"Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word Mi-she- mi-ki-nock in the Chippewa language. That is, "Mi-she" as one of the adnominals or adjectives in the Ottawa and Chippewa languages, which would signify tremendous in size; and "Mikinock" is the name of mud turtle—meaning, therefore, "monstrous large turtle," as the historians would have it. But we consider this to be a clear error. Whereever those annalists, or those who write about the Island of Mackinac, obtain their information as to the definition of the word Michilimackinac, I don't know, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... and the fame of his prowess in arms vied with, the glory of his virtue, and made his name a terror to all evil-doers the wide world over. In Lybia there was, in those days, a city called Silena, near whose walls lay a great lake, inhabited by a monstrous and fearsome dragon. Many a redoubted knight had fallen in conflict with this terrible beast; none had obtained the least advantage over it; and now for a long time it had laid waste and ravaged all the country round, no man daring to attack or hinder it. Every day for many a long ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... cabin they met Carrie, for whom Estelle was both sister and mother. The little shanty slanted on the side of a swell like a little boat sliding up a monstrous mid-ocean wave. Around it lay a little garden inhabited by a colony of chicken-coops—"All my own making," Estelle said. "Oh, of course, sister held the nails and bossed, but I did it. I like it, too. It's more fun than working red poppies on tidies—that's ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... it was deserved, and Mr. Robert Vyner would have been the first to admit it. His monstrous suspicion was daily growing less monstrous and more plausible. It became almost a conviction, and he resolved to test it by seeing Joan and surprising her with a few sudden careless remarks of the kind that a rising K.C. might spring upon a particularly difficult witness. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... and up out of the ghastly fog edging the German Empire, silhouetted, monstrous, against the daybreak, soared a Laemmergeyer, beating the livid void with enormous, ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... definitely figure to his mind. From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... honoured with the transaction of your legal affairs or not. But I do care on other grounds. And I do implore you to believe that I am speaking to you more as a friend than as a lawyer;—that I am speaking to you as the whole city would speak, and will speak when it hears of this—this incredible—this monstrous notion,—when I entreat you to think yet further on ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Larolles, "why, don't you know it was the very night of the grand private masquerade at Lord Darien's? I would not have missed it for the whole universe. I never travelled in such an agony in my life: we did not get to town till monstrous late, and then do you know I had neither a ticket nor a habit! Only conceive what a distress! well, I sent to every creature I knew for a ticket, but they all said there was not one to be had; so I was just like a mad creature—but about ten or eleven o'clock, a young lady of my ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of nature. By numbers the origin and the substance of all things could be explained [244]. Numbers make the mystery of earth and heaven—of the gods themselves. And this part of his system, which long continued to fool mankind, was a sort of monstrous junction between arithmetic and magic—the most certain of sciences with the most fantastic of chimeras. The Pythagoreans supposed the sun, or central fire, to be the seat of Jupiter and the principle of life. The stars were divine. Men, and even animals, were held to have within ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he resigns voluntarily or not; but, end how it may, it is a disastrous occurrence. If Government should persist in the appointment, they would be beaten by a great majority, and the House of Commons would vote him out; if it is given up, it is a monstrous concession to the violence and power of the House of Commons, for however objectionable the appointment may have been, it is not so outrageous as to call for the interference of Parliament with the King's undoubted prerogative, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the sea, and, hasty, put on board The spoils and female captives. Half the host, With Agamemnon, son of Atreus, stay'd Supreme commander, and, embarking, half Push'd forth. Swift course we made, for Neptune smooth'd The waves before us of the monstrous Deep. At Tenedos arriv'd, we there perform'd Sacrifice to the Gods, ardent to reach Our native land, but unpropitious Jove, Not yet designing our arrival there, 200 Involved us in dissension fierce again. For ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... altogether the same as that of those at St. Georges, or in the abbatial church of the Trinity at Caen. There are indeed monsters among them, but they are of unfrequent occurrence; and, if the expression may be allowed, they are not equally monstrous. Nor are they of a description to appear to bear any reference to mythology, or to history. On the contrary, the sculpture on them is for the most part of great beauty; and the patterns display a fertile, and an elegant, if not a classical, taste on the part of the architects. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... consider, after an action so shameful, thou must obscure thyself in some remote corner of the world, where honesty and honour never are heard of: no, thou canst not shew thy face, but it will be pointed at for something monstrous; for a hundred ages may not produce a story so lewdly infamous and loose as thine. Perhaps (fond as you are) you imagine the sole joy of being beloved by him, will atone for those affronts and reproaches you will meet with in the censuring ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... answered she, "I am sure you know what I mean; but you must know I have a prodigious monstrous great favour to beg of you: now pray don't refuse me; I assure you if you do, I shall be ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... expected to see stalls and milking machines and hay he saw an expanse of metal floor and monstrous machinery. The barn door which had been a rickety wooden slab from the outside was a gleaming sheet of metal from the inside. It glided silently shut and left no joint or seam to show where ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... companion of thy fireside, Help and joy of all thy lifetime." On the floor a child was sitting, And the babe this tale related. "There appeared within this dwelling, Came a bird within the castle, From the East came flying hither, From the East, a monstrous eagle, One wing touched the vault of heaven, While the other swept the ocean; With his tail upon the waters, Reached his beak beyond the cloudlets, Looked about, and eager watching, Flew around, and sailing, soaring, Flew away ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... would pay the bill himself. Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in this adventure, and would not the generous fellow ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gazed in surprise at the stranger,—Candia's stranger. Their number was augmenting. A few occupied the embankment shaded with acacias; others crowned the promontory rising abruptly from the rocks. Here and there, on the monstrous bowlders, a tiny boat lay sparkling like gold at the foot of the detached crag, so lofty that it gave the effect of the ruins of some Cyclopean tower, confronting the immensity ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... invention, has deluged the West and South with blood. Murder's prime minister hangs in every man's belt. Colonel James Bowie's awful knife is a twin of this monstrous birth. In long years of dark national shame our country will curse the memory of the "two Colonels." They were typical of their different sectional ideas. These men gave us the present coat of arms of San Francisco: the Colt's ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 had babies of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... for he didn't dare to turn; The sea would have thrown the ship like a mustang noosed with a rope; For the monstrous waves were leapin' high astern, And the shelter of Seven Island Bay was the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... present system of the officering and personnel of the army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if the present theory of our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest of America ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... why Pina acted as she did, though they could not possibly excuse her evil conduct in the eyes of righteous persons like the Senator and others of his class, who would have thought it a monstrous and unnatural thing that a noble Venetian girl should fall in love with a music-master, though he were the most talented and famous ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... not a question of right, 't is one of expediency," replied the bondsman. "A year at court, Miss Janice, would teach you that in this world 't is of monstrous importance to know when ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... has ever been a chief chapter of human life. False religions are the only ones known to two thirds of the human race, even now, after nineteen centuries of Christianity; and false religions are perhaps the most monstrous, complicated and thorough-going specimens of humbug that can be found. And even within the pale of Christianity, how unbroken has been the succession of impostors, hypocrites and pretenders, male and female, of every possible variety of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... to get the car safely back to his father's garage before the family returned from New York on the afternoon train. Now that his excitement had cooled into sober second thought, he marveled that he had been led into committing such a monstrous offense. He must have been mad. Often he had begged to do the very thing he had done and his father had always refused to let him, insisting that an expensive touring car was no toy for a boy of his age. Perhaps ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... and the canoe was propelled by means of short paddles, the men sitting with their faces in the direction in which they were going. The heads of many of the canoes were curious, in some cases it was the figure of a man with a face as ugly as can well be conceived, with a monstrous tongue thrust out of the mouth, and white shells stuck in ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... are, and on her hands in one way or another, she carves and chisels, and strives to evoke from the block a breathing statue. She may succeed so far as that you shall become her Frankenstein, a great, sad, monstrous, incessant, inevitable caricature of her ideal, the monument at once of her success and her failure, the object of her compassion, the intimate sorrow of her soul, a vast and dreadful form into which her creative power can breathe the breath of life, but not of sympathy. Perhaps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... monstrous wrong he sets him down— One man against a stone walled city of sin. * * * * * * When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars." ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... as he swung back the barriers at last, and his 'beauties' came forth. Seven or eight monstrous brutes, hounds of a kind unknown to me: fulvous and sleek of coat, tall on their legs, square-headed, long-tailed, deep-chested; with terrible jaws slobbering in eagerness. They leaped around and up ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... this, do we delay and give way to weakness and train up so monstrous a tyrant against our own selves? Is it not disgraceful that our forefathers, brought up in slavery, felt the desire for liberty, but we who have lived under an independent government become slaves ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... desire to see for myself the highest embodiment of English law where it lurked—a huge and bloated personification of all that was monstrous and discouraging to suitors—in the secret place of thunder, just behind the altar of sacrifice, forever spinning the web that for hundreds of years hath enmeshed and overspread the mightiest empire upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... wuz a shtrapping young fellow about eighteen, Oi wuz sailin' aboord a trader. Wan day we were layin' becalmed, as we air now, off Turk's Island. While we were quietly sittin' on the bulwarks, we saw a monstrous shaark off our starboard beam. The ould mon at the toime was snorin' away in his cabin, an' it was a foine chance to have a little fun. We out wid the shaark hook and havin' baited it wid a temptin' piece av junk, attached ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... of women to whom he preached in this city: "To her husband a wife owes the duty of unqualified obedience. There is no crime that a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him or applying for that monstrous thing, a divorce. It is her duty to submit herself to him always, and no crime he can commit justifies her lack of obedience. If he is a bad or wicked man she may gently remonstrate with him, but disobey him, never." Again, addressing his audience at St. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... attention, however, to Big Waller. He "caught" that gigantic Yankee in every conceivable action and attitude. He photographed him, we might almost say, with his legs apart, the hatchet high above his head, and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to delineate him tumbling over one of the logs, and hurling a shoulder-load upon the ground; but he failed utterly in the last ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... there at Prosopis—so shalt thou smite them. Farewell. I will seek out the Hathor if in any way I can come at her, and tell her all. But of this I warn thee, the hour is big with Fate, and soon will spawn a monstrous birth. Strange visions of doom and death passed before mine eyes as I ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... (q.v.) treaty, which gave her the monopoly of slave- hunting for the Spanish colonies and an opening for contraband trade. In the river Plate region, where the dissensions of Spaniards and Portuguese afforded another opening, English traders smuggled. The Spaniards, with monstrous fatuity, refused to make use of the superb waterways provided by the Parana and Paraguay, and endeavoured to stifle all trade. England's main struggle was with France. It was prolonged by her entanglement in European disputes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... open it, when "Wonderful cures," "Consumption," "Scrofula," "Indigestion," and "Fits," greeted our eyes on every page. Illustrated, too! Here was represented a man apparently dying, and near by a figure that would appear to be a woman were it not for two monstrous wings on its back, throwing obstacles in the way of death in the shape of a two-quart bottle of sarsaparilla syrup. Presumptive man in a brown linen coat, to suppose that we, just on the eve of a pleasure excursion, are troubled with such complaints, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... exaggerated account of the whole affair will be spread over the whole country, and we will be equally suspected by our own people. Those who spread useless falsehoods about us will gladly have a foundation for a monstrous one. Didn't Camp Moore ring with the story of our entertaining the Federal officers? Didn't they spread the report that Miriam danced with one to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" in the State House garden? What will they stop at now? O! if I ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... this chaos of incandescent nature, sent in a flame of deep blue sky and sea. It lay there calmly, like some phantasmagoric flower, some monstrous rose that swoons away, with upturned face, in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition of another and a better world, I do not see. As to my departed brother, who leads our minds at present to these reflections, he walked all his life pure among many impure. Except a little hastiness ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... on a little cricket, digging holes in the ground, when he heard a sudden noise. He started up, and saw a strange, monstrous head looking at him over the garden wall. He jumped up, and ran as fast as ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... will be just a fortnight; time enough for naughty girls, and long enough for two letters, faith. Congreve and Delaval have at last prevailed on Sir Godfrey Kneller to entreat me to let him draw my picture for nothing; but I know not yet when I shall sit.(26)—It is such monstrous rainy weather, that there is no doing with it. Secretary St. John sent to me this morning, that my dining with him to-day was put off till to-morrow; so I peaceably sat with my neighbour Ford, dined with him, and came home at six, and am now in bed as usual; and now it is time to have another ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... indignation and scorn upon Roland's face was simply beyond description when he heard this barefaced and monstrous request. ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... alone. And what a foolish god was that who taught the stupid Gentiles that we drank the blood of a murdered child at our Passover feast! Why, I, who was only a child, knew better. And so I hated and feared and avoided the great white church in the Platz, and hated every sign and symbol of that monstrous god who was kept there and hated my own person, when, in our play of a Christian funeral, I imagined my body to be the corpse, over which was carried ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... instance of the monstrous exaggerations of this ancient Munchausen, take the following:—"I am a liar if I have not seen in Java, a single shell in which three men might completely hide themselves, and all white!" He also states himself to have met with whole nations of giants, twenty-fie feet high; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... were so monstrous that they carried with them their own refutation. It was too often the custom in the middle ages to overwhelm an enemy with incredible charges for it to be fair to accuse the enemies of Hubert of any excessive malignity. The substantial innocence of Hubert ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy and repellent; it had nothing but strength and size—but in that consciousness of Mary's the great structure may have partaken of beauty. Sheridan ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... been torn from unfinished houses, iron railings from the magnificent gateway; trees were cut down, street sheds demolished; carts, carriages, and omnibuses were being triumphantly dragged from hiding-places to the monstrous pile. There were not very many men at work, but those who were engaged, labored like beavers. Blouses and broadcloth were about equally mixed. A few men armed with cutlasses, muskets, and pistols appeared to act as leaders; ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... said. "In my free and unrestricted spirit I moved deep into the substance of that world, below all the total ruin, far below. And there was a monstrous machine, near the molten core, almost infinitely older than the feeding one far above it. And it, too, had been left in a stratum where all else was destroyed. I could see it had once produced the ooze from which came the life from which in turn come the beings by whom the machine above ...
— Sweet Their Blood and Sticky • Albert Teichner
... on foot it is useless to attempt a description. Beards of awful size, moustaches of every shade and length under a foot, phizzes of all colors and contortions, four-story hats with sky-scraping feathers, costumes ring-streaked, speckled, monstrous, and incredible, made up the motley crew. There was a Northern emigrant just returned from Kansas, with garments torn and water-soaked, and but half cleaned of the adhesive tar and feathers, watched closely by a burly Missourian, with any quantity of hair and fire-arms and bowie-knives. There were ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... England.—The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is on the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though vitally interested in the character of the Irish Executive, is not to say a ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... with the devil; and that to him they seemed more worthy of pity than of punishment? Hereupon I answered that I had not indeed read any such book (for say, who can read all that fools write?), but that the appearances here and in all other places proved that it was a monstrous error to deny the reality of witchcraft, inasmuch as people might then likewise deny that there were such things as ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... certain Indians of Vancouver Island, there once lived "a monstrous old woman with wolfish teeth, and finger-nails like claws." She used to entice away little children whom she afterwards ate up. One day a mother, who was about to lose her child thus, cried out to the spirits to ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... take care that your behaviour is widely advertised," he said. "You have brought a most monstrous charge against me, and I shall proceed against you for slander. The truth is that you are not equal to the job I intended giving you and you are finding an ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... grant you, is at first sight mysterious enough," Henshaw returned, his keen eyes fixed on Morriston. "But even that does not reconcile me to the monstrous improbability of my brother, Clement, taking his own life. I knew him too well ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... Bill and the three mids confirmed the wreckers in their belief that they were saving something of grand value; for, in fact, had the block of sandstone been a monstrous nugget of gold, the boy slaves could not have been ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... plan in mind beyond an overwhelming desire to put a bad fright into his roommate in payment for what he considered a monstrous act of duplicity. It would serve Travail right if, once he entered the secondary plane of the shell, he would be forced to stay there a while. A good scare would cause him ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... rejected the proper instruments and forms of life, he must make a living out of the charitable curiosity excited by his very unfitness. {94} And asceticism of this prudential type tends always to be both empty and monstrous; empty because it denies life, and monstrous because life is not really denied, but only ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... quite as stout as Miss Greeb had reported. A gigantically fat woman, she made up in breadth what she lacked in length. Yet she seemed to have some activity about her, too, for she opened the door personally to Lucian, who was quite amazed when he beheld her monstrous bulk blocking up the doorway. Her face was white and round like a pale moon; she had staring eyes of a china blue, resembling the vacant optics of a wax doll; and, on the whole, appeared to be a timid, lymphatic ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... why suppose anything so monstrous; men do not ill-treat children. It is only women, who adore them, that kill them and ill-use them accordingly. She will be my little benefactress, God bless her! I may love her more than I ought, being yours, for my home is ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... understanding reached her. She began to understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other engines of men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted sea-miles and the smoke of land-miles she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it stood there that Freedom, and the Nation ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... April 2, 1711, took note of the severance which had taken place between sign and trade, and of the absurdity that the sign no longer had any significance. After satirizing first, the monstrous conjunctions in signs of "Dog and Gridiron," "Cat and Fiddle" and so forth; and next the absurd custom by which young tradesmen, at their first starting in business, added their own signs to those of the masters under whom ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... scarce know what I said. I declared it monstrous, and not to be thought of for a moment; and then she went on in her fashion that would wile a bird off a bush, declaring that no doubt the proposal was a shock, but if I would turn the matter over, I should see it was for the dear child's advantage. Belamour dotes on her, and after ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spread from bight to bight, and crag to crag; and above there were sheets of eruptive flame and great rumblings, and mighty arcs of fire spanning the whole heavens, and gripping them as with the glittering jewelled hand of some monstrous keeper of the skies whose mutterings came to us below. Or the scene changed again, and it was as though elves of the zenith had brought their golden caskets above the firmament, and there had burst them open, so that all the jewels of the light rained upon ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... whole; from the nave of one of the pyramids there hang, on the tops of four buttresses, festoons of chains, in length altogether 548 feet, made of stone. Each garland, consisting of twenty links, is made of one piece of stone 60 feet long; the links themselves are monstrous rings 32 inches in circumference, and polished as smooth as glass. One chain is broken, and hangs down from the pillar. In the neighbourhood of the pagodas there are usually tanks and basins lined with cement, or buildings attached for the purpose of lodging ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... course increases a torpedo's chance of striking by giving it a larger target. Moderate size, no overloading with armour, speed, good coal supply, and as many quick-firing guns as can be mounted—that is my idea of the best type of warship at present. The policy of building monstrous ships is doubtful, when they can be sunk by a torpedo-boat. Under such conditions, it seems to me that ease and rapidity of manoeuvring is of more advantage than gigantic weight of ordnance and armour, because after all the torpedo's attack is directed against a part which ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Europe, some months after, we found the same whale within a few leagues of the same spot, floating dead upon the water; it measured above half a mile in length. As we could take but a small quantity of such a monstrous animal on board, we got our boats out, and with much difficulty cut off his head, where, to our great joy, we found the anchor, and above forty fathom of the cable, concealed on the left side of his mouth, just under his tongue. [Perhaps this was the cause of his death, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... 'Dat's what de people call me 'round here.' Marse Tom say: 'My name is Woodward. I am on my first political legs, and am goin' 'round to see and be seen, if not by everybody, certainly by de most prominent and 'fluential citizens of each section.' Then de old man say: 'Git down. Git down. You are a monstrous likely man. I'll take you in to see Pinky, my wife, and we'll see what she has to ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... friendly admiration, had been his antagonists, and Pope would naturally accept their view of his merits. And, moreover, Pope's great ally of this period had a dislike of his own to Bentley. Bentley had said of Warburton that he was a man of monstrous appetite and bad digestion. The remark hit Warburton's most obvious weakness. Warburton, with his imperfect scholarship, and vast masses of badly assimilated learning, was jealous of the reputation of the thoroughly trained and accurate critic. It was the dislike of a charlatan for the excellence ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... their names—that is to say, whose grease is imposed on people for blacking; then there were the executioners, and the puffers of bad wares. In the midst of all the merriment, as it must have been, that was going on, shot up from a pit a stem, a tree, a monstrous flower, a large toadstool, and a cupola. These were the Utopian productions of the honoured assembly, the entire amount of their offerings to the world during the past year. Sparks flew from these various objects; they were the thoughts and ideas which had been borrowed or stolen, which now took ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... threw them on the ground. I went back for more, and having scattered them about and piled up a few for a pillow, was about to throw myself on this quickly-formed couch when I saw, just under the stone, what I at first took for a stick, but which then beginning to move, exhibited itself to me as a monstrous rattlesnake, with its body coiled up and its head erect, its fierce eyes glittering, and its forked tongue moving rapidly to and fro as if eager to bite me. I had disturbed it from its slumbers, and it was naturally ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Point in the fog we sensed that we had risen and fallen over several rises. Every now and then we felt hard slippery snow under our feet. Every now and then our feet went through crusts in the surface. And then quite suddenly, vague, indefinable, monstrous, there loomed a something ahead. I remember having a feeling as of ghosts about as we untoggled our harnesses from the sledge, tied them together, and thus roped walked upwards on that ice. The moon was showing ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... city of Thorn and in her father's house. She called me often to ride beside her, Helene being on my other side, while the Lubber Fiend, who had saved all our lives, gambolled about and came to her to be petted like a lapdog of some monstrous sort. He licked his lips and twisted his eyes upward at her in ludicrous ecstasy till only the whites were visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail; cannot ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... and immediately the shadow of deep sorrow covered their faces. It was a thing monstrous, possessing none of the forms familiar to the eye, yet not devoid of a hint of some new unknown form. On a thin tortuous little branch, or rather an ugly likeness of one, lay crooked, strange, unsightly, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... highest philosophy. It is the divine voice which speaks in our hearts, though it has caught some accretion of human passion and superstition. The popular versions are false and debased; the old versions of the Atonement, for example, monstrous; and the belief in the everlasting torture of sinners, a hideous and groundless caricature. With much that such men have said I could, of course, agree heartily; for, indeed, it expresses the strongest feelings ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to pray for my miserable life, and to watch over it as though it were precious, and I cannot, je ne puis pas, control myself. That is, I could," he continued again after a minute's silence, "but this is too hard work for me, a monstrous work, when I am alone. With others, under special circumstances, when you are going into action, I am brave, j'ai fait mes epreuves, because I am vain and proud: that is my failing, and in presence of others. . . . Do you know, let me spend the night with you: ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... niche, there struggled a convulsive bulk, like some monstrous worm, too large for the bore, yet writhing. Bare feet kicked him in violent rebellion, and a muscular knee jarred squarely under his chin. He caught a pair of naked ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... so. Before the Pantheon, the mayor of an arrondissement sits on a platform, writing down the names of volunteers. Whenever one makes his appearance, a roll of drums announces to his fellow-citizens that he has undertaken to risk his valuable life outside the ramparts. It really does appear too monstrous that the able-bodied men of this city should wear uniforms, learn the goose-step, and refuse to take any part in the defence within shot of the enemy. That they should object to be employed in a campaign ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... fine old-fashioned furniture. Polishing of stairs and floors was a joy to her. We tramped in and out in muddy boots. We scattered tobacco ashes. We opened bedroom windows, even on wet nights, and rain came in. We used monstrous and unheard-of quantities of water. Yet no sooner had one guest departed than Madame ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... always slight the work that I cannot understand their ever having any heart in. Often they do slight it, and they insist unsparingly upon the scanty privileges which their mistresses seem to think a monstrous invasion of their own rights. The habit of oppression grows upon the oppressor, and you would find tender-hearted women here, gentle friends, devoted wives, loving mothers, who would be willing that their domestics ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... to bear on every corner of its solitary galleries, before he reports 'all right.' Suspicious of the Elgin marbles, and not to be done by cat-faced Egyptian giants with their hands upon their knees, Inspector Field, sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand, throwing monstrous shadows on the walls and ceilings, passes through the spacious rooms. If a mummy trembled in an atom of its dusty covering, Inspector Field would say, 'Come out of that, Tom Green. I know you!' If the smallest ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... a boat in the lake, made of red sandal wood. It had a mast of fine amber, and a blue satin flag: there was only one boatman in it, whose head was like an elephant's, and his body like that of a tiger. When the boat was come up to the prince and Mobarec, the monstrous boatman took them up one after another with his trunk, put them into his boat, and carried them over the lake in a moment. He then again took them up with his trunk, set them ashore, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... Larches forgets. These head-dresses, monstrous as they are, are not exposed to the objection of being inconsistent with the habits of life of those who wore them, as so many of the fashions of later periods and of the present day are. There were no such vehicles as she is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... "It's a monstrous house though," she went on a minute later. "You'll never be able to do all there'll be to do now, unless you have help. Let alone the work, you never can manage to lift your aunt by yourself. I reckon you'll have to ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... year before, the agreement was made with Erskine, the President did not pretend that the orders in council included blockades; and that it was remarkable that he should forget his own declaration regarding the monstrous spoliation of a few months before by the French, under the Rambouillet decree, and yet remember this British order of blockade of four years before, which everybody else had forgotten. Indeed, so completely had ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... of the direct temptation of the evil one could lead you to entertain so monstrous a doctrine, as that ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... that the wood afforded, it had been untrodden for many years. Giant ceiba trees reared themselves two hundred feet into the air. Lianas hung in festoons from the boughs like monstrous boa constrictors. Parrots flew squawking from branch to branch, and humming birds and butterflies of many hues and gorgeous beauty darted like bright arrows among ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits. Files of monstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, between which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame; points of light which revealed further depths incalculable in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the bitter memories of the angler. The fish that break away are monstrous animals; imagination increases their bulk, and fond desire paints them clean-run and bright as silver. There are other chances of the angler's life scarcely less sad than this. When a hook breaks just as the salmon was losing strength, was ceasing to struggle, and beginning ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... that had been his father's, and which now he meant to make his own. There were candles on the table, the dresser, and the mantelshelf. He lit them all, and the room changed from a place of shadows and monstrous shapes to a gentleman's bedchamber,—somewhat sparsely furnished, but of a comfortable and cheerful aspect. A cloth lay upon the floor, the windows were curtained, and the bed had fresh hangings of green and white Kidderminster. Over the mantel ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... various requests which the 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 ideas, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hatred[53] of your father was of such stature that it entirely outstripped, overgrew, and overshadowed your love of me. There was no struggle between them at all, or but little; of such dimensions was your hatred and of such monstrous growth. You did not realise that there was no room for both passions in the same soul: they cannot live together in that fair carven house. Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are; by which ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... child her bosom loses its form, her beauty its freshness. Woman is made for motherhood. Man would perhaps abandon her, disgusted by the loss of beauty; but his child clings to him and weeps. Behold the family, the human law; everything that departs from this law is monstrous. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... all kinds of game,—wild cattle, does, deer, stags, bears, turkeys, partridges, parrots, quails, woodcock, wild pigeons, and ring-doves. There are also beaver, otters, and martens. The cattle of this country surpass ours in size. Their head is monstrous and their look is frightful, on account of the long, black hair with which it is surrounded and which hangs below the chin. The hair is fine, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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
... testified that they had always found him good-natured and correct, but considered his intellect somewhat below the average grade. A few months subsequently he died in jail of consumption. Regarded from the ordinary moral stand-points, this was a strange, an unaccountable, a monstrous act, and we are unable to take the first step towards a solution of the mystery. Looking, however, at the material conditions of his affections, his propensities, his impulses,—his cerebral dynamics,—we get a clew, at least, to the secret. His father was an habitual drunkard, and a frequent inmate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... but become a teacher and benefactor of his kindred races; and become an agent in carrying civilization and Christianity to a benighted continent. That any one will be turned aside from so noble a mission by the delusive dream of conquest and empire in the Western Hemisphere is an absurdity too monstrous and mischievous to be believed. Yet 'the Committee's Report' was accepted, and adopted, and endorsed by a 'National Convention;' and is published and sent ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... there is nothing you could do. Go to her as my friend. It isn't such a monstrous thing to ask. Tell her any good you know of me. At present her imagination paints me in all the lurid colours of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... little. So even William—Uncle William—regarded this monstrous thing as an insignificant matter of everyday experience. Maybe he expected it to occur frequently—every night, or so. Doubtless he did expect it to occur every night, or so. Indeed! Very well. As if she were going to show now ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... if the fellow be a knave, Provided that the razors shave; It certainly will be a monstrous prize." So home the clown, with his good fortune, went, Smiling in heart and soul, content, And quickly soaped himself ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... ceased to smile; Assured that fluent speech and flow'ry vest Disguised the troubles of a man distress'd; - But now our Quacks are gamesters, and they play With craft and skill to ruin and betray; With monstrous promise they delude the mind, And thrive on all that tortures human-kind. Void of all honour, avaricious, rash, The daring tribe compound their boasted trash - Tincture of syrup, lotion, drop, or pill; All tempt the ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... good night here, Hartley,"—the Banker's voice was unnatural and wavering. "I can't discuss it with you. It's got to be proved," he spoke more heatedly. "What have you got? Only the word of a stinking native. I tell you it's monstrous." He stopped and clutched Hartley's arm, and seemed as though ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... of the head by his good fortune. He imagined that because he was monstrous he was great. That made him arrogant and presumptuous. He, too, loved Zoe. Thus it came about that a rivalry was established between Sampey and the Wild Man of Milo. How was it with Zoe? Which loved she?—or loved she either? Observing and reflecting, she dreamed. As it was eyes only that she saw, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The words I, and YOU, and THEY, are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... infidelity—was quite a familiar one; 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 Italian Commedia ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the seven league boots, the way you get over ground. And just after I've gone and made away with a monstrous supper, too," he managed to say, between gasps. "Let me get my breath, and I've got something to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... are at last, and I'm deuced glad of it. It's perfectly monstrous you fellows haven't better horses. You ought to make me remount agent, and I'd show you the sort of horses that ought to be bought for police service. Let me have a glass of beer, that's a good fellow, before I'm locked up. I suppose there's no tap ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Chick 'How very monstrous! Misanthrope, is the word I want. The idea! Misplaced affection! I say, if any misanthrope were to put, in my presence, the question "Why were we born?" I should reply, "To make ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... his release each day in some novel manner. Each morning I looked abroad from my window on arising, more than likely detecting his outstretched form on the walk below, patiently awaiting my appearance, and each night I was liable to dreams of his coming upon me, a monstrous creature, sad-faced but eager, tireless, resolute, determined to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... about with strawe, and tow, they closely hide: And caryed to some mountaines top, being all with fire light, They hurle it downe with violence, when darke appeares the night: Resembling much the Sunne, that from the heavens downe should fal, A straunge and monstrous sight it seemes, and fearfull to them all; But they suppose their mischiefes all are likewise throwne to hell, And that from harmes and daungers now, in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... about three and one-third millions of them now. Say they are worth, old and young, large and little, one thousand dollars a head—monstrous thing, to put a price upon a human head, but suppose it. It would amount to but a few billions of dollars. What would a war cost between these two sections? Perhaps a million dollars a day! How much ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... seeing Ghatotkacha and his followers scatter in different directions and seeing those vow-observing great rishis, of ascetic wealth, viz.; Lomasa and the rest, away for bathing and collecting flowers, assumed a different form, gigantic and monstrous and frightful; and having secured all the arms (of the Pandavas) as also Draupadi, that wicked one fled away taking the three Pandavas. Thereupon that son of Pandu, Sahadeva, extricated himself with exertion, and by force snatched the sword ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Profession, or indulged Arrogance of Temper) with his violent Introduction of anti-dramatick Rope and Wire-dancing, Tumbling, and Fire-eating, to the visible Degradation of a liberal Stage, whereon nothing mean, shocking, or monstrous, should ever appear; he hath not succeeded so well: Then, his Scheme of uniting an Academy, for the sober regular Education of Youth, with a publick Theatre, seemed rather the feverish Delusion of a distempered Brain, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke |
