"Reprehensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stalk stood rigid, it would break, the wind would scatter the flowers, and the buds would die without opening. The gust of wind passed, the stalk rises again, proudly wearing her treasure. Who accuses her for having bowed to necessity? To lower the head when a ball whistles is not cowardice. What is reprehensible is defying the shot, to fall ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... tribes perhaps excepted), the Kayans and other tribes are apt to distort the truth in their own favour, in describing from memory incidents that seriously affect their interests. When a party has allowed itself to commit some reprehensible action, such as over-hasty and excessive reprisals, a whole village, or even several villages, may conspire together more or less deliberately to "rig up "some plausible version of the affair which may serve to excuse or ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... which the killing of a wild animal may be so wanton, so revolting and so utterly reprehensible that the act may justly be classed as murder. The man who kills a walrus from the deck of a steamer that he knows will not stop; the man who wantonly killed the whole colony of hippopotami that Mr. Dugmore photographed in life; the man who last winter shot bull elk in Wyoming ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... virtue willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed, therefore, the state—He willed its connection with the source and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of His will, which is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it reprehensible that this, our corporate realty and homage, that this our recognition of a signiory paramount—I had almost said this oblation of the state itself—as a worthy offering on the high altar of universal ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... The practice, so common with some theological writers, of drawing dark pictures of heathenism, in which not one luminous spot is visible, in order to exalt the revelations given to the Jews, is exceedingly unfortunate, and highly reprehensible. It is unfortunate, because the skeptical scholar knows that there were some elements of truth and excellence, and even of grandeur, in the religion and civilization of the republics of Greece and Rome; and it is reprehensible, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... U's crack driving team, bearing Irish and Miss Allen of the twinkling eyes upon the front seat of a two seated spring-wagon that had seen far better days than this. Native Son helped to crowd the back seat uncomfortably, and waved a hand with reprehensible cheerfulness as ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... were declared incapable of holding any commission under the United States and recommending the several States not to employ any in offices civil or military. This brought the lieutenants to "acknowledge in the most explicit manner that the offense for which they were dismissed is highly reprehensible and could not be justified under any circumstances or any pretence whatever, and that they were exceedingly sorry for the rashness which betrayed them into such behavior." Then the strikers were "restored to former rank ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... deceitfulness of the heart, the zeal which, in its proper exercise, is admirable, as inciting us to a grand enthusiasm in a cause believed to be true and holy, ofttimes degenerates into a blind and bitter bigotry, as unreasoning as reprehensible; the faith which pierces the unseen and eternal, and fixes its calm eye on One who sits changeless amid infinite series of changes, all-wise amid infinite follies and wickednesses of His creatures, all-merciful and all-loving amid the hate and opposition of weak, finite hearts, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... do not deny that my conduct towards you in the past was altogether reprehensible and unpardonable. I do not deny that circumstances so shaped themselves that I was made to seem a wretched, despicable criminal in your eyes; but, Annunziata, I stopped short of actual guilt, and as Heaven is my witness I had no hand either in your abduction or ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... does he fail to visit similar sins in other people with the sincerest vengeance which his somewhat blunted pen is capable of inflicting. Southey and he are on the most intimate terms. You are aware that, some little time before the death of Moore, Byron caused that brilliant but reprehensible man to be evicted from his house. Moore took the insult so much to heart that, it is said to have been one great cause of the fit of illness which brought him to the grave. Others pretend that the lyrist died in a very happy state of ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... duty, having recognized this mixed-up state of affairs, is to ask whether it be simply reprehensible and pathological, or whether, on the contrary, we must treat it as a normal element in making up our minds. The thesis I defend is, briefly stated, this: Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... signed by upwards of a hundred and fifty of the respectable inhabitants of Alcantara—upon whom excesses had been committed in no way less reprehensible than at Maranham—had been forwarded to me on the 6th of December; but, as the complaints were of the same nature, it is unnecessary to do more than advert to the circumstance. In addition to these, I received a statistic list of the murders and ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... Albanians but Serbs and Bulgars who had been, a short time before, converted to Islam. It seems probable that the sharp divisions of Serb, Bulgar, and so on, did not then exist, and that the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople did himself not know what variety of reprehensible Slav it was that lived in those parts.... The last Patriarch of Ochrida, whose name was likewise Arsenius, spent the remainder of his life in exile at Mt. Athos, and there, in another monastery, was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... my imagination to the margin, it must not be considered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play some freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... reprehensible, but more especially as they are employed as a manure for dry soils, with the very best effect. They are commonly ground and drilled in, in the form of powder, with turnip seed. Mr. Huskisson estimated the real value of bones annually imported, (principally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... sentimental romances of the best kind. These sentiments are not only subjectively true, but also objectively they are not without value; they are sound sentiments issuing from a moral source, only reprehensible as overstepping the limits of human truth. Without this moral reality how could they stir and touch so powerfully? The same remark applies to moral and religious fanaticism, patriotism, and the love of freedom ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... without discussion, dismissed from this Chamber through the single fact of his absence, prolonged without leave, is repugnant to my reason and also to my conscience. You are told: "The absence of M. de Sallenauve is all the more reprehensible because he is under the odium of a serious accusation." But suppose this accusation is the very cause of his absence—["Ha! ha!" from the Centre, and laughter.] Allow me to say, gentlemen, that I am not, perhaps, quite so artless ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... resentment, feeling herself the most ill-used of womenkind, and this calm inclusion of herself in the list of wrong-doers did not tend to pour oil on the troubled waters. For Cornelia to acknowledge her deliberate intention to offend, and in the same breath to offer a kiss of reconciliation, showed a reprehensible lack of proper feeling. Miss Briskett was a woman of high principles, and made a point of forgiving her enemies—slowly! As a preliminary process she demanded an abject apology, and a period of waiting, during which ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hospitality and most exceptional kindness with which you have treated me and my niece, and for which we shall feel grateful all our lives, but I think you will agree with me that it would be useless for us to pursue the search after that most reprehensible person, my brother-in-law, Bonnet. There can be no doubt, I believe, that he and Blackbeard have left the vicinity of Charles Town, and have gone, we know ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Superintendent with growing indignation. "The Service! Why! Cameron was right in line for promotion. He had the making of a most useful officer. And with this trouble coming on it was—it was—a highly foolish, indeed a highly reprehensible proceeding, sir." The Superintendent was rapidly mounting his pet hobby, which was the Force in which he had the honor to be an officer, the far-famed North West Mounted Police. For the Service he had sacrificed everything ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... finished product of an environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out beings moulded after all the standards society abhors. Fortunately the psychologists have made it unnecessary to explain that there is nothing willful or personally reprehensible in the vagrancy of these vagrants. Their histories show that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters of the farms they ran away from, through their character-debasing experience with irregular industrial labor, on to the vicious economic life of the winter unemployed, their ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... which, instead of benefiting by past experience, took good care to keep the Japanese well informed concerning the military measures of the government, and even discussed the organization of the army and the possibilities of the strategical advance in a way that seemed particularly reprehensible in the light of the fearful reverses of the last few months. The government warnings were disregarded especially by the large dailies, who seemed to find it absolutely impossible to regard the events of the day in any other light than ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... hands of Bedford and Grenville, his only defence against an administration composed of whig magnates. They used their power to force him to send Bute out of London. This insolent conduct was specially reprehensible in the case of Grenville, who owed his advancement to Bute's recommendation. Grenville continued to weary the king with interviews; he worried him with his disputes with his colleagues, and irritated him beyond endurance by suggestions, which were not ill-founded, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Sabbath was disregarded, spent often in cards, or desecrated by the meetings of partisans of both factions; moral duties were neglected and decorum outraged. The fact was, that a minor court had become the centre of all the bad passions and reprehensible pursuits in vogue. Carlton House, in Pall Mall, which even the oldest of us can barely remember, with its elegant open screen, the pillars in front, its low exterior, its many small rooms, its decorations in vulgar taste, and, to crown the whole, its associations of a corrupting ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back, might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the Argo—had been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was deeply interested ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... for example, in the "Times" for his "injudicious and even reprehensible tone" which "aggravated the difficulties his opponents might have in giving way to him." Was this, it was asked, the way to get Roman Catholic children to the Board schools? Was it not an abandonment of the ideal ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... How reprehensible is the vice of envy, which should never exist in anyone, when found in a man of excellence, and how wicked and horrible a thing it is to seek under the guise of a feigned friendship to extinguish not only the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... does it with an easy conscience—as easy, that is, as the maritime conscience can well be in a gale of wind, with the Foreland lights ahead and infinite possibilities all around. The captain drinks his whisky and hot water with a certain slow appreciation of the merits of that reprehensible solution, and glances at the aneroid barometer on the bulkhead of ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... factory with the body of a foundling from my mother's studio I saw a constable who seemed to be closely watching my movements. Young as I was, I had learned that a constable's acts, of whatever apparent character, are prompted by the most reprehensible motives, and I avoided him by dodging into the oilery by a side door which happened to stand ajar. I locked it at once and was alone with my dead. My father had retired for the night. The only light in the place came from the furnace, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... veiled for the early Christians behind the question of the kind of Christ in whom their hearts believed. With all that we have said about the reprehensible admixture of the metaphysical element in the dogma, with all the accusation which we bring concerning acute or gradual Hellenisation, secularisation and defection from the Christ, we ought not to hide from ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... The Tweed here behaved with proper decorum; it would have been highly reprehensible in the English half of the river to have shown the smallest ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... rest, these they prefer to those who may be older; for as their power is very extensive, if they are [1273a] persons of no account, they may be very hurtful to the state, as they have always been to the Lacedaemonians; also the greater part of those things which become reprehensible by their excess are common to all those governments ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... their own gratification; most of the beds bear the marks of nocturnal foxes; and the squirrels spend their days wantonly biting off and flinging down the tender young shoots of the firs. Then there is the boy who drives the donkey and water-cart round the garden, and who has an altogether reprehensible habit of whisking round corners and slicing off bits of the lawn as he whisks. "But you can't alter these things, my good soul," I say to myself. "If you want to get rid of the hares and foxes, you must consent to have wire-netting, which is odious, right round your garden. ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... him, with a wife and one daughter. This is one of the best stations of the underground railroad; safe as a mother's arms, and you will never believe you're not the favored guest of a week-end party. Walker's an old chum of Leary's. They used to cut up in the most reprehensible fashion out West in old times. You've probably wondered what becomes of old crooks. Walker is of course an unusual specimen, for he knew when the quitting was good, and having salted away a nice little fortune accumulated in express hold-ups, he dwells here in peace and passes ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... dishonored the colors belonging to your school, and made certain derogatory remarks concerning his country and his flag, for which offenses he desires now to make reparation. Will you therefore kindly permit him, at the first possible opportunity, to apologize for his reprehensible conduct, publicly, to his teacher, to his country and to his flag, and especially to Master Alexander Sands, the bearer of the flag, who, though not without fault in the matter, was, nevertheless, at the time, under ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... to see a lady or gentleman, however well dressed they may otherwise be, with unclean nails. It always results from carelessness and inattention to the minor details of the toilet, which is most reprehensible. The nails should be cut about once a week—certainly not oftener. This should be accomplished just after washing, the nail being softer at such a time. Care should be taken not to cut them too short, though, if they ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... be an enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society was not agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore, when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these reprehensible things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness of a small boy ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... manners, as they appear to Europeans, cannot be dismissed without comment on a reprehensible type of American girl who flourishes on shipboard, on tours, and in public places generally—but most particularly in the large and expensive hotels ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... If a man loves his own State, therefore, and is content to be ruined with her, let us shoot him, if we can, but allow him an honorable burial in the soil he fights for. [Footnote: We do not thoroughly comprehend the author's drift in the foregoing paragraph, but are inclined to think its tone reprehensible, and its tendency impolitic in the present stage of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Judah. To be ignorant on such a vital matter makes it even more reprehensible. I cannot believe that our dear Miss Pinniger has so ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... The reprehensible haste with which various European nations terminate their wars is a source of annoyance to every one. Hardly have we acquired a decided taste for news of some transient war or other, when the conflicting parties judge ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... business of life! We should hardly know what judgment to pass upon a man of wealth who should entirely neglect the education of his children in schools; but the common indifference to industrial learning is not less reprehensible. Labor should be systematic; not constant, indeed, but always to be reckoned as the great business of life, never to be avoided, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... will come when you will thank me. It is not, my dear Veronica, that I think there is any harm in you; there is not. But a girl is soiled not only by evil but by the proximity of evil, and a reputation for rashness may do her as serious an injury as really reprehensible conduct. So do please believe that in this matter I ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... hope of safety, it would be great folly for them prematurely to enter into a danger which involves their all, but when tarrying makes the struggle more difficult, to put off action even for a little time is more reprehensible than ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... of my own money, including what devolved to me from my uncle, his father, in the prosecution of his suits. Trenck had paid two hundred ducats to the tribunal of Vienna, in the year 1743, to procure its very reprehensible silence concerning a curator, to which I was sacrificed, as the new judges of this court refused to correct the error of their predecessors. Such are the proceedings of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... what you're dying to know. You want to know whether Mr. Snow is in the same depths of mourning as when our acquaintance first began. This, my dear child, is very reprehensible of you. Young girls with braids down their backs—and by the way, Linda, you did not tell me what happened "after the ball was over." Did you go to school the next morning with braids down your back, or wearing your coronet? Because ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... New York the other night. And I will own that I've had a real struggle with myself sometimes, lately, not to mind—his giving so much time to his portrait painting. And of course both of those are very reprehensible—in an artist's wife," she ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... of some general knowledge of the principles of nutrition and the nutritive values of foods is not generally realised. Ignorance on such a matter is not usually looked upon as a disgrace, but, on the contrary, it would be commonly thought far more reprehensible to lack the ability to conjugate the verb 'to be' than to lack a knowledge of the chemical properties of the food we eat, and the suitability of it to our organism. Yet the latter bears direct and intimate relation to man's physical, mental, and moral well-being, while the former ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... of standing. It was a reprehensible affair, but he was released upon his own recognizance. He was charged with breaking into the untenanted home of one Tugh; of illegally possessing firearms; of disturbing the peace—a variety of offenses all rational to ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... by mercenary dealers, there is none more reprehensible, and at the same time more prevalent, than the sophistication of the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... observe that such dissensions had already arisen, and unfortunately on his account." He then proceeded circumstantially to describe the quarrel between Aerschot and Egmont, already narrated by the Regent, omitting in his statement no particular which could make Egmont reprehensible in the royal eyes. He likewise painted the quarrel between the same noble and Aremberg, to which he had already alluded in previous letters to the King, adding that many gentlemen, and even the more prudent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... when Vermifuge was mentioned, Addison winked to me; and I think we were pretty well aware that something funny had started, unbeknown to Gram. Theodora, however, knew nothing of it. Whether this reprehensible slyness would have continued among the rest of us, until we had taken up the whole of the elderberry wine, I cannot say; but about a month later, a dismal expose was precipitated one Friday night by the arrival ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... an object of envy to all the young peasant-girls within a circuit of ten miles, although her conduct, from a religious point of view, was supremely reprehensible. Flore, born in 1787, grew up in the midst of the saturnalias of 1793 and 1798, whose lurid gleams penetrated these country regions, then deprived of priests and faith and altars and religious ceremonies; where marriage was nothing more than legal coupling, and revolutionary maxims left ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Society for its suppression. For what was this disquiet feeling, but the sense that he had had his day, would never again know the stir and fearful joy of falling in love, but only just hanker after what was past and gone! Could anything be more reprehensible ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had not heard the evidence, they had not even read the depositions of the witnesses; they pronounced judgment on the credit of the unsworn and partial statement made by their own advocate. Such a proceeding, so subversive of right and equity, would have been highly reprehensible in any court or class of men; it deserved the severest reprobation in that house, the members of which professed themselves the champions of freedom, and were actually in arms against the sovereign, to preserve, as they maintained, the laws, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... distinction between coarseness and immorality. The young women who read "Tom Jones" with enthusiasm were not less moral than the women who now avoid it, they were only less refined. They did not think vice less reprehensible, but were more accustomed to the sight of it, and therefore less easily ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... its effect. According to Mr. Cradock, people were usually engaged either in practising the very worst, or in desiring to practise it, or in wishing and dreaming that they had practised it. It was the nature of mankind, and not in the least reprehensible, though curable. Thus Mr. Cradock. Mrs. Hilary had, against her own taste, absorbed part of his teaching, but nothing could ever persuade her that it was not reprehensible: it quite obviously was. Also disgusting. Mr. Cradock might say what he liked. It was disgusting. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... fight any Government which violated Luxemburg. Although this gross disregard by the Germans of their solemn pledge did not entail the same consequences as the subsequent violation of Belgian neutrality, it is equally reprehensible from the point of view of international law, and the more cowardly in proportion as this state is weaker than Belgium. Against this intrusion Luxemburg protested, but, unlike Belgium, she did ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... sense-organs, and the body. Brahman indeed is without parts and omnipresent; but through its adjuncts it becomes capable of division just as ether is divided by jars and the like. Nor must it be said that this leads to a reprehensible mutual dependence—Brahman in so far as divided entering into conjunction with its adjuncts, and again the division in Brahman being caused by its conjunction with its adjuncts; for these adjuncts and Brahman's connexion with them are due to action (karman), and the stream of action is without ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is, of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery considered as a fine art. Some cynics there are who will tell us that the only reason we are not all thieves is because we have ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... generation had come to the front; Scott's series of verse-romances was closed; Byron was in mid-career; there were young men of extraordinary and somewhat disquieting talent—Shelley, Keats, and Leigh Hunt—all of whom were supposed to be, although characters of a very reprehensible and even alarming class, yet distinctly respectful in their attitude towards Mr. Wordsworth. It seemed ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... excursion, during which, as already intimated, she had seen the character of her affianced in a new light—a light which showed him to be possessed of traits as abhorrent to her feelings, as, to her mind, they were base and reprehensible in themselves. And now, to crown all, he had, by an act of deliberate, private malice, even according to his own account, inflicted a mortal wound on the victim of his former injuries—the man who, but the day before, had snatched her, whom the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... condition. Regardless of the rights of individuals and communities alike, he sought in the early part of his reign to replenish his depleted purse by the most shameless measures, in order that he might surround himself with luxury and indulge his autocratic proclivities. Among his most reprehensible violations of constitutional rights, were his bartering of privileges and offices and the selling of troops. These things Hoelderlin attacks in one of his youthful poems ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... trivial for a man of his serious mien, he was guilty of an indiscretion deserving Vesta Philbrook's deepest scorn. He burned with his own shame as he dismounted to adjust the wire, like one caught in a reprehensible deed, and rode home feeling foolishly small. Kerr! ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... would have come IMMEJOUSLY," said Hannah, displaying a most reprehensible ignorance, "but me hands were all covered ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... upon by him at some length, but more in sorrow than in anger; and he did not omit to draw the especial attention of his visitors to the important fact that, even according to their own showing, there was no sufficient motive to induce Senor Alvaros to engage in such a very reprehensible undertaking. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... very little to do with this story, and yet it may be fully warranted by the occasion. And at least it is justifiable to say that the full of the moon may have made Joe Harris madder than usual and readier than ever to indulge in frolics of the most reprehensible character. What we began to indicate, especially, was that no portent loomed in the heavens above the doomed city or even above the house of Judge Owen, and that still an earthquake was muttering and rumbling under it, destined to tumble it ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... hast thou mentioned! And at nightfall, into the bargain!—Don't utter that name!" I was amazed; what significance could that name possess for such an inoffensive and innocent being, who would not have known how to devise, much less to execute, anything reprehensible?—This alarm, which revealed itself after a lapse of nearly half a century, induced in me reflections which were not ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the children's ward distributed them, and went back from the private rooms bearing tribute of flowers and fruit. Twenty-two himself developed a most reprehensible habit of concealing candy in the Sentinel office and smuggling it to his carriers. Altogether a new and neighbourly feeling seemed to follow in the wake of the little paper. People who had sulked in side-by-side rooms began, in the relaxed discipline of convalescence, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for the reason that nobody in the kitchen had ever before lived in a house the master of which being a parent of adult children took surreptitious lessons in dancing; the thing was unprecedented, and therefore of course intrinsically reprehensible. Mr. Prohack guessed the attitude of the kitchen, and had met Machin's respectful glance with ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the delusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my brothers and sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use a reprehensible word. One of her ditties began with ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... each of which a dozen to twenty couples go round and round, colliding, jostling and (righteously enough) eliminating the vagrant do-nothings who in aimless perambulation are for ever trenching upon the dancers' ground. For which reprehensible proceeding, mind, there is positively no excuse at the Mansion House, where the range of drawing-rooms and vestibule is ample enough to accommodate without difficulty the largest numbers that ever come together there. There is always the Long Parlor, too, to resort to, where, at about the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... of my readers has at some time taken a grasshopper into his hand, and, holding the tip of his finger against the insect's mouth, has promised the creature its freedom on condition that it disclosed its reprehensible habit of chewing tobacco. The grasshopper surely complied, and I trust the promiser was as good as his word. The grasshopper's head is so placed that, while it is at the front of its body, the mouth is directly on the under side of its head, while the eyes are at the top of the front of its face. ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... Sovereign." She wrote to Disraeli to tell him that in her opinion it was "VERY IMPORTANT that the book should be severely censured and discredited." "The tone in which he speaks of royalty," she added, "is unlike anything one sees in history even, and is most reprehensible." Her anger was directed with almost equal vehemence against Mr. Reeve for his having published "such an abominable book," and she charged Sir Arthur Helps to convey to him her deep displeasure. Mr. Reeve, however, was impenitent. When Sir Arthur told him ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... fidelity; I ask my patrons (I do not venture to call you my clients) to put the same confidence in me. You may think that in acting thus I am trying to fasten upon this affair—no, no, madame; there may be reprehensible things done; with an inheritance in view one is dragged on . . . especially with nine hundred thousand francs in the balance. Well, now, you could not disavow a man like Maitre Godeschal, honesty itself, but you can throw all the blame on the back of a miserable ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... against letting children read too much, or too entirely along one line. There is a habit of reading along lines which deaden, instead of stimulating, thought, and the habit, if carried to excess, becomes a mental dissipation which is utterly reprehensible; but the pathway to this habit is entered upon so innocently and unconsciously by the story-loving child that he (perhaps more often she) must be guided very tenderly and wisely past its dangers; the library which ignores ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... unequivocal indorsement of the gold standard which was pressed upon him by his counselors. Having accepted it, however, he proved to be a valiant champion, though his major interest was undoubtedly in the protective tariff. To him nothing was more reprehensible than attempts "to array class against class, 'the classes against the masses,' section against section, labor against capital, 'the poor against the rich,' or interest against interest." Such was the language of his acceptance ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... reprove others. Contempt is the lot of Christ's vicar because he seems to tolerate these actions. You, dear son, have charge of the bishopric of Valencia, the most important in Spain; you are a chancellor of the Church, and what renders your conduct all the more reprehensible is the fact that you have a seat among the cardinals, with the Pope, as advisors of the Holy See. We leave it to you whether it is becoming to your dignity to court young women, and to send those whom you love fruits and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... pavement is a most reprehensible habit. If it must be done, a man should step to the curb ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... prostration of spirits. She had never chosen the straight path if she could find a crooked or a by-road, and her project for obtaining Mrs. Sutton's services and company had been put into execution, without consultation with her husband. However reprehensible this might be in the abstract, it was not in the kind old soul to betray her, as she advanced, placidly and civilly, to reassure ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... reputation for dissipated tastes and habits, and by unpleasant experience he learned how difficult it is to get rid of a bad name. The son of a Hertfordshire baronet, he was still a law student when he formed a reprehensible connexion with an unmarried lady of that county—Miss (or, as she was called by the fashion of the day Mistress) Elizabeth Culling, of Hertingfordbury Park. But little is known of this woman. Her age is an affair of uncertainty, and all the minor circumstances of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... I hope never to look upon the dreadful man again. Tom felt that he and I must go to this Mike to ask him something of my little girl's history. He claims to have picked her up and, thinking her dead, left her for a few hours unnoticed in his sailboat. The man had done something reprehensible while in Florida, and was sailing for the Atlantic Ocean to flee from justice, so he did not stop to inquire about my child, or to give her more than a passing thought. His first wife was evidently a better woman than this second one. She worked with my ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... his familiarity in my family, but for the suggestions of another. If you read over—what I never dare open—the play of Othello, you will have some idea of what followed—I mean of my motives—my actions, thank God! were less reprehensible. There was another cadet ambitious of the vacant situation. He called my attention to what he led me to term coquetry between my wife and this young man. Sophia was virtuous, but proud of her virtue; and, irritated by my jealousy, she was so imprudent as to press and ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... are not primarily interested in negating ourselves. Only our estimate of the importance of the object justifies our intended loss. This object should accordingly be scrutinized. Self-sacrifice is noble if its end is noble, but become reprehensible when its object is petty or undeserving. Omit or overlook that word for, and self-sacrifice loses its exalted character. It sinks into asceticism, one often most degrading of moral aberrations. In ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... unprofitable there should be unprofitable, hurtful, and unhappy persons. What manner of god then is Jupiter,—I mean Chrysippus's Jupiter,—who punishes an act done neither willingly nor unprofitably? For vice is indeed, according to Chrysippus's discourse, wholly reprehensible; but Jupiter is to be blamed, whether he has made vice which is an unprofitable thing, or, having made it not ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... generous level, it quite comprehended the salient points of a Calcutta dinner party; and it was seldom that she failed, metaphorically speaking, to carry away a bone from the feast. If you found this reprehensible, she would have told you she had observed that they do it in Japan, where manners are the best in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and make use of that paper been squarely offered to him an hour ago, he would without doubt have decided that he ought not to keep it. Even now, looking at it as an abstract principle, he did not deceive himself in the least. But Nature has the reprehensible habit of not presenting these questions to us squarely and fairly, and it is remarkable that in most of our offending the abstract principle is never the direct issue. Mr. Harkutt was conscious of having been unwillingly led step by step into a difficult, not to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... white is not to be blamed in the villa for destroying its antiquity; neither is it reprehensible, as harmonizing ill with the surrounding landscape: on the contrary, it adds to its brilliancy, without taking away from its depth of tone. We shall consider it as an element of landscape, more particularly, when we ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... well that she was shifting upon him the responsibility of deciding. As a strict disciplinarian—in theory—it would never do for her to countenance such unlawful proceedings. He rose to the occasion promptly. "Soap and water for these highly reprehensible young folks, after that—the ice cream—seeing that the cherry pie came to a timely end. And ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... and it was not until the 29th that he actually established the Santiago Blockade. Sampson, his superior in command (though not his senior in the captains' list), later declared his conduct at this time "reprehensible"[1]—possibly too harsh a term, for the circumstances tried judgment and leadership in the extreme. Cervera found Santiago destitute of facilities for refitting. Yet the fact remains that he had 10 days in which to coal and get away. "We cannot," writes Admiral ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars and then came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... still greater anxiety on his mind from the reports he received of the conduct of one whom he had considered his friend, Mr Thomas Doughty. His conduct in appropriating the gifts made to him by the Portuguese prisoners was reprehensible, but it was now found that he was plotting a mutiny to kill the Admiral or to supersede him in the command, intending to carry off some of the squadron, and to ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... President. Jefferson sincerely wished to avoid what he termed the monarchical tendencies of his predecessors; and as an earnest of his intentions he abandoned not only levees but also the practice of addressing Congress in a speech, since Republicans held this custom a reprehensible imitation of the British speech from the throne. Yet with characteristic indirection, Jefferson assigned other reasons for substituting a written message for the usual personal address. "I have had principal regard," said he, "to the convenience of the Legislature, to the economy ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... most reprehensible, Mr. Ford," he said stiffly. "I trust I know my duty as the head of a great railway company too well to be carried away on every baseless wave of excitement that fires the imagination of the mining-camp I chance to be ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... colonists had not been so flagrant, and so well imbedded as indisputable records of our history; if the action of the military authorities had not been so arbitrary, the uprising of Attucks and his followers might be looked upon as a common, reprehensible riot and the participants as a band of misguided incendiaries. Subsequent reverence for the occasion, disproves any such view. Judge Dawes, a prominent jurist of the time, as well as a brilliant exponent of the people, alluding in 1775 ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... to be romantic was just one shade less reprehensible than to put on airs. Captain Alfred Price, in all his seventy years, had never been guilty of airs, but certainly he had something to answer for in the ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... man of her own country and a little titled fortune hunter from the land of macaroni. Bonetti wasn't to be a bad fellow at all. He was merely an Italian, which he couldn't help, being born so, and therefore, as she said, of an acquisitive nature. There is no villany in that, however—that is, no reprehensible villany. He was after a rich marriage because he was fond of a life of ease. She'd have found ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... solicited and obtained Abelard's absolution, i. 146; buried with Abelard, ib.; a fine lady, 147; Pope's reprehensible lines found ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Alderman had seen the expression upon Mrs. Durham's face, and had interpreted it correctly, for he added, 'Mrs. Durham, I am somewhat ashamed to say that in the grave of a faithful and most devoted creature I have here buried metaphorically, for good and all, as many of the reprehensible habits of my old life as I can cast at once, therefore, if I seem to you to be very different in the future, you may know there is a good reason for my being so. Could you conveniently take this infant ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... last-named colour is never to be admitted, unless as an outlaw, who is to be used by the Worthy Grand, and who is to be so educated that he will not dare to commit any daring act, without permission from the Worthy Grand; and it shall be highly reprehensible in any Brother to converse with any coloured Brother, upon any business pertaining to the Brotherhood; and all such shall lay themselves liable to a vote of censure—as the man of colour is not admitted for other purpose, than to carry out deeds ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... that universal preference on the part of mankind to get something from nothing, and to acquire the largest return for the least possible expenditure, but I question my right to say that Roscommon was much more reprehensible ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... duty. If Churchill, perceiving the frantic course of his master, had withdrawn from his service, and then either taken no part in the revolution which followed, or even appeared in arms against him, the most scrupulous moralist could have discovered nothing reprehensible in his conduct. History has in every age applauded the virtue, while it has commiserated the anguish, of the elder Brutus, who sacrificed his sons to the perhaps too rigorous laws of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... who was to have come at that time to Estoras. You need, therefore, be under no uneasiness, dear lady, either as regards the past or the future, for my friendship and esteem for you (tender as they are) can never become reprehensible, having always before my eyes respect for your elevated virtues, which not only I, but all who know you, must reverence. Do not let this deter you from consoling me sometimes by your agreeable letters, as they are so highly necessary to cheer me ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... has, within a few years, been produced in the feelings, if not in the opinions of the public in relation to slavery. It is now the most exciting topic of discussion. Nor is the excitement in society confined to discussion alone. Designs and plans, of the most reprehensible character, are boldly avowed and defended. What has produced this lamentable state of things? No doubt many circumstances have combined in its production. We think, however, that all impartial observers must ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... without result, for the King of Portugal, who was engaged at the time in war with Spain, died, without having been able to give any attention to maritime discoveries. His successor, John II., adopted the plans of Columbus and Toscanelli with enthusiasm. At the same time, with most reprehensible cunning, he tried to deprive these two savants of the benefit of their proposition; without telling them, he sent out a caravel to attempt this great enterprise, and to reach China by crossing the Atlantic. But he had not reckoned upon the inexperience of his pilots, nor ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Lord Fitzwilliam had been reprehensible from the beginning. The suggestion of the Lord-Lieutenancy had scarcely taken a definite shape, when he opened a communication, as appeared afterwards, with the heads of the Irish party, and announced the system on which he intended to govern the country. In any case, such a proceeding would ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... down in her rocking-chair in despair for full five minutes after she had watched the reprehensible girl go down the street. She had not been so completely beaten since the day when her own Bessie left the house and went away to a wild West to die in her own time and way. The grandmother shed a few tears. This girl was like her own ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... present volume to show the guilty folly of such un-American, un-republican, wholly unjustifiable, reprehensible and altogether ridiculous King-worship, not by argument, or a more or less fanciful story, but by the unbiased testimony of ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... his prayer, in which he declared that he did not fear torture or death, but asked life only for the sake of those who loved him. Thus the physical ordeal was the fulfillment of a vow, and a sort of atonement for what might otherwise appear to be reprehensible weakness in the face of death. It was in the nature of confession and thank-offering to the "Great Mystery," through the physical parent, the Sun, and did not embrace a ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the gospel. "To impute crimes to Christianity," says the celebrated King of Prussia, "is the act of a novice." His word may fairly be taken for such an assertion. And yet these unbelievers have been so vile and perverse as to decry a system which they acknowledge to be useful. How ungrateful! How reprehensible! Collect now the thoughts scattered under this branch of the subject, and be honest—heartily believe, and openly acknowledge, that God was the author of the Bible. What but a superhuman, a truly divine influence breathing in the Scriptures, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... it was a really reprehensible way. The worst that could be said of it was that it brought her into contacts and promiscuities from which she should have been kept free. Even so no great harm had been done, especially in the case ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... Caliphs, with all their esoteric unbelief, were, at least in their earlier history, tolerant of all the differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick, on the other hand, crowned his system of government by a religious inquisition, which will seem the more reprehensible when we remember that in the persons of the heretics he was persecuting the representatives of a free municipal life. Lastly, the internal police, and the kernel of the army for foreign service, was composed of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... modest and so self-contained, was conscious of a reprehensible feeling of exultation, and, by a singular association of ideas, she found herself constrained to remember what Uncle Dan had said to her the other evening. She glanced at him, chatting, in pleasant good-fellowship, with the Signora, and she was glad ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... would throw our respective establishments into singular confusion, and might betray ourselves into sundry false positions, and very awkward predicaments. However, the comparative extinction of natural affection would form the most prominently reprehensible feature in the case; and I cannot but think that the boasted cosmopolitanism of some good people would wear an aspect not very dissimilar, if rightly and soberly viewed. Certainly I could no more tear the love of country from my heart, than I could the love of kindred; and when my ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... However reprehensible, and indeed contemptible, terrestrial reptiles may be, the only question which appears to me to be relevant to my argument is whether these creatures are or are not comprised under the denomination of "everything that ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with Germany's possession of Schleswig-Holstein, with Austria in Herzegovina and Bosnia, France in Algiers, Italy in Tripoli: they are all instances of claim-jumping, reprehensible in ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... or to deny their existence wherever they are actually to be found. There are criminal corporations just as there are criminal doctors, and lawyers, and clergymen. Wherever men are gathered together there you will find a certain number who are disposed to seek their personal advantage in reprehensible ways, but because some doctors and some lawyers and some clergymen are criminals we do not attach an imputation to their respective professions. We are content to say that there are black sheep in every ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... more primitive instincts which they seek to repress. An artist may, for example, through a vivid portrayal, so excite the animal lust and cruelty which lurk hidden in all of us as to make the most morally reprehensible objects acceptable. Nature has taken many a revenge on civilization through art. Although no one should demand that these appeals be entirely excluded, yet when they operate alone, without the sublimation of insight, they are flagrantly ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... possession I looked upon as an oversight and excused it on the ground of inexperience in military matters. He should, however, have destroyed them. This last surrender demonstrated to my mind that Rosecrans' judgment of Murphy's conduct at Iuka was correct. The surrender of Holly Springs was most reprehensible and showed either the disloyalty of Colonel Murphy to the cause which he professed to serve, or ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... life away from Edo was to be avoided." Shu[u]zen took her up harshly—"Bound to the Uedaya for a term of years then you would cheat your master out of the money he expended on you. This is theft, and most reprehensible. For such it is hard to find excuse." His roughness puzzled and frightened even the experience of Kogiku. She became confused. Shu[u]zen was satisfied with the impression. He was unwilling further ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... hours devoted by others to slumber. Abbott Ashton, for instance, had fallen into the reprehensible habit of bolting from the boarding-house, after the last paper had been graded, no matter how late the night, and making his way rapidly from town as if to bathe his soul in country solitude. Like all reprehensible habits ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis |
