"Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I am without reason afraid of them. I think of the demons as being like monstrous bats. But that is ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... analogy for it in the vegetable and not in the animal world we must go to the forests of the tropics and not to the northland woodlands. In the great swamps at the mouth of the Amazon the naturalist Bates describes a monstrous liana, the "Sipo Matador" or Murdering Creeper, that far more fitly than the oak tree of the north typifies John Bull and the place he has won in the sunlight by the once strong limbs ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... which is not evidence at all. He will swallow an undated, unlocalised legend of Coleridge, reaching Coleridge on the testimony of rumour, and told at least twenty years after the unverified occurrences. Nay, the psychologist will never dream of procuring contemporary evidence for such a monstrous statement as that an ignorant German wench unconsciously acquired and afterwards subconsciously reproduced huge cantles of dead languages, by virtue of having casually heard a former master recite or read aloud from ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... to say to my friends who are disposed to look upon money as the most valuable of all things, that if you marry according to my instructions you will marry the conditions which produce money. To marry for money, or to marry a person who possesses a fortune for no other reason, is a monstrous wrong, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... subaltern, who chanced to be at that moment in attendance upon her. "It's worse than that; it's a monstrous shame! She's only nineteen, you know; and he is twenty ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... is a philosophy of Pan-theism—no "me," no "you," no "it." It is a mystical story, with a storm scene in which is painted a picture that reminds one strongly of "The Fall of the House of Ushur,"—with the frankly added words, "On him were marks of hoofs of a monstrous goat that ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrous creatures, these catfish of Reelfoot—scaleless, slick things, with corpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feet long they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more, and they ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... (thus leaving us to keep the change), than that we should think to pay him for his incorruptible with our corruptible. There would, no doubt, be a subtle element of absurdity in a poet consenting to pay his tailor for a suit with a sonnet, while it would obviously be beyond all proportion monstrous for a tailor to think to buy a sonnet with a suit. Yet a poet might, perhaps, be brought to consider the transaction, if he chanced to be of a ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... authority do you bring this monstrous charge?" demanded Mr. Stanton, more boldly. "How happens it that you ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... governing circles of both parties. But the clamour of British Columbia was in the air, and her suggestions, hotly opposed by the Company, had been brought before the House of Lords by another peer. In the discussion which followed, the Duke of Newcastle declared that "it seemed monstrous that any body of gentlemen should exercise fee-simple rights which precluded the future colonization of that territory, as well as the opening of lines of communication through it." The Minister's idea at the time ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... best of these great fanes, wonderful as they are. Here, recalling them, one could venture to criticise and name their several deficits:—a Wells divided, a ponderous Ely, a vacant and cold Canterbury, a too light and airy Salisbury, and so on even to Exeter, supreme in beauty, spoilt by a monstrous organ in the wrong place. That wood and metal giant, standing as a stone bridge to mock the eyes' efforts to dodge past it and have sight of the exquisite choir beyond, and of an east window through which ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... voice stuck in his throat; his arms fell powerless by his sides, and his feet seemed rooted to the ground; and though the fierce revulsion of his wrath presently aroused his torpid senses, he yet could scarcely breathe, so intense was his anguish. Thirsting for vengeance as terrible as his monstrous wrong, but having no weapon at hand, he returned to his chamber as stealthily as he had quitted it, in search of a dagger, with which he would wash out the stain cast upon his honour in the blood of the guilty pair, and then massacre his whole household; but he had no ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... take away the edge from truths, stated as Cato knew how to state them. There is very much of what is called Agricultural Science, nowadays, which is—rubbish. Science is sound, and agriculture always an honest art; but the mixture, not uncommonly, is bad,—no fair marriage, but a monstrous concubinage, with a monstrous progeny of muddy treatises and disquisitions which confuse more than they instruct. In contrast with such, it is no wonder that the observations of such a man as Cato, whose energies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... animalism somewhat developed, the little brain somewhat sharpened, by her career on the musical-comedy stage. Now there were signs of change. A glimmering notion of the duty of sacrifice entered her head. She carried it out by appearing one day, when Septimus was taking her for a drive, in the monstrous nightmare of a hat. It is not given to breathing male to appreciate the effort it cost her. She said nothing; neither did he. She sat for two hours in the victoria, enduring the tortures of the uglified, watching him out of the tail of her eye and waiting for a sign of recognition. At last ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the chariot of the sun. She saw, too, the winds that are the Desert's best-loved children: Health with shining eyes and a skin of bronze: Passion, half faun, half black-browed Hercules: and Liberty with upraised arms, beating cymbals like monstrous spheres of fire. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and Lord Holt stated the principle: "If a man takes upon him a public employment, he is bound to serve the public as far as the employment extends, and for refusal an action lies." /3/ An attempt to apply this doctrine generally at the present day would be thought monstrous. But it formed part of a consistent scheme for holding those who followed useful callings up to the mark. Another part was the liability of persons exercising a public employment for loss or damage, enhanced in cases of bailment by what remained of the rule in Southcote's Case. The scheme has ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... there is a very pretty custom. Each family has one evening in the week when it stays at home and receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter and cake, served in the most informal way, is the only refreshment. The rooms are full, busy, bright,—everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake, were waiting to give the company ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the only true realist: symbolism, which is the essence of the transcendental spirit, is alien to him. The metaphysical mind of Asia will create for itself the monstrous, many-breasted idol of Ephesus, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most clearly to the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... congress. One article of this oath was to take arms in defence of their country, if called upon by the voice of the congress. To this Colonel Wanton and others flatly refused their assent; to take arms against their sovereign, they said, was too monstrous an impiety. I asked them if they had lived at the time of the revolution whether they would have been revolutionists—their answers were at first evasive, circuitous, and unintelligible, but, by fixing them down precisely to the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... for minds cowardly and base, as the vulgar of most nations, and forasmuch as they are easily rendered by men who can render nothing else, they are often trusted in by the herd of painters incapable and profane, as in that monstrous abortion of the first room of the Louvre, called the Deluge, whose subject is pure, acute, mortal fear; and so generally the senseless horrors of the modern French schools, spawn of the guillotine: also there is not a greater test ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... art, within whose breast The glowing thoughts disdain ignoble rest; Whose soul is laboring with a monstrous birth Of winged words, to scatter through the earth Of thee I ask, What hast thou done of that thou hast to do? Art silent? Then I say, Until thy deeds are many let thy ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... nook and crevice of the oyster village. There was not a family into which it did not intrude, nor a home circle whose sanctity it did not ruthlessly invade. It scraped along the great mossy rock; and lo! with a monstrous scratchy-te-scratch, the mother-oyster and the father-oyster and hundreds of other oysters were torn from their resting-places and borne aloft in a very jumbled and very frightened condition by the impertinent machine. Then down it came again, and the sick little oyster was among the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... other things most real and manifest, the truth of which they suppose as certain, in all the serious affairs of life, and which, nevertheless, as well as Thou, escape our feeble senses? O misery! O dismal night that surrounds the children of Adam! O monstrous stupidity! O confusion of the whole man! Man has eyes only to see shadows, and truth appears a phantom to him. What is nothing is all; and what is all is nothing to him. What do I behold in all nature? God. God ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... alluded to a crab which lives on the cocoa-nuts; it is very common on all parts of the dry land, and grows to a monstrous size: it is closely allied or identical with the Birgos latro. The front pair of legs terminate in very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair are fitted with others weaker and much narrower. It would at first be thought quite impossible for a crab to open a strong ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... into good society, was taken by them, dressed as the Count de St. Germain, into several houses in the Rue du Marais. He imitated the Count's peculiarities admirably, and found his auditors open-mouthed to believe any absurdity he chose to utter. NO fiction was too monstrous for their all-devouring credulity. He spoke of the Saviour of the world in terms of the greatest familiarity; said he had supped with him at the marriage in Canaan of Galilee, where the water was miraculously turned into wine. In fact, he said he was an intimate friend of his, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... observation post. Over the Kereves Dere, and beyond, upon the sloping shoulders of Achi Baba, the curtain became a pall. The sun climbed higher and higher. All that first mirage of beauty had disappeared, and there was nothing but the monstrous shapes of bursting shells, giants of smoke that appeared one after another along the Turkish lines. All through the morning the cannonade ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... darkness. At times it seemed to him that it was the end of the world and that he was the last one left alive. Still the wind increased. Hour after hour it increased. By what he calculated was eleven o'clock, the wind had become unbelievable. It was a horrible, monstrous thing, a screaming fury, a wall that smote and passed on but that continued to smite and pass on—a wall without end. It seemed to him that he had become light and ethereal; that it was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... "Your monstrous dulness shows the state of your mind. This is what comes of getting entangled with women. You need to ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... letting in that monstrous draught, man; but sit down. You'll find the bottle on the table and a glass on ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... destined, for the future, to steal on my attention, irresistibly and darkly, in all my lonely hours. Already, the fatality denounced against me in Mannion's letter had begun to act: already, that terrible confession of past misery and crime, that monstrous declaration of enmity which was to last with the lasting of life, began to exercise its numbing influence on my faculties, to cast its blighting shadow ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... usual conspiracy, but still a regular conspiracy I call it—between Papa and Mamma to make me marry that stick of a Connemara. What is there in him, I should like to know, to make any girl admire or love him? And yet half the girls in London would be glad to get him, for all his absurdity. It's monstrous, it's incomprehensible, it's abominable; but it's the fact. For my part, I must say I do like a little originality. And whenever I hear Papa, and Uncle Sussex, and Lord Connemara talking at dinner, it does seem to me too ridiculously absurd that they should each have a separate voice in Parliament, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... merrily and madly Danced at Hiawatha's wedding, Danced the Beggar's Dance to please them. Now, in search of new adventures, 20 From his lodge went Pau-Puk-Keewis, Came with speed into the village, Found the young men all assembled In the lodge of old Iagoo, Listening to his monstrous stories, 25 To his wonderful adventures. He was telling them the story Of Ojeeg, the Summer-Maker, How he made a hole in heaven, How he climbed up into heaven, 30 And let out the summer-weather, The perpetual, pleasant Summer; How the Otter first essayed it; How the Beaver, Lynx, and ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... for the damned in mediaeval writings. The public at large thought hell none too bad for one who revolted against God and Holy Church. No, the heretics were persecuted because heresy was, according to the notions of the time, a monstrous and unutterably wicked thing, and because their beliefs threatened the vested ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... ghost. If such the mode, what can we hope to-night, Who rashly dare approach without a sprite? No dreadful cavern, no midnight scream, No rosin flames, nor e'en one flitting gleam. Nought of the charms so potent to invite The monstrous charms of terrible delight. Our present theme the German Muse supplies, But rather aims to soften than surprise. Yet, with her woes she strives some smiles to blend, Intent as well to cheer as to amend: On her own native soil she knows the art To charm the fancy, and to touch the heart. If, ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... were glad, indeed, when the wall of the fissure leaned at length so far from the perpendicular that we were able to scramble up it. We found ourselves upon a levelish little meadow of grass. In the centre of it there grew a monstrous and gigantic live-oak, between two of whose roots there glittered a spring. On all sides of the meadow, except on that toward the river, were superimpending cliffs of quartz. Along the base of these was a dense ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... that all the members of the vertebrate kingdom are derived from some fishlike animal. The belief that animals so distinct as a monkey, an elephant, a humming-bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish, etc., could all have sprung from the same parents, will appear monstrous to those who have not attended to the recent progress of natural history. For this belief implies the former existence of links binding closely together all these forms, now so ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... asked one or two of the men, whose dull brains had not quite as yet grasped the full meaning of this monstrous scheme. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had got their axes ready to cut them away, should such occur. At length a tremendous sea came roaring towards our weather bow. The ship struggled as if to avoid it, but she pitched headlong into the deep hollow just before her, and a monstrous sea, lifting its head half way up to the foretop, came right down on our deck, sweeping up to the main hatchway. Horner and several of the men shrieked out with terror, believing that their last moments were come. I ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... here, were it not for the monstrous excises which are impos'd upon all sorts of commodities, both for belly and back." (HOWELL, Letter from ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... tell me there can be no longer the slightest doubts of Wallenstein's intention. Ever since the death of the king he has been negotiating privately with me, but I could not believe that he was in earnest or that such monstrous treachery was possible. How could I suppose that he who has been raised from the rank of a simple gentleman to that of a duke and prince, and who, save the fortunes which he obtained with his wives, owes ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... in their presence." Some of these Desert louts are very familiar and insolent, and require sharp answers to keep them at a distance. I must not forget to mention, the Rais put my passport en règle for Soudan. A more monstrous piece of absurdity could not be attempted against the virtue of the free and simple-minded children of The Desert. Such documents are only fit for our elevated Christian civilization, for countries like Naples, France, and Austria, the hot-beds of spies ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... reintroduced the single figure into art (the Source, and the Odalisque, for example). For color he had no fancy. "In nature all is form," he used to say. Painting he thought not an independent art, but "a development of sculpture." To consider emotion, color, or light as the equal of form was monstrous, and to compare Rembrandt with Raphael was blasphemy. To this belief he clung to the end, faithfully reproducing the human figure, and it is not to be wondered at that eventually he became a learned draughtsman. His single figures and his portraits show him to the best advantage. He had ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... he spoke, a worn unrolled His monstrous volumes from the mould; They chose him for the referee, And on the pleadings ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... 'Tis monstrous strange, and yet it is true, In this reformation we should have such luck; That crosses were always disdain'd by you, Who before pull'd them down, should now set ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Should a monster, something abnormal in strength and subtlety and wickedness, something which menaced all the good in the world, be allowed to exist? Gordon argued that it should not. He was driven to it by years of fruitless struggling against this monstrous creation in the shape of man. He had seen such suffering because of him; his whole life had been so turned and twisted this way and that way because of him, that he himself had in the end become abnormal, and mentally askew, with ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... which cannot have escaped the notice of the least observant, must surely lead the reflective man or woman to doubt the value of educational methods that have led to no better result. It is monstrous to think of years spent in grinding out syntax rules, mathematics, Latin, French, geography, science, history, composition, and a dozen other branches of knowledge, in order to develop a taste for sensational rags, middle-class magazines, and ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... to descend from shelf to shelf, where the rock had been blasted away so as to form a flight of the roughest of rough steps of monstrous size, while, trembling ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... than that of many another man, had found him out. He had done wrong. He admitted it, but this monstrous judgment on him was out of all proportion to his offence. And, like some malignant infectious disease, retribution would fall, not on him alone, but on those nearest him, on his innocent mother and sister. It was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... himself by the ease with which he made this monstrous threat, but it seemed to have a soporific influence on his companion, for he muttered an "aw gwan" and subsided ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... in the unguessed riddle of the Sphinx. It is not a fable; it is a truth. There is a problem to be solved, and that monstrous creature knows it! The woman's face, the brute's body—Spiritualism and Materialism in one! It is life, and more than life; it is love. Forever and forever it teaches the same wonderful, terrible mystery. We aspire, yet we fall; love would fain give us ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... copy of Mr. Collier's fac-simile in sheet No. II., and alongside of that I have placed the impossible E in the Ralegh signature, and the almost exactly similar E which occurs in the emendation End, vice 'And,' in the Bridgewater Folio. By means of this monstrous letter we are enabled to trace the chain of forgery from the Perkins Folio through the Bridgewater Folio, to the perpetration of the abomination at the foot of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... all happened yesterday, and I only found it out last evening after prayer meeting', and it ain't ten o'clock in the forenoon yet, I calkerlate I ain't done anything so very monstrous," said that individual, in an ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... might stand before them free. The king spoke to him, too, in a kind and encouraging manner. "Forget your countrymen," said he. "They are gone. Henceforth you shall be one of us. We will take care of you. And now," he continued, "tell us what this monstrous image means. Why did the Greeks make it, and why have they ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... came a stir, a creak, and then the sound of feet lighting softly on the floor. A tiny figure appeared on the edge of the shadows beyond the dying fire. The light fell upon furry gray feet; and Alwin's first thought was that a monstrous cat had dropped down. Then the flames leaped higher, and showed a furry cloak and a furry hood, and from its fuzzy depths protruding, a sharp yellow beak for a nose, and a hairy yellow peak for a chin. Of eyes, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... terra!" as Lingo says. What! this purest of Patriots is immoral? What! "the Poet of all circles" is "the advocate of lust"? Monstrous! But who can doubt Byron? And his Lordship, in a subsequent passage, does not hesitate to speak still more plainly, and to declare, in plain round terms (we shudder while we copy) that Moore, the Poet, the Patriot "Moore, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... been forbidden to establish himself in Kingsmill! Why had they not taken her into council? She would have faced the man, and have overawed him; he should have been made to understand the gross selfishness of his behaviour. Never had she heard of such a monstrous case— ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... such a kitchen became at once an impudent mockery. When this farther room was reached, it proved to be even worse than the kitchen. It was shut up for the night—had been shut up apparently for a week—and was in the possession of the cats of the town, and the flies of Egypt. Two monstrous hounds entered with us; and the cats fled hastily by a window which was slightly open at the top, spitting and howling with fear when they missed the first spring, and came within the cognisance ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... nothing of the cause of natural phenomena, nor do they desire to be informed of them, conceived thunder to be a spirit dwelling in the mountains, and now and then sallying forth to make himself heard. Some of them imagined it to proceed from the crowing of a monstrous turkey-cock in the heavens; others ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... anxiety of authorship addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one; that he will either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear deformed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic whole. Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling difference of more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a faithful display of the main and supporting ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... aroused himself apparently from his noonday rest, and was stretching himself, wondering who the bold intruder could be who had ventured into his domains. I gazed at the lion, and the lion gazed at me. I know I did not like the appearance of the monstrous brute. My rifle was loaded with ball, but still I dreaded lest, should I fire and not kill him outright, he might yet attack me. I therefore, keeping my face towards him, slowly retired, hoping earnestly that he would go to sleep ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... "that troop of gay dolphins, in the smooth sea beyond the island. You saw the shark, with its glaring eyes, opening its monstrous jaws, as it rose near the pretty creatures, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... and yet persistent, wrestling hard with the terrible Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who is often marching away to seiges of Milan, reducing strong rogues and deeply wronging the church (whose forged documents are all purely genuine). Then what a hubbub there is in the church! Monstrous anti-popes, one of whom, Victor, dies, and a satanic bishop Henry of Liege consecrates another, Pascal, and the dismal schism continues. Then our lord Alexander returns to Rome, and the Emperor slaughters the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Stuarts had been to the Whigs. If, as the Whigs taught, those who paid the taxes were entitled to a voice in the government, then the manufacturing districts ought to send representatives to Parliament. It seemed monstrous that places like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham had no one in the House of Commons to plead for the needs of their inhabitants. The manufacturer wanted Parliamentary representation because he hoped through ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... repudiated as a monstrous and malicious calumny the common view that his programme was to march on Athens and to dethrone the King. His movement was directed against the Bulgars, not against the King or the Dynasty: "We are neither anti-royalist nor anti-dynastic," he declared, "we are simply patriots." ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... who laid before Lady Southdown the great advantages which might occur from an intimacy between her family and Miss Crawley—advantages both worldly and spiritual, he said: for Miss Crawley was now quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance of his brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that reprobate young man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of Mrs. Bute Crawley had caused the old lady to revolt against ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... possibility for him, a stranger, who was nothing to her but a superficial acquaintance, to achieve anything in the way he most desired. The Captain would be completely justified in rejecting every uncalled-for interference with his affairs as a piece of monstrous impudence; and then, too, in what way could he hope to ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... of Scripture. Mr. Godwin is a mixture of the Stoic and of the Christian philosopher. To break the force of the vulgar objections and outcry that have been raised against the Modern Philosophy, as if it were a new and monstrous birth in morals, it may be worth noticing, that volumes of sermons have been written to excuse the founder of Christianity for not including friendship and private affection among its golden rules, but rather excluding them.[A] Moreover, the answer to the question, "Who is thy neighbour?" added ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... recollecting that his friend the count was returned to his lodgings in the same house, he resolved to visit him; for he was none of those half- bred fellows who are ashamed to see their friends when they have plundered and betrayed them; from which base and pitiful temper many monstrous cruelties have been transacted by men, who have sometimes carried their modesty so far as to the murder or utter ruin of those against whom their consciences have suggested to them that they have committed some small trespass, either ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... and in my earlier writings, my sole idea was to make comic capital out of everything I saw and heard. My object was not to tell the truth, but to make people laugh. I treated my readers as unfairly as I treated everybody else —eager to betray them at the end with some monstrous absurdity or some extravagant anti-climax. One night, after a lecture in the early days, Tom Fitch, the 'silver-tongued orator of Nevada,' said to me: 'Clemens, your lecture was magnificent. It was eloquent, moving, sincere. Never in my entire life have I listened ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... task of emancipating the crown from parliamentary interference. But popular suspicion had been aroused by Charles's secret dealings and James's open professions; and Titus Oates, who knew something about real plans for the reconversion of England, inflated his knowledge into a monstrous tale of a popish plot. The Whigs, as the opposition party came to be called, used it for more than it was worth to damage the Tories under Danby. The panic produced one useful measure, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, many judicial murders, and a foolish attempt ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Pickwick is specially shown in the case of Jingle, whom he pursued with an animosity that was almost frantic. One would think it was some public enemy he was hunting down for the public good. Poor Jingle had really done nothing so monstrous, after all. He had "chaffed" Dr. Slammer, "run off" with the spinster aunt—nothing so uncommon in those days—had been consigned to the Fleet for non-payment of his debts, and there showed penitence and other signs of a good heart. His one serious offence ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... law of God, neither can it be.[36] Its intoxication blinds men, and shuts their eyes to the light of divine revelation. They arrogate to themselves the exclusive privilege of learning and clear understanding: but the skepticism, the pitiful inconsistencies, and monstrous extravagances, which characterize their writings and discourses, make us blush to see so strong an alliance of ignorance and presumption; and lament that the human mind should be capable of falling into ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... "There's a monstrous injustice being practiced, systematically and cruelly, against thousands of homeless people who come to this country in innocent hope every year. They come here believing it's the great big open-handed West they've heard so much about, carrying everything with them ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... reasons best known to himself, had left his clerical duties in his native city of Vera Cruz and taken service with Captain Brand. One of the reasons for leaving—and rather abruptly, too—was for thrusting a cuchillo into the heart of his own father, who had reported him to his superior for his monstrous licentiousness. The padre, however, always declared that he was actuated entirely by filial duty in killing his old parent, to save him the pain and disgrace which would have followed the exposure of his son! He still clung, though excommunicated, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Chorlton, with all her village life upon her, and her utter ignorance of the monstrous world of Maisie's own past experience, came like a breath of fresh air. Was it Pomona though?—or was it the tea? Reserve gave way to an impulse of informal speech:—"My dear, you have ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... getting into it. In a moment more, the skiff pushed off and rowed toward the steamer. A sailor stood on a sort of platform abaft the wheel house to throw the men in the skiff a rope when they came near. The engine was stopped, and the monstrous steampipe commenced blowing off the steam, which, being now no longer employed to work the engine, it would be dangerous to keep pent up. The steam, in issuing from the pipe, produced a dense cloud of smoke and ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... she was well informed about affairs of State. Is it possible to suppose that such a woman would shut herself up in her home to weave wool, when, with her talent, her energy, her experience, she could be of so much service to her son and to the State? We do not need to attribute to Agrippina a monstrous ambition, as does Tacitus, in order to explain how the Empire was ruled during the first two years, by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina; it was a natural consequence of the situation created by the premature death of Claudius. Tacitus himself is forced to recognise that the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... afraid that crude Calvinism, as preached in certain parts of the north, is nothing less than monstrous. The good God, beneficent Father of us all, is unrecognizable when eternal reprobation is represented as the inevitable fate of the vast majority of His children. In time, no doubt (and the sooner the better), the results of modern theological thought will penetrate into ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general state of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrous insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and the expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on Scotland as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant? The England with ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... an overturned barrel of water. In rags, a beast of a person lies gulping food Like a cigarette butt on the yellow sun. Two skinny goats stand in broad green spaces On pegs, and their ropes sometimes tighten. Invisible behind monstrous trees Unbelievably at peace the huge ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... attractive to a thirsty Soul. A red man, dressed strangely in the feathers of a raven, stood hard by, and loudly invited all passers-by to partake of this refreshment. I was about to excavate a portion of the monstrous strawberry (being partial to that fruit), when my guide held my hand and whispered in a low voice that they who accepted the invitation of the man that guarded the strawberry were lost. He added that, into whatever paradise I might stray, I must beware of tasting any of the food ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... cab without extra charge. Nothing exceeds my scorn for the English taxi-driver who demands another ninepence for an additional passenger, even though only a child—nothing except my scorn for the cowardly official who conceded this monstrous imposition. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... stood the unearthly tread smote the floor. My eye caught something in motion; it was about the size of Goliah's foot—it was grey, heavy, and flapped with a dead weight from one step to another. As I am alive, it was the most monstrous grey rat I ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... cruelties. The which when Patrick heard, taught by the Divine Spirit, he knew that the vessel of evil was hardened in reprobation, prepared in no wise for correction, but rather for perdition; and thus he prayed unto the Lord: "O Lord God, as thou knowest this vulpine man to be monstrous in vice, do thou in a monstrous mode cast him forth from the face of the earth, and appoint an end unto his offences!" Then the Lord, inclining his ear unto the voice of his servant, while on a certain time the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... they are altogether grand, massive, and imposing. The general proportions of the bulls are good, the limbs are accurately drawn, the muscular development is well portrayed, and the pose of the figure is majestic. Even the monstrous forms of human-headed bulls have a certain air of quiet dignity, which is not without its effect on the beholder; and, although implying no great artistic merit, since they are little more than reproductions of Assyrian models, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... this view remain just the same; the sequence, and the purposiveness in this sequence, remain untouched, only that the Greeks saw in the rational and purposive in nature the realisation of rational progressive thoughts, not the bloody survivals of a monstrous gladiatorial combat in nature. The Darwinians appear to me to resemble the Roman emperors, who waited till the combat was ended, and then applauded the survival of the fittest. The idealist philosophy, be it Plato's or Hegel's, recognises in what ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the name of air. The inhabitants of the higher Alpine chalets, with their flocks and herds, and the grasses which support these, do the same; while the chamois rears its kids in air rarer still. Insect life, moreover, is sometimes exhibited with monstrous prodigality at ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Gulliver coming wading through the water towards their ships, the Blefuscan sailors all jumped overboard and swam ashore in a terrible fright. Never before had any of them seen or dreamt of so monstrous a giant, nor had they heard ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... fellow, lean; and from continually looking down on the earth from the elevation over which, in another sense, he always hung, his nose, his lips, his chin were pendulous and loose, and drawn down into a monstrous grotesque. ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... These monstrous decrees were carried into effect—at a time when France reigned supreme in the domain of intellect, poetry, and the arts—in the days of Racine, Corneille, Moliere—of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... be denied that civilization, by the many false practices which it has introduced, by the facilities which its very complexity affords to the concealment of crime, and by the monstrous systems of corruption which fashion, caste, and conventionality are enabled to shelter, is the direct means of rendering many individuals miserable in the extreme; but these are the necessary incidents to its struggles to advance under the dominion ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... made large enough for the enormous pendants which were peculiar to their order, and which gave them, with the Spaniards, the name of orejones. *29 This ornament was so massy in the ears of the sovereign, that the cartilage was distended by it nearly to the shoulder, producing what seemed a monstrous deformity in the eyes of the Europeans, though, under the magical influence of fashion, it was regarded as a ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... and the Christianity in which they are called upon to believe, into which they are invited to enter, really is. The lecturer goes up and down the land and in the face of mighty audiences he denounces Christianity. He declares it to be unintelligible and absurd, to be monstrous and brutal. And when you ask what it is that he is thus denouncing, what it is that he is thus convicting over and over again, you find that it is something not simply which makes no part of Christianity, but ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... would be little comfort for me away from the chimney corner—which has never been my favourite post, by the way. Caliban and Agnes, the cook, a kindly Normandy woman, did their best for me and for the ravenous gang of workmen that laboured (in the slight intervals between their meals!) at the monstrous, many-mouthed iron tube in the cellar; while I chafed and scolded at the delays, unwilling to leave the men, weary of my dear Island now its chief jewel was gone, irritated by the tramping feet and tuneless ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... find the editing by Committee feasible. The friction was incessant, the waste of time monstrous. The second number cost him even more headaches than the first, and this, although the gallant Gluck abandoning his single-handed emprise fortified himself with a real live compositor and had arranged for the paper to be printed by machinery. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of remarkable longevity, monstrous births, &c. will suffice to shew the nature of this Chapter. It must be admitted that its contents are unimportant except as matters of curious speculation, and as connected with the ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... the Kraken has been referred to imperfect and exaggerated accounts of monstrous Polypi infesting the northern seas; how far may not the Cuttle-fish have given rise to this fiction? In hot countries (our readers will remember that in a late paper, Mirror, vol. xvii. pp. 282-299, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... Now floats the monstrous beast, o'ercome with pain, Whose scaly flanks upon the waves expand; And now descends into the deepest main, Scowers at the bottom, and stirs up the sand. The rising flood ill able to sustain, The cavalier swims forth, and makes for land. He leaves the anchor fastened in his tongue, And grasps ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... indefeasible, and never could be parted with. The claim appears to have caused some sensation among the crown lawyers. It was certainly unfounded and injudiciously asserted. Lord Liverpool pronounced it monstrous; and it probably increased the suspicion and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... apartment only a portion of this obscure light. The hearse destined to convey the remains of my dear mother to their last, long resting-place, was drawn up at the door. I saw it looming through the fog, with its tall, black shadowy plumes, like some ghostly and monstrous thing. A hitherto unknown feeling of dread stole over me. My life had been all sunshine up to the present moment—the sight of that mournful funeral array swept like a dark cloud over the smiling sky, blotting out all that ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Monstrous things are done in Paris. The future of a province depends on the mere signature of men who (through intrigues I have no time to explain to you) often stop the execution of useful and much-needed work; in fact, the best plans are often those which ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... benefit to the sister sciences as to itself. For, when questions belonging to the most sacred hereditary beliefs of Christendom were supposed to be affected by the verification of a fossil shell, or the proving that the Maestricht "homo diluvii testis" was, after all, a monstrous eft, it became necessary to work upon Conchology, Botany, and Comparative Anatomy, with a care and a reverence, a caution and a severe induction, which had been never before applied to them; and thus gradually, in the last half-century, the whole choir ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... there is nothing before you but ruin," said the archdeacon, now moved beyond all endurance. "Ruin both for you and Eleanor. How do you mean to pay the monstrous expenses of this action?" ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... and one of the guests happened to have a particularly large nose, the fool said out loud: 'What a terrible nose that gentleman has got!' So all the family pretended not to hear, and were rather uncomfortable, and when the fool saw that, he said: 'How I lied when I said that gentleman's nose was monstrous; now I come to look at it I really think it's rather a small nose!' Well, of course, no one could help laughing after that, and they all went off into peals of merriment, even ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fruitfull shore of muddie Nile, Upon a sunnie banke outstretched lay, In monstrous length, a mightie Crocodile, That, cram'd with guiltles blood and greedie pray Of wretched people travailing that way, Thought all things lesse than his disdainfull pride. I saw a little Bird, cal'd Tedula, The least of thousands ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... to obtain supplies from the natives. Savage irony was all they received; a handful of corn and a piece of bread were offered in exchange for swords and muskets. The Indians came against them in numbers, frightfully dressed, and bearing their okee in the form of a monstrous idol, stuffed with moss, and hung with chains and copper. But they were received with a volley of pistol-shot. The omnipotent okee fell to the earth, and with him several of his worshippers. The rest fled to the woods, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... are growing queer, Nay, threaten to be furious; I'll scan their paltry bills next year, At present I'm not curious. Such fellows are a monstrous bore, So I and Harry Grosvenor To-morrow start for Gallia's shore, And leave ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... far as the eye could reach fifty miles, looking southward from the highest white peak. Filling ravines and gulches, and dropping from the walls of canyons in white shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering young trees and larches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere on the California Sierra, and still falling. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... is by no means extinct in the modern European world, should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. He is aware how deeply the greater part of mankind resent any interference with the order of society, and therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form of what he himself calls a 'monstrous fiction.' (Compare the ceremony of preparation for the two 'great waves' in Book v.) Two principles are indicated by him: first, that there is a distinction of ranks dependent on circumstances prior to the individual: ...
— The Republic • Plato
... bordering on delirium, the least shock was an agony to him. The creaking of a plank terrified him. His father's breathing took on fantastic proportions. It seemed to be no longer a human breathing, and the monstrous sound was horrible to him; it seemed to him that there must be a beast sleeping there. The night crushed him; it would never end; it must always be so; he was lying there for months and months. He gasped for breath; he ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a myth will maintain itself, how it will continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the comparatively intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free Republic! And yet within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites have successfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon the fundamental principles, laid down by the fathers of this country, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... front; a system of thighs and legs so strangely astray that they could touch each other only at the knees, and, viewed from the front, resembled the crescents of two scythes joined by the handles; large feet, monstrous hands; and, with all this deformity, an indescribable and redoubtable air of vigor, agility, and courage,—strange exception to the eternal rule which wills that force as well as beauty shall be the result of harmony. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... proved the promise made, Lucy appealing to a parent pray'd; But all opposed the event that she design'd, And all in vain—she never changed her mind; But coldly answer'd in her wonted way, That she "would rule, and Lucy must obey." With peevish fear, she saw her health decline, And cried, "Oh! monstrous, for a man to pine! But if your foolish heart must yield to love, Let him possess it whom I now approve; This is my pleasure."—Still the Rector came With larger offers and with bolder claim; But the stern lady would attend ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... educating period for small maids of six, that long-ago time of bitter party hatred. Though only a short half-dozen years crowned her fair cropped head, and she lisped still in an adorable baby way, Hope Carolina was very wise—"monstrous wise," the black people said. She did not understand the meaning of "renegade" exactly,—the Radical Judge was a renegade too,—but she knew all about Reconstruction. It was what made them, the black people, so sassy, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... another monstrous crime of Nero's, also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero discovered enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately chapleted, and holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... colony. His life then, by his own admission, had been disreputable. Who does not know that vices which may be treated with tenderness, almost with complaisance, while they are kept in the background, became monstrous, prodigious, awe-inspiring when they are made public? A gentleman shall casually let slip some profane word, and even some friendly parson standing by will think but little of it; but let the profane word, through some unfortunate accident, find its way into the newspapers, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... mate's challenge with a series of snarls rising in volume. There was a tearing, scrambling sound from within. Then Shann fired at the jack-in-the-box appearance of a monstrous head, and Thorvald released ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... of boys and youths in all their glorious flower? is there no one that cares that the growing man may be upright and virtuous, and that the nobility of his nature may not be warped and corrupted, either through want of a guardian or by the depravity of those he associates with? Is it not monstrous and thankless to say so, seeing that we enjoy the divine bounty, which is dealt out to us richly, and never abandons us in our straits? And yet some of these same straits have more necessity than beauty. For ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the carriage was a very large dog, but possessing a grace and a swiftness of motion unusual to his size. He was not only beautiful, but also intelligent-looking. His coat was of dark brown, and smooth as sealskin, showing every muscle of his body. His broad square head and monstrous jaw reminded the beholder of a tiger. His ears were close-cropped, which gave a compactness to his head that brought into prominence his great changeable eyes: eyes that the Davenports afterwards found so fiery sometimes that they reflected red lights; at other ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... in the depths of that huge blind Incoherence! With amazement, not with measurement, men look on the Immeasurable; not knowing its laws; seeing, with all different degrees of knowledge, what new phases, and results of event, its laws bring forth. France is as a monstrous Galvanic Mass, wherein all sorts of far stranger than chemical galvanic or electric forces and substances are at work; electrifying one another, positive and negative; filling with electricity your Leyden-jars,—Twenty-five ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... me their Aigle for full Freedom no more pants, And the Senator, he mutthers ov "degraded immigrants." Says they can't "assimilate" us; faix, the wurrud sounds monstrous foine, But Oi fancy that it's maning is, "We mane to draw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... technique of thinking, and that I was no more capable of managing my own brain than mending a watch. For the first time in my life I was really thinking eagerly and intensely, and that seemed to me so monstrous that I said to myself: 'I am going off my head.' A man whose brain does not work at all times, but only at painful moments, is often haunted by the thought ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his word or no; and without encountering anything worth mentioning, came to the place where the spirits on their passage to the other world were obliged to decide by lot the station in which every one was to act there. Here was a monstrous wheel, infinitely larger than those in which I had formerly seen lottery-tickets deposited. This was called ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... meant also my making money. That was the complete understanding—here in London, and while you were at my house. You know it as well as I do. And I refuse to suppose that you seriously intend to sit there and pretend that you meant to give me nothing but an armful of waste paper. It would be too monstrous!" ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... death of Christ is a satisfaction not only for guilt, but also for eternal death, according to Hos. 13, 14: 0 death, I will be thy death. How monstrous, therefore, it is to say that the satisfaction of Christ redeemed from the guilt, and our punishments redeem from eternal death, as the expression, I will be thy death, ought then to be understood, not concerning Christ, but concerning our works, and, indeed, not concerning the works commanded ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... Honorinde, to whom fate had given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world. This man would have willingly passed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and day, what we call, in hunter's parlance, 'big game.' Having won the victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin. The young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy. She was filled with repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... shimmering all around us, its very tranquility deadlier than tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it. Time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whale; and, like a whale, feeds on the littlest things—small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden, golden evenings—and anon turneth whale-like to ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... from Far End and immediately called Council, even as Kurho was calling Council. Little had been gained, little proven; the perilous thing was still there, that monstrous means of death that might come in a moment of temper or reprisal to either tribe. Alas, such weapons were not easily ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... have fled the city. Their monstrous crimes are the theme of universal execration. But I reported them many months ago, and Gen. Winder was cognizant of their forgeries, correspondence with the enemy, etc. The Secretary of War, and the President himself, were informed of them, but it was thought ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... suddenly that they started up with a spasmodic jerk which nearly threw the old fellow from his perch. By a desperate effort, however, he maintained his seat, but his broad-brimmed hat went flying from his bald head and rolled to the ground, scattering in its fall his snuff-box, spectacles and a monstrous red bandanna handkerchief. This little episode called forth a peal of laughter from the by-standers, in which the ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... whether designedly or undesignedly propagated, that he was a man of divine extraction; and revived a report equally absurd and fabulous with that formerly spread respecting Alexander the Great, that he was begotten by a huge serpent, whose monstrous form was frequently observed in the bedchamber of his mother, but which, on any one's coming in, suddenly unfolding his coils, glided out of sight. The belief in these miraculous accounts was never ridiculed by him, but rather increased ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... twelve months labored actively and successfully to strengthen the Protestant cause in Scotland, he revisited Geneva, where he remained till 1559. During his residence in Geneva, he published his "First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Government of Women"—a treatise which was levelled against Mary of England, but which gave serious offence to Elizabeth. From April, 1559, when he once more and finally set foot on Scottish earth, till his decease, which took place November 24, 1572, the reformed church was ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... and friends of the family, to whom the young painter tried to get access, in the hope of interesting, if it were possible, in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed in money and trade, to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite monstrous speculation, a thing unheard-of. Nothing meanwhile, was altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket. If Augustine was absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the domestic code, she stole up to her room to make signals by means of a jar of flowers, if she ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... delighted, while the basket was filled with these articles, then passed over to Nathaniel, who was going home with Mrs. Brooks. It was amusing to watch Nathaniel, with the monstrous burden in his hands trying to help Mrs. Brooks down the front steps; for Aunt Madge was not enough of a fine lady to send the pair ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... shade overspread the lawn, the flowers, the old vine-clad stone house. In the music of the singing birds, in the murmur of the running water, he heard an ominous sound. Quiet beauty—sweet music—innocent laughter! By what monstrous abortion of fate did these abide in ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... of the history is everywhere interrupted by the insertion of innumerable laws, with regard to the greater part of which it is impossible to see any reason for their being inserted where they are." The dislocation of the narrative by these monstrous growths of legislative matter is not, as Goethe thinks, to be imputed to the editor; it is the work of the unedited Priestly Code itself, and is certainly intolerable; nor can it be original; the literary form of the work at once shows this. It is still possible to trace how the legal matter ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the most curious effect upon her mind, almost greater than the other. She had shown no faith in him, but he had faith in her. Reckless and guilty as he was, he had not doubted her. He had put it in her power to convict him not only of the worst accusation that was brought against him, but of a monstrous trick to prove his alibi, and a cruel wrong to her compelling her to uphold that as true. She was able to expose him, if she chose, as no one else could do; but he had not been afraid of that. This second thought, which burst upon Elinor without any ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant |
