"Repugnant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant—(we had three banyan to four meat days in the week)—was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and carried them out. True to himself in the smallest things, he could never in his life be content with the companionship of one book. To cut off the possibility of choice and change in anything whatever was repugnant to him. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who would allow nothing to turn him from his purpose once he was convinced that he was right; a man, too, to whom anything in the way of underhand intrigue, or backstairs negotiations, would be temperamentally repugnant. The chivalrous foeman had become the most loyal ally, and an ally of whom the entire British Empire should be proud. There was nothing tortuous about the farmer turned soldier, and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... exist unendingly side by side with Him and unendingly resist Him; that Hell and Heaven, Satan and God shall co-exist for all eternity. This is almost unthinkable to thoughtful men. It is a Dualism repugnant to all our ideals of God. And this golden thread, running through the Old and New Testaments alike, confirms this thought, in its dim vision of a golden age somewhere away in the far future—away it would seem beyond the dark vision of Hell—when evil shall ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... in her dishevelment. Repugnant as the task was she disarmed the two men and flung their ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... commerce, and make a few other inroads on freedom; but he set a nation in flames. The Cabinets of 1807 and 1812 warred against commerce itself, and placed an interdict on every harbor; and which of the measures of the British statesman was more arbitrary in its character, more repugnant to the spirit of freemen, or more questionable as to its legality, than the Enforcing Act of 1808? And if the men of New England, who had in their colonial weakness met both France and England by sea and land ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... to ask what I know of Oliver Haddo, since by chance I met the other night at dinner at Queen Anne's Gate a man who had much to tell me of him. I am curious to know why he excites your interest, for I am sure his peculiarities make him repugnant to a person of your robust common sense. I can with difficulty imagine two men less capable of getting on together. Though I have not seen Haddo now for years, I can tell you, in one way and another, a good deal about him. He erred when he described me as his intimate ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... the idea as presented by the professor filled him with disgust. His father going into the show business! He had pictured show life in his illusions as one long, summer day's dream, but now it seemed the meanest of careers. The idea of his father associating himself with such a calling was repugnant in the extreme. Alfred could scarcely restrain his thoughts from taking ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... limited to the narrow bounds of an island; there are other countries where their measures, and, above all, their conduct to the Catholics, must render them pre-eminently popular. If they are beloved here, in France they must be adored. There is no measure more repugnant to the designs and feelings of Bonaparte than Catholic emancipation; no line of conduct more propitious to his projects than that which has been pursued, is pursuing, and, I fear, will be pursued towards Ireland. What is England ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... or the Hindu Puranas and Epics, chiefly in their moderation. They may be classified under several heads. Many of them are mere embroidery or embellishment due to poetical exuberance, esteemed appropriate in those generous climates though repugnant to our chilly tastes. In every country poetry is allowed to overstep the prosaic borders of fact without criticism. When an English poet ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... displayed upon the defects of this incomparable statue. Some have abused the hero for being shirtless, and said it was an abomination to think that a statue in a state of nudity (much larger than life, too!) should be stuck up in Hyde Park, where every lady's eye must glance, however repugnant it might be to their ideas of modesty. But did not the ladies themselves order and pay for the said statue? Is it not an emblem of their own pure taste? Then, as for putting on Achilles a kelt or short petticoat (called by the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... dresses." How filthy! Yet be not too hard upon him, reader, for this observation; I have travelled in his neighbourhood, on the Mississippi steamers, and I can, therefore, well understand how the novelty of the operation must have struck him with astonishment, and how repugnant the practice must have been ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... in the matter of the national budget. To minds charged with the primary necessity of advance planning, cooerdination, provision of synchronizing parts in organization, the whole notion of our hit-or-miss system is repugnant. A budget system is not the remedy for all administrative ills, but it provides a basis of organization that at least does not paralyze administrative efficiency as our system does today. Through it, the cooerdination of expenditure in government ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... acquired inhibition, plunging viciously after the object wished; all the more fantastically savage because of previous repression. The sole ultimate factor in human decisions is physical force. This we must learn, however repugnant the idea may seem, if we are to protect ourselves and our institutions. Reliance on anything else is fallacious and ruinous. Dangerous beyond description are the voices sometimes heard today, decrying the continuance of armament after the close of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... characteristic designation and appropriate position.' Such a procedure appeared to Goethe as a kind of mosaic, in which one ready-made piece is set next to another in order to produce out of a thousand details the semblance of a picture; and this was 'in a certain way repugnant' to him. What Goethe awoke to when he met Linnaeus's attempt at systematizing the plant kingdom was the old problem of whether the study of nature should proceed from the parts to the whole or from the whole ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... anxious face, and whispered that it was only fear of the police that had so suddenly quieted the men, and besought him not to withdraw till they were ready to leave the establishment. Chester turned back; both the place and company were repugnant to him, but it was his duty to remain, and he sat down regarding the two men as they drank at the counter, boisterously knocking their glasses together ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the senses is sinful, and that man never appears so acceptable in the sight of the Deity, as when he rejects all the delicacies of the palate, as well as other sensual gratifications, and imposes on himself that food to which he feels naturally most repugnant. You may see that those peaches, which were so disdainfully thrown into the yard, are often secretly picked up by the children, who obey the impulses of nature, and devour them most greedily. Even ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... of thinkers whom this antithesis does not satisfy grows daily. Although the pessimism which claims authorisation from Darwin's doctrines is repugnant to them, they still are unable to accept the dualism which leaves a gulf between man and nature. And their endeavour is to link the two by showing that while Darwin's laws obtain in both kingdoms, the conditions of their ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... water-color painter. I had learned water-color with two masters, but had never liked it or felt the slightest impulse to continue it. One man is naturally constituted for one process, another for another. There is something in my idiosyncrasy repugnant to the practice of water-color and favorable to oil, and this in spite of the greater convenience of water-color, and the facility with which it may be left off and instantaneously resumed. In after-life I learned water-color a third ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... now. The old woman had been away several days when I arose with the firm purpose of abandoning the hut with the bird and going out into the so-called world. My mind was narrow and limited; I wanted again to remain there, and yet the thought was repugnant to me. A strange conflict took place in my soul—it was as if two contentious spirits were struggling within me. One moment the quiet solitude would seem so beautiful to me, and then again I would be charmed by the vision of a new ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was neuerthelesse verie free and liberall in gifts: which contrarie extremities so ill matched, though in him (the time wherein he liued being considered) they might seeme somewhat tollerable; yet simplie & in truth they were vtterlie repugnant to the law of the spirit, which biddeth that none should doo euill that good may come thereof. Against which precept because Adelstane could not but offend in the heat of his couetousnes, which is termed the root of all mischiefe, though he was exceeding bountifull and ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... Descartes, whose divisions and definitions so profoundly affected the course of thought in these matters after the sixteenth century. Holding also "that a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely no body is repugnant to reason," and that an indivisible space-filling particle is self-contradictory, he was led to identify space and matter; that is, to make matter as indispensable to space as space to matter. There is, then, but one kind of corporeal being, whose attribute is extension, and whose modes are ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and the Hour, which made it rather hot for him, the latter in particular pitching into his views and assuring its readers that the book was 'dangerous,' and its author a believer in—various thing especially repugnant ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... of the Johnston invasion. Mr. Hakes gave additional details. On September 11, 1857, occurred the Mountain Meadows massacre in the southwest corner of Utah. This outrage, by a band of outlaws, emphatically discountenanced by the Church authorities and repugnant to Church doctrines, which denounce useless shedding of blood, was promptly charged, on the Pacific and, indeed, all over the Union, as something for which the Mormon organization itself was responsible. So it happened that, in December, 1857, J. Riley Morse, of the colony, rode southward ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... up of all claims to Katie was in itself so far from being repugnant to Ashby, that, as the reader knows, he had already virtually renounced her, and formally, too, by word of mouth to Dolores. But to do this to Lopez was a far different thing. It would, he felt, be base; it would be cowardly; it would be a vile piece of truckling to an enemy, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... eldest daughters treated him far worse than any sovereign of the Hanoverian line was ever used by a son. They were most respectable women, and their deficiency in piety has worked well for the world; but it must ever be repugnant to humanity to regard the conduct of Mary and Anne with respect. No wonder that people called Mary the modern Tullia. Mary II. died young, and childless; and Queen Anne, though a most prolific wife, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the conscript officers for months, and sometimes for years. It was not for want of courage, for they had that in abundance, but born and reared in an atmosphere of personal independence, they felt as free as the mountains they inhabited, and they scorned a law that forced them to do that which was repugnant to their ideas of personal liberty. Living in the dark recesses of the mountains, far from the changing sentiments of their more enlightened neighbors of the lowland, they drank in, as by inspiration with their mother's milk, a loyalty ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... their failings as well as their virtues so fairly told, that it is plain they have not been packed. Thus it is by him we are taught that Cranmer moved the King to the execution of Joan of Kent, though Cranmer's general disposition would seem repugnant to such an office, and though no mention is made in Edward's Journal of any such interference, or, indeed, of any reluctance on his own part which should render it needful: thus of Latimer, he does not conceal that he probably subscribed on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... crown lawyers gave an opinion that the colony's disregard of the Navigation Acts invalidated their charter. Randolph was appointed customs collector in New England, and it was determined to replace the laws of Massachusetts by such as were not "repugnant to the laws of England." And the view was expressed that the settlement should be made a royal colony. Manifestly, the precious liberties of the Puritans ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... yielded to the temptation without the slightest appearance of a struggle, did somewhat surprise her, as indeed, from their knowledge of his character, it did Mr and Mrs Gaskoin. Not that they would have expected him to adhere to the contract, if doing so proved repugnant either to himself or the young lady; but under all the circumstances of the case, they would have thought his conduct less open to exception, if he had deferred entering into any other engagement till he had seen Miss Seymour. It was true, that he had not yet offered his hand to his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... religion. It was a revival of the ancient mysticism of Hugo de St. Victoire, of Honorius, and of Rupert in another and a scientific age; nor was it unopposed: in the place of the foreign scholasticism formerly so repugnant to its doctrines, those of Schelling were opposed by a reaction of the superficial mock-enlightenment and sophistical scepticism predominant in the foregoing century, more particularly of the sympathy with France, which had been rendered ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and at school. I attempted mathematics, and even went during the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth, but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra. This impatience was very foolish, and in after years I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... you please in future that my slumber tonic is served just on the boil. The worthy Joanna does not understand the mysteries of the boiling process. Water, after it has passed the initiatory stage becomes flat, absolutely flat and tasteless. What I had to drink last night was so repugnant to my palate that I found it impossible to sink into repose with that calm attitude of mind which is so essential ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... permission to send a flag off, being impressed with the opinion that there must exist some latent cause of a peculiar nature to induce a commander who had heretofore distinguished himself for a scrupulous regard to the claims of honorable warfare,—to induce him to commit an act so repugnant to sound policy, so abhorrent to his nature, so flagrant an outrage on humanity. The General, we understand, would not sanction, nor did he absolutely prohibit, a flag being sent. They, therefore, on their own responsibility, sent on board the Ramilies, Isaac ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull
... Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs then spoke for Lord Salisbury's Government, treated the matter coolly enough, though admitting that the agents of the Congo State had sometimes adopted methods repugnant to Christian feeling; and so for the moment the controversy ended, but Sir Charles with persistent application returned to the question again and again, although his efforts were hampered by lack of information. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the light of nature have seen and determined that it is a thing most repugnant to nature, that Women rule and govern ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... Colonies had in the meantime established in the seaboard towns of America, usages and customs which were repugnant to British notions of regular and orderly government. The commercial life had taken a form of ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... keen sense of realities, he knew that it did not suffice merely to produce a work in order to have it become known and sell; and, while it was repugnant to him to solicit an article from a fellow craftsman, he excelled in the art of exciting curiosity, and acquiring partisans and women admirers who, upon the publication of each new volume, would loudly proclaim it as a masterpiece. ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the towns were little republics, with the Bible for their foundation, and their schools were established for general instruction in that book. The exclusion of the Bible from those early schools would have been repugnant to their founders. They regarded the Bible not merely as an authoritative book in all matters of conscience, but as the charter of their liberty and their guide to the independent ownership ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... to be thought of. I intended to put him to death first and foremost. It would have been easy to have imitated the old seigneurs of the feudal age, and ordered my retainers to assassinate him; but that was repugnant to my whole character. It should never be said that a Mohun had shrunk before his foe; that one of my family had delegated to another the punishment of his enemy. I would fight Mortimer—meet him in fair and open combat—if ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... been exhibited in the colonies of New-England, went to show the malignant pleasure the Evil Spirits found, in indulging their wicked mockeries, or in otherwise tormenting those who placed their support on a faith, that was believed to be so repugnant to their own ungrateful and abandoned natures. Under the impressions, naturally excited by the communication he had held with the traveller in the mountains, Eben Dudley found his mind equally divided between ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... nagara, when added to the root of a verb, forms a gerund in Do if it is followed by a verb indicating a repugnant or contrary action; e.g., toganin Deus iori bacutai no go von, o uqetatematuri nagara; caietta somuqi tatematuru [... go von vo uqe ...][140] 'sinners receiving, or even if sinners receive, benefits from ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... known but a few months and loved not at all the grim, gray-haired man she had called husband, the sense of wretched bereavement, the nearness of death, was strong on her. He had been kind to her in his way, and the inevitable closeness of their relationship, repugnant as it had been to her, made its claims felt. An hour ago he had been standing here, the strong and virile ruler over thousands. Now he lay stiff and cold, all his power shorn from him without a second's warning. He had kissed her good-by, solicitous ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... suitable craft in which to make the trip along the coast to the north end of the island. When it actually came to the point I must confess that the idea of seizing and carrying off the property of somebody else was extremely repugnant to me. Still, I could see no other course open without exposing the party to imminent danger of betrayal, and I had resolved in my own mind that, since necessity seemed to point to the deprivation of some unfortunate individual of his property, the deprivation should be only temporary; ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... humming with vicious gossip, all alive with quips from the worldly wise. At the very outset of her employment, the sixteen-year-old girl learned that she might eke out the six dollars weekly by trading on her personal attractiveness to those of the opposite sex. The idea was repugnant to her; not only from the maidenly instinct of purity, but also from the moral principles woven into her character by the teachings of a father wise in most things, though a fool in finance. Thus, she remained unsmirched, though well informed as to the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... said Mr. Milburgh complacently. "I should be telling an untruth if I said I had not. Nothing is more repugnant to me than to ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... the bell brought in a tea-tray, and Justine, having despatched the telegrams, seated herself and began to pour out her tea. Food had been repugnant to her during the first anguished unsettled days, but with the resumption of the nurse's systematic habits the nurse's punctual appetite returned. Every drop of energy must be husbanded now, and only sleep and nourishment could fill the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... thing, I had gone on the streets as little as possible, though I should naturally have done that, for the behaviour of the French on this bank holiday of theirs is repugnant in the extreme to the sane English point of view—I mean their frivolous public dancing and marked conversational levity. Indeed, in their soberest moments, they have too little of British weight. Their best-dressed men are apparently turned out not by menservants but by modistes. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... mortal placed under the circumstances in which I now found myself would have gone at once to the Captain, confessed his fears, and put the matter into his hands. To me, however, constituted as I am, the idea was most repugnant. The thought of becoming the observed of all observers, cross-questioned by a stranger, and confronted with two desperate conspirators in the character of a denouncer, was hateful to me. Might it not by some remote ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a positive science."[2] These vast abstract constructions inspire with an invincible a priori mistrust, not the general public only, but superior minds as well. Fustel de Coulanges, as his latest biographer tells us, was severe on the Philosophy of History; these systems were as repugnant to him as metaphysics to the positivists. Rightly or wrongly (without doubt wrongly), the Philosophy of History, not having been cultivated exclusively by well-informed, cautious men of vigorous and sound judgment, has fallen into disrepute. The reader will be reassured—or disappointed, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... observation Gypsies are frequently presented, the author was excited to an examination of history, for the developement of a case involved in so much obscurity; and aggravated by circumstances so repugnant to the mild and genial influences of ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... by every method to invalidate, the doctrine and authority of the christian religion; no interpretations of the histories of miracles ought to be look'd upon as out of season, provided they appear neither improbable, nor repugnant to the nature of the ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... unchangeable, and yet to alter it to please the fancy of man, is in itself ridiculous. It is hardly possible in the nature of man, that a class of society should be receiving pay for their services and not be influenced thereby:—in the nature of things they will avoid such doctrines as are repugnant to them that give ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... it, the more repugnant became the thought of taking human life needlessly; and thus it happened that while he was trying to decide just what to do, they had come to a little clearing, at the far side of which lay a palisaded ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... repugnant or foreign to the free Slav barbarian than the penal code which was modeled by Yaroslaf upon the one at Byzantium. Corporal punishment was unknown to the Slav, and was abhorrent to his instincts. This seems a strange statement to ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... honest youth, and the idea of meanness and duplicity were most repugnant to his feelings in general; and yet he listened eagerly to this proposition, for oppression had utterly changed his nature. The career of dissipation and pleasure proposed so adroitly by Daumon dazzled his imagination and his eyes began ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... is clearly unjust to woman in according her but four to eight dollars per month for labor equally repugnant with, and more protracted than that of men of equal intelligence and relative efficiency, whose services command from ten to twenty dollars per month. If, then, the friends of Woman's Rights could set ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... general court; and besides electing freemen, and the necessary officers of the company, were empowered to make ordinances for the good of the community, and the government of the plantation and its inhabitants; provided they should not be repugnant to the laws of England. Their lands were to be holden in free and common soccage; and the same temporary exemption from taxes, and from duties on exports and imports, which had been granted to the colony of Virginia, was accorded to them. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just three ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... time,—harder than people dreamed. They thought her long service and support of her invalid father were made easy by a love of duty and by exceptional ability. Enfield knew that, though she had rare tact and succeeded admirably, all sordid care and labor were extremely repugnant to her. She had said she never had anything she liked; he would have expressed it, that she never liked anything she had. He thought that a very melancholy case. That she liked the society of spirited young men, he had learned to his sorrow more ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... them; for it is vngodly for man to be remisse and fauourable vnto those whom diuine piety, and our duety to God will not suffer vnpunished. For what folly were it to forsake the Creator and Giuer of life, and to follow the author of death? this dishonest fact, vnbeseeming, and vtterly repugnant to the credite and reputation of a Iudge, be farre from him. Let none countenance that which the Lawes doe condemne, for all are by the Regall Edicts to bee punished with death, who intermeddle with ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... direction of sheer bawdry and abomination. It is curious to see the oblique effect which general degradation has upon the vocabulary of these people; quiet words, or words that express a plain meaning, are repugnant to them; even the old-fashioned full-mouthed oaths of our fathers are tame to their fancy, for they must have something strongly spiced, and thus they have by degrees fitted themselves up with a loathly dialect of their own which transcends the comparatively harmless ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... with his cowardice, and shame, and guilt, was so detestable, that they turned away from him, as if he were some obscene and filthy animal, repugnant to the sight. And here that last black crime was busy with him too; working within him to his perdition. But for that, the old clerk's story might have touched him, though never so lightly; but for that, the sudden removal of so great a load might have brought ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... outwardly calm, more sure of his meaning. His voice is never boisterous; he expresses the most powerful thoughts with moderation. There is no gesticulation; exclamations, the abandonment of impulse, all that is irreconcilable with decorum is repugnant to his tact, his reserve, his dignity. He seems to be always addressing a select circle of people with acute minds, and in such a way as to render them at every moment conscious of their acuteness. No flattery could be more delicate; we feel grateful to him ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... if it were the channel of inspired thought, and were somehow sacred. The most preposterous inventions of its activity have been regarded in their time as the greatest feats of the human mind, and in its receptive form it has been nursed into an imbecility to which the truth is repugnant, and the fact that the beautiful resides nowhere else is inconceivable. It has been flattered out of all sufferance in its toyings with the mere elements of character, and its attempts to present these in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... process of pleasurable instruction, we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made so, there is a probability that it will not cease when schooldays end. As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it when free from the coercion of parents and masters. And when the acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then there will be as prevailing a tendency to continue, without superintendence, that ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... question of means is always a very grave one. It is a snare in which souls of average virtue often become entangled. But I know your scrupulous conscience. Deliberate carefully over each step you think of taking, and if it contains nothing repugnant to you, go on boldly. Pure natures have the marvelous gift of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... have said before, my landlady was away. I consequently went to the door myself, where I was met by an unexpected visitor in the shape of the idiot boy, Colwell. Somewhat disconcerted at the sight of a face so repugnant to me, I was still more thrown off my balance when I heard his errand. He had been sent, he said, by a man who had been thrown from his wagon on the north road, and was now lying in a dying condition inside the old mill, before which he was picked up. Would I come and see him? He had but an hour ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... road; and her resistance only served to inflame him the more. It seemed, afterwards, as she sat unnerved, a miracle that she had stopped him. Then came reproaches: she would not trust him; they could not be married at once; she must understand that!—an argument so repugnant as to cause her to shake with sobs of inarticulate anger. After this he would grow bewildered, then repentant, then contrite. In contrition—had he known ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it was the first time. And it would be the last. There had not been many ways of seeing Steven, but this way had always been open to her if she had cared to take it. But it had been of all ways the most repugnant to her, and she had never taken it till now when ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... American army. Burgoyne's employment of the Indians now produced the worst possible effects. Though he laboured hard to check the atrocities which they were accustomed to commit, he could not prevent the occurrence of many barbarous outrages, repugnant both to the feelings of humanity and to the laws of civilized warfare. The American commanders took care that the reports of these excesses should be circulated far and wide, well knowing that they would make the stern New Englanders not droop, but rage. Such was their effect; ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... to this cruel act of self-denial, when I wished the earth to open and swallow me, you owe your birth; and I the unutterable pleasure of being a mother. There was something of delicacy in my husband's bridal attentions; but now his tainted breath, pimpled face, and blood-shot eyes, were not more repugnant to my senses, than his gross manners, and loveless ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... merchant, and was to be married in the course of a year. Some of M. Emanuel's relations and connections would, indeed, it seems, have liked him to marry her, with a view to securing her fortune in the family; but to himself the scheme was repugnant, and the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... have, on account of that notoriety, submitted this translation to the Publick, under that title, rather than what I hold to be the true one, viz. Horace's Epistle to The Pisos. The Author of the English Commentary has adopted the same title, though directly repugnant to his own system; and, I suppose, for the ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... to advance even a trifle like three thousand without something in the way of security—merely as a matter of form, as you have put it. We might have asked him to sign a bill or bond; but that method would have been repugnant to you, Lancaster, as it was to me. As we have arranged it, Alan can start for the Arctic without feeling a ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the deity. In some cases the person who was supposed to be the occasion or source of misfortune was offered up. In general, human sacrifice followed the lines of all other sacrifices and disappeared when it became repugnant to humane and ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... struck her then as sad—must have been their farewell, the finis to the love-chapter of their youth. Bessie averted her mind from the idea that Miss Julia Gardiner had consented to marry a rich, middle-aged gentleman who was a widower: she did not like it, it was utterly repugnant, she hated to think of it. Oh, that people would marry the right people, and not care so much for rank and money! Lady Angleby's loveliest sister had forty years ago aggrieved her whole family by marrying the poor squire of Carisfort; and Lady Angleby had said ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... It was repugnant to his imagination, shocking to his ideas of honesty, shocking to his conception of mankind. This enormity affected one's outlook on what was possible in this world: it was as if for instance the sun had turned blue, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on which they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested: that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... in Europe, but they have nothing corresponding to the American corporation lawyer. The ablest American lawyers have been retained by the special interests. In some cases they have been retained to perform tasks which must have been repugnant to honest men; but that is not the most serious aspect of the situation. The retainer which the American legal profession has accepted from the corporations inevitably increases its natural tendency to a blind conservatism; and its influence has been used not for the purpose of extricating the large ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the other hand, a still more rapid multiplication of the proletariat, the destruction of all property-holding and of all security of employment for the working-class, demoralisation, political excitement, and all those facts so highly repugnant to Englishmen in comfortable circumstances, which we shall have to consider in the following pages. Having already seen what a transformation in the social condition of the lower classes a single such clumsy machine as the jenny had ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... tolerate or give a favourable interpretation to Burns's constitutional foibles—even his best virtues are not good enough for him. He is repelled and driven back into himself, not less by the worth than by the faults of others. His taste is as exclusive and repugnant as his genius. It is because so few things give him pleasure, that he gives pleasure to so few people. It is not every one who can perceive the sublimity of a daisy, or the pathos to be extracted from ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... murderer was exposed to nothing but excommunication and ecclesiastical censures; and the crime was atoned for by penances and submission [z]. Hence the assassins of Thomas a Becket himself, though guilty of the most atrocious wickedness, and the most repugnant to the sentiments of that age, lived securely in their own houses, without being called to account by Henry himself, who was so much concerned, both in honour and interest, to punish that crime, and who professed, or affected on all occasions, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... have authority to make such by-laws regulating the use and management of the public ways within their respective limits, not repugnant to law, as they shall judge to be most conducive to their welfare.[64] They may make such by-laws to secure, among other things, the removal of snow and ice from sidewalks by the owners of adjoining estates; to prevent the pasturing of cattle ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... have inevitably fallen into low company. But he had promised his mother to shun it. He saw its result in his father's conduct, and as he read, and his mind matured, the narrow coarseness of such company became repugnant. From time to time he was sorely tempted to leave the home which his father made hateful in many respects, and try his fortunes among strangers who would not associate him with a sot; but his love for his mother kept him at her side, for he saw that her life was bound up in him, and that he alone ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... All the bishops, except three, voted against it. Besides the influence of the court over them, the church of England, they imagined or pretended, was in greater danger from the prevalence of Presbyterianism than of Popery, which, though favored by the duke, and even by the king was extremely repugnant to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... holy pontiff himself, and all the terrors of the Church were at thy command, thou shouldst not escape my vengeance, thou daring priest! To the Furca!—his offence is repugnant to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... I did not reprove you with so much as a fault. I know well that it is next to impossible to be in the frequent presence of an individual without experiencing at some time some emotion. He becomes continually repugnant, or else exceedingly fascinating. The sentiments of the heart never ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... said he was long unheard of; but he had not the tragedy of many authors, who were heard of long before they were heard. When you had read any Shaw you read all Shaw. When you had seen one of his plays you waited for more. And when he brought them out in volume form, you did what is repugnant to any literary man—you ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... assaulted by a fellow upwards of six feet high, whom the writer has no doubt she could have beaten had she thought proper to go at him. Such is the deliberate advice of the author to his countrymen and women—advice in which he believes there is nothing unscriptural or repugnant ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... occupation is necessary to mental and physical health. As it is, most people get too much of one kind of work. All the week they are chained to a task, a repugnant task because the dose is too big. They have to do this particular job or starve. This is slavery, quite as much as when man was bought and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... which Christians in this country are divided into Church-people and Dissenters, only add to the confusion. For to suppose, as these names suggest, that Dissenters do not belong in any sense to the Church of Christ, is an idea which is repugnant to the minds of all who know anything of their work. But though the difficulty of the question is so great, it is hoped that the previous chapters will have prepared the reader to see his way to the answer, which Holy Scripture enables us ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... acceptable. But in the estimation of the world—before men—they were pleasing, even regarded highly worthy. Men thought thereby to render themselves well-pleasing in God's sight. But the spiritual sacrifice is, in man's estimation, the most repugnant and unacceptable of all things. It condemns, mortifies and opposes whatever, in man's judgment, is good and well-pleasing. For, as before stated, nature cannot do otherwise than to live according to the flesh, particularly to follow its own works and inventions. It cannot admit that ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... demand for information. But he asked nothing. He made no allusion to the night before. To Vere his manner was almost cold. When they were getting into the boat at Santa Lucia she said, with none of her usual simplicity and self-possession, but like one making an effort which was repugnant: ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... glebe of earth in civilized Europe shall produce sufficient nourishment for a man. This idea of seeing every little patch of earth dug up by human hands strikes the imagination of every natural man as something appallingly uncanny; it is especially repugnant to the German spirit. When that comes to pass it will be high time for the day of judgment to dawn. Emmanuel Geibel, in his poem Mythus, has symbolized this natural aversion to the extreme measures of a civilization which would absorb every form of wild nature. He creates a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... regained her former strength. When she rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that she was unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to face the awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. She was especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all her friends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consulted specialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... observed that nearly all of them possess brachycephalic skulls, indicating the influence upon them of Mongolian invasions thousands of years ago and supplying, perhaps, a very substantial argument that, if we find the faintly Mongoloid type of emigrant repugnant to us, we can never expect to assimilate ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... a government, exhibits the picture of a giant held in bondage by a pigmy. I have always remarked, too, that they who are best qualified to sit in this neighbourhood-tribunal, generally keep most aloof from it, as repugnant to their tastes and habits, thus leaving its decisions to the portion of the community least qualified to make such as are either ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... herself has been censured by some as repugnant to nature. Possibly they may think it somewhat strained and theatrical, but it is not so: the woman is but true to herself, in this matter, and to the solid and self-poised repose in which her being dwells. So that the thing does not seem repugnant ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... year 1828, soon after his arrival in Nuremberg, Kaspar Hauser was to look out at the window in the Vestner Tower, from which there was a view of a broad and many-colored summer landscape. Kaspar Hauser turned away; the sight was repugnant to him. At a later period, long after he had learned to speak, he gave, when questioned, the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... this unexpected visit of Phillip's, and the feeling that grew between us as I nursed him well and strong again, that brought it about that I told Kenneth Moore, who had become so repugnant to me that I could not bear to see him or hear him speak, that I wanted to be released from the promise he had wrung from me that ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... imputation decided Frank to undertake the errand, which, after all, notwithstanding the danger attending it, was less repugnant to his feelings than more direct ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge |
