellow named Orpheus getting over to fetch his girl"—"gail" Lord Freynault pronounced it—"since old John will use Eton cribs in describing the horrid chasm. Can't we sop old Cerberus and somehow manage to swim, if there is no ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the lower part of it. Two little bright, light-coloured eyes in perpetual movement lit up this ruddy face and gave him a sly look. He was broad-shouldered and thick-set, and gave one the idea of having strength without nerves. The horrid man was still laughing when the station and its master were far away from us, but what the other one had said ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... termed by one author "artificial deformed Maypowles fit to furnish her that in a Stage play should represent some Hagge of Hell," and other choice epithets were applied. To learn how these "Horrid Bushes of Vanity" could be hated, let us hear the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... famine and cold, which had moderated so as, without ending, to aggravate his misery. Before he died, he had gnawed his shoulder from very hunger. On the fifth night, as it approached twelve o'clock, having been motionless for hours, his guards believed him to be dead, and, tired of their horrid duty, proposed to return home. In order, however, to be sure, they sent one of the party up the ladder to feel if his heart still beat. He had ascended into the tree, when a shriek, unlike anything human, broke upon ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... For he a chosen villain was at heart, And capable of deeds that durst not seek Repentance. Soon her father saw her shame; His heart grew stone; he drove her forth to want And wintry winds, and with a horrid curse Pursued her ear, forbidding her return. Upon a hoary cliff that watched the sea, Her babe was found—dead; on its little cheek, The tear that nature bade it weep had turned An ice-drop, sparkling in the morning ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... three men were employed in washing: They slept on shore; but soon after sunset were awakened out of their first sleep by the roaring of some wild beasts, which the darkness of the night, and the solitariness of their situation in this pathless desert, rendered horrid beyond imagination: the tone was hollow and deep, so that the beasts, of whatever kind, were certainly large, and the poor fellows perceived that they drew nearer and nearer, as the sound every minute became more loud. From this time sleep was renounced ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... good, to force whoever was not already too far sunk into the mire, high up to the larger atmosphere, whence they could see how minute an atom is man, how infinite and blind and pitiless the might that encompasses his little life. Many feeble spirits ran back homewards from the horrid solitudes and abysses of Manfred, and the moral terrors of Cain, and even the despair of Harold, and, burying themselves in warm domestic places, were comforted by the familiar restoratives and appliances. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... unworthy to be called his brother; nor have Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a Sovereign, or the Continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise the latter for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the horrid perpetrations of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... recommended her murderer as her successor to the bed she lay on, and to those arms where she so often had enjoyed the pressure of his love. Nor was the recommendation ineffectual, for the said wicked Jane did become the wife of her victim's husband. The old horrid savagery of our criminal literature!—not yet abated—never to be abated—only glossed with tropes and figures more hideous than the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... heart. I remember thinking that when you came to the Pigeon chapter you would pass it over as quite unreadable. Your last letter has interested me in very many ways, and I have been glad to hear about those horrid unbelieving Frenchmen. I have been particularly pleased that you have noticed Pangenesis. I do not know whether you ever had the feeling of having thought so much over a subject that you had lost all power of judging it. This is my case with ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... a name to Corisco, which the natives know as Mange: it was called, says Barbot, "'Ilha do Corisco,' from the Portuguese, because of the violent horrid lightnings, and claps of thunder, the first discoverers there saw and heard there at the time of their discovery." There is still something to be done in investigating the cause of these electrical discharges. Why should lofty Fernando Po and low-lying Corisco suffer so much, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... suddenly a water-snake appeared, a horrid sight for both alike, and held his neck upright above the water. And when he saw it, Puff-jaw dived at once, and never thought how helpless a friend he would leave perishing; but down to the bottom of the lake ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... hatred, the jury, on September 24, found a verdict against James of the Glens, who, in a touching brief speech, solemnly asserted his innocence before God, and chiefly regretted 'that after ages should think me guilty of such a horrid and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... use to play together, didn't we?" she asked, turning her grave eyes to his. "You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a door; but it was your cousin Vandie Newland, who never looked at me, that I was in love with." Her glance swept the horse-shoe curve of boxes. "Ah, how this brings it all back to me—I see everybody here in knickerbockers and pantalettes," ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... afternoon we went up over the hill to the plain of Sartilmont, the battlefield of Wednesday night. All along the road were heaps of uniforms, some quite new, probably taken from the dead. Those horrid limp things made me shiver with their lifelessness, and the spirit of death, everywhere, seemed to close us in. Countless numbers of haversacks were strewn about, doubtless cast away by the soldiers to disencumber themselves in falling quickly back from one position to another. In them, generally, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... disorder. I could scarcely reach my room. A thousand ideas floated through my mind. At last one fixed, final thought took possession of my heart. It was to die. Oh, beloved Charlotte, this heart, excited by rage and fury, has often conceived the horrid idea ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... in their eagerness frequently went ahead of the rest of the party. The latter was a little in advance of his companion, when he uttered a loud cry. "Oh! there is another of those horrid brutes." At that instant a fierce bellow was heard, and a huge tiger bull-seal started up and gazed fiercely at the midshipmen. They grasped their axes to attack the seal; but the animal, rushing forward, warned them that "discretion was ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... every way an Ass? abus'd on all sides? And from all quarters, people come to laugh at me? Rise like a Comet, to be wonder'd at? A horrid Comet, for Boys tongues, and Ballads? I ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... mad in the least," the girl snapped; "though he's been through enough to make him crazy—and so have I. If you're so anxious to do your duty, officer," she added, bitterly, "why don't you arrest that horrid, hulking man over there?" She pointed a neatly gloved, accusing finger at the motionless Zeke, who was staring fixedly at the point where he ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... and exclude the warring elements, left in heaps in the disordered court. Maria contemplated this scene she knew not how long; or rather gazed on the walls, and pondered on her situation. To the master of this most horrid of prisons, she had, soon after her entrance, raved of injustice, in accents that would have justified his treatment, had not a malignant smile, when she appealed to his judgment, with a dreadful conviction stifled her remonstrating complaints. By force, or openly, what could be done? But surely ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... his shepherd's cloak around his left arm, to resist the first onset of his enemy, and, with a determined look and nimble pace, advanced towards his threatening adversary. In an instant the wolf sprang upon him, with a horrid yell; but Sophron nimbly eluded his attack, and suddenly throwing his vigorous arms about the body of his adversary, compelled him to struggle for his own safety. It was then that he uttered cries more dreadful than before; and as he writhed ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day |
