"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appalling secret of the supernatural visitation which had thus harassed my three fellow-travellers had been confided to me under the impression that I might be likely to find a solution of the mystery, I have ever since ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the North German Gazette said that the Alsace elections had strengthened the war party in France. War seems to have been the general anticipation of military men. General Wolseley (February 26) is reported to have said: "I feel sure that a vast, appalling war is certainly in the near future; but this, indeed, everybody may ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... the sand, and waited. I knew by the masklike expression of his face, the pallor, and the steadiness of the eyes, that he anticipated something that might be very terrible—appalling. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... that he was speaking with one who had never been able to come into contact with another soul. 'We live apart from each other, all of us, Mr. Armstrong,' she said. 'It is only the artist, only the thinker and dreamer, who cares to grieve over it all; but there is something appalling in the thought that no one soul really touches another. You shake your head,' she said. 'Forgive me, but you are young, and you are not ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... was left unanswered by herself of whom she asked it. All too soon, moreover, it was joined by another question of similar import, but far more appalling. Indeed, where did the boy, where does any boy, pick up the tricks and manners and the phraseology of certain of his forbears who quitted the world before he fairly entered it? In Scott's case, the example ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... helplessness, as he had enjoyed it in another way on that other day. Two hundred yards below the deep pool into which she had pushed the factor—just beyond the shallows out of which he had dragged himself to safety—was the beginning of Blue Feather's Gorge. An appalling thing was shaping itself in her mind as she ran to it—a thing that with each gasping breath she drew became more and more a great and glorious hope. At last she reached it and looked down. And as she looked, there whispered ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... self-revelation—from the nakedness to which she had stripped the horror of her marriage under the eyes of her daughter. Nothing, not even the natural impulse to screen one's soul from the gaze of the people with whom one lived, had prevented the appalling indignity of this exposure. The delusion that it is possible for a woman by mere virtue of being a woman to suffer in sweetness and silence, evaporated as he looked at her. He had believed her to be a nonentity, and she was revealing an inner life ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... she disclosed a gash where his temple had struck upon a stone, and his right arm swung loosely out from his side. Phebe McAlister had suddenly found herself in the presence of her first case, and the presence was rather an appalling one. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... appearance depressed him. The women had hard faces, the lustre was gone from their hair, they wore ill-fitting dresses without style or charm. The men were gross, heavy-limbed and plethoric. The music was appalling. It was produced out of a piano, a cello, and a violin driven by three Japanese who cared nothing for time or tune. Each dance, evidently, was timed to last ten minutes. At the end of the ten minutes the music stopped without finishing the phrase ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... my gate, Shivering in the winter gloaming, How appalling seems your fate,— Destined to be always roaming, Singing for a bit of bread And a shelter ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... out in horrible crimson splashes against the cliffside? Or did he sink into the reeling swirl of the foaming waters, and die more mercifully in their steel-dark depths? I could not see. I saw only the flying form dart through the mist like an arrow from a bow. I heard only the appalling cry, like nothing earthly ever heard before; and I woke in a panic, with hands tightly clasped, and my body damp with moisture. It was but a dream—this awful picture; it was gone as an image from a mirror, and I was awake, and gazing ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Atlantic states and the borders of Canada. In this unhappy fratricidal war each side used the Indians to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies, and as a result, in the quiet valleys lying between the Hudson and Ohio and the Great Lakes, there was an appalling destruction of property and loss of life. Brant proved himself one of the most successful of the leaders in this border warfare, and while he does not seem ever to have been guilty of wanton cruelty himself, those under him, on more ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... in an appalling state, and forthwith proceeded to repair them, but the enemy would not allow this to go on long, and, after a few days' work had been spent on them, a couple of hours' bombardment would suffice to demolish ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... and heroine conducted themselves when married. Their main object seems to be merely to instruct young ladies how to get husbands, but not how to keep them: now this last, I speak it with all due diffidence, appears to me to be a desideratum in modern married life. It is appalling to those who have not yet adventured into the holy state, to see how soon the flame of romantic love burns out, or rather is quenched in matrimony; and how deplorably the passionate, poetic lover declines ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... to the development of the better qualities of the human character. As for ourselves, we do not believe any more in the superior innocence and virtue of a rural population than in that of the largest capitals, perfectly conscious of the appalling accumulation of vice, and sin, and crime that is to be found in such places as London and Paris, and even in New York. We cannot shut our eyes to the numberless evils of the same general character ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... being in a house in which a pile of wood in a cellar had caught fire; there was a short delay, while the hose was got out, and before an aperture into the burning room could be made. I went into a peaceful dining-room, which was just above the fire, and it was strangely appalling to see little puffs of smoke fly off from the kindled floor, while we tore the carpets up and flew to take the pictures down, and to know the room was all crammed with vehement cells, ready to burst into vapour at the fierce touch of ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... interesting pamphlets, one which deals with this village of Foca, a small place of about 200 inhabitants, surrounded by fertile orange and vine plantations near the mouth of the Alaro. His researches into its vital statistics for the half-century ending 1902 reveal an appalling state of affairs. Briefly summarized, they amount to this, that during this period there were 391 births and 516 deaths. In other words, the village, which in 1902 ought to have contained between 600 and 800 inhabitants, not only failed to progress, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... had reached the jungle, and while the smile was yet on his visage, his blood was curdled and his face elongated by a most appalling yell! It was not exactly a war-whoop, nor was it a cry of pain, though it partook of both, and filled the entire family with horror as they rushed to the tent on the mound from which ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... within a hundred miles of me except the two who had just gone away; or should there be, he was very likely to prove an enemy. The idea of being thus alone in a wilderness was grand, but it was somewhat appalling and trying to the nerves. How long would Obed be absent? I thought to myself. Three weeks or a month at shortest. Could I manage to preserve existence for that length of time? I was still weak and ill, and could scarcely crawl about, so I spent the greater portion of my time on my couch. I placed ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... just that place He designs for them in His house. Oh, how I long to become that, and that only, which pleases Him, that neither height nor depth might separate me from His love! And when I think of the deceitfulness of my heart, the danger of being lifted up seems so appalling that the former deliverance seems yet greater ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... from which it was first rescued by the labor of slaves. There is poison in every man's veins, affecting the very springs of life, dulling or extinguishing, with the energies of the body, all energy of mind, and often exhibiting itself in the most appalling forms of disease. From year to year the pestilential atmosphere creeps forward, narrowing the circles within which it is possible to sustain human life. With disease and misery, industry still more rapidly decays, and if the process goes ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the inn?" she stammered, looking about her, bewildered. Then, as the appalling truth struck home, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... heiress with a rent-roll of forty thousand livres, had come to live in the neighborhood. Gaston always met her at Manerville whenever he was obliged to go thither. These various personages being to each other as the terms of a proportion sum, the following letter will throw light on the appalling problem which Mme. de Beauseant had been trying for the past ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Isabelle, "it is to be hoped she is! I have the most abject horror of fevers and that is enough to make me catch it. Fancy having one's head shorn like a convict! The very idea is appalling." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... was little wind to carry off; through the haze the huge reeling shapes of the fighting vessels, looming indistinctly, vomiting flame like so many angry dragons, and several of them burning in addition, having been set on fire by shells; and above all the appalling concussion of the great guns, like the ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... hosts of invaders which I observe have in these days sprung up. I suppose that every one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity; that list of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for a long time—namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's notice to deface and deform our English tongue. These strange, fantastic, grotesque, and weird titles open up to my prophetic vision a most unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach—and I am not sure that it is ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... sixty-five cents." This was stated with great exactness. It was the amount of this appalling sum that had, no doubt, crushed out her last ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... matches and threw the burning stumps to the floor, drank his fill, then stumbled away, intending to give himself up to his first sergeant for absence without leave. Back round by way of the store and the east front he went, but before he could reach the barracks came the appalling cry of fire—Lanier's quarters! His doing beyond doubt, and now, in dismay and terror, he fled from the post. Some ranch folk took him in next day, and cared for him awhile, then sent word to the fort. Poor Cary had Lanier to plead ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... illfated follower, I found that he was beyond all human aid; he had been shot through the left breast with a ball, the last convulsions of death were upon him, and he expired almost immediately after our arrival. The frightful, the appalling truth now burst upon me, that I was alone in the desert. He who had faithfully served me for many years, who had followed my fortunes in adversity and in prosperity, who had accompanied me in all my wanderings, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the thirteenth century, there was a catastrophe of appalling dimensions, long known as the 'Great Storm,' when 40,000 Flemish men and women perished. This was the same tempest which overran the Dutch coast, and formed the Zuyder Zee, those 1,400 square miles ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... which I knew to contain the package, ripped it up with my sword, and raced away up the garden path to where my motor bike was waiting on the road above. I had every reason for haste; but I fled without looking back at the statue and the body; and I think the thing I fled from was the sight of that appalling allegory. ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... appalling introduction, Cass could not but notice that the voice, although hurried and excited, was by no means agitated or frightened; that the eyes which looked into his sparkled with a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... but if the least dependance can be placed on the statements of those persons who have given the most attention to the subject, with the best means of information, it unquestionably exceeds ten millions of human beings exported by violence and fraud from Africa. This appalling mass of crime and suffering has every atom of it been heaped up before the presence of enlightened men, and in the face of a Holy God, by nations boasting of their civilization, and pretending to respect the dictates of christianity. The mind ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... kirk, his ignorance of all but these theological books, as well as an innocence of the motives and difficulties of men and women (which would have been childlike had it not been childish), predoomed him to failure. His ignorance of modern literature was so appalling that the youngest member of his Bible-class smiled when he mentioned Tennyson. These and other qualities went far to make the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner the ministerial "inefficient" that ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... however, accompanied by natives, we met at the scene of destruction, and truly it was an appalling one to us. The mangled corpses of our companions, rendered more ghastly from the numerous wounds they had received, the provisions, clothing, &c. scattered about the ground, the hideous yells of exultation uttered by the natives, ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... calm, walked out on the floor and picked up the ball. The shouting died away and the sudden stillness seemed appalling. He toed the black streak across the boards and measured the distance to the basket. Then, his legs astraddle, his knees slightly bent, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... was a great help to her here. He came to see her now and then; and though he still had his discouraging moods, at other times he was friendly and kind. Enjoying this conspiracy with the charming young Mrs. Lanier, he expressed his gallantry by bringing her books of appalling size. But some had beautiful illustrations that set her to imagining. Eagerly she groped her way deep into the history of the building of cathedrals and palaces in times gone by. And the long majestic story of man's building on the earth thrilled her to the very soul. Joe must make his ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... Bourget and a very great deal against himself. He demonstrates clearly that he is neither a scholar, a reader or a man of letters and very little of a gentleman. His ignorance of French literature is something appalling. Why, in these days it is as necessary for a literary man to have a wide knowledge of the French masterpieces as it is for him to have read Shakespeare or the Bible. What man who pretends to be an author can afford to neglect those models of style and composition. George Meredith, Thomas Hardy ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... first few minutes after I perceived I had come to my night's lodging, such as it was, the circumstance looked appalling. I was very lightly clad, my feet and dress were very wet, I had only a little shawl to throw round me, and the cold autumn wind had already come, and the night mist was to fall on me, all fevered and exhausted as I was. I thought I should not live through the night, or, if I did, I must ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... four points, where the natural features had been so far improved upon that passes of a sort—narrow ledges for the most part, bounded on one side by a vertical, unclimbable face of rock and upon the other by an appalling chasm—had been painfully hewn out of the stubborn granite; and it was in the direction of these four passes that young Maitland was now retiring in excellent order, and enticing the enemy to follow him. For it ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Baltimore and Ohio is 500 feet higher; but the descent occupies a distance of seventeen miles, while the descent to-day was effected in eleven, so that, with all our partiality for the Baltimore and Ohio, it must be confessed there is nothing on it so wonderful and sublime as this. One curve was quite appalling, and it was rendered more so by the slow rate at which the train moved—not more, I should think, than at the rate of two miles an hour—certainly not nearly so fast as we could have walked, so that we had full ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... Measurement by angles. A weary night. The watches. The wind changing. The second day. Cliffs beyond. Sailing against the wind. Rounding the northern point. The fourth day. The increasing gale. Night. The lights to the south. The gale turning to a storm. Driven back. A night without sleep. An appalling monsoon. Springing a leak. The Professor exhausted. Danger ahead. The cliffs. A maelstrom in sight. Averting the danger. Recovery of the Professor. Steering for shore. Striking the beach. The vessel shattered. Stranded miles from home. Taking up the march. Putting an inscription ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship Griffon, with the splendid supply of furs which was to have paid off his debts, with all his reserve supplies and his men. This was not the limit of his troubles; for, after the overland journey of appalling hardships through a country of melting ice, flood, swamp, and hostile Iroquois—the Iroquois being furious with La Salle for having outwitted them in the building of this fort, and seeking him everywhere to destroy him—when he got to Montreal ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... hundred sane persons, and among those are unreckoned numbers of unstably endowed and too mildly mannered lunatics to require public restraint, but none the less dangerous to the perpetuation of the mental stability of the race, is an appalling picture of fact for philanthropic conservators of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... new anxieties arise; in which likewise success is uncertain, and failure would be distressing—these considerations, with a variety of others scarcely possible to be detailed have at times come over me with an almost appalling influence. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... could work up sufficient nerve to appear in public muzzled in this way. I knew from reading how many million microbes of different kinds there are inhabiting every cubic inch of air, and it was indeed appalling to think what even one of them would do for me if it chanced to hit me in a vulnerable spot. I did the best I could and kept my windows open wide both day and night, that some of these little imps of Satan might ride ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... in Peking during the two months' fighting was appalling. Apart from the wholesale destruction of foreign property in the Tatar city, and of Chinese as well as European buildings in the vicinity of the legations, the wealthiest part of the Chinese city had been laid in ashes. The flames from a foreign drug ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... high riding-boots, a great curiosity to them, as they nearly all wear the peculiar skin shoes already described. The odour of fish not only from the barrel on which I was seated, but also from my admiring crowd, was somewhat appalling as they stood around, nodding and ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... from Pekin carried through the heart of China to the extreme south, along the existing trade routes, be advantageous and remunerative. The enormous traffic carried on throughout the Celestial Empire in the face of appalling difficulties, on men's backs, or by caravans of mules or ponies, or by the rudest of carts and wheelbarrows, must be, some day, undertaken by railways. In the judgment of careful observers, too much stress should ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Just when we were doing our best to get the thing onto straight lines...." He wheeled about and paced back again, with quick, uneven steps. Between him and the motionless Peter, Peggy stood, looking from one to the other. Her merry eyes were quite grave now. The situation was certainly appalling. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... account with singular likelihood for that sudden outburst of persecution in Antioch ... At this very time an earthquake, more than usually terrible and destructive, shook the cities of the East. Antioch suffered its most appalling ravages—Antioch, crowded with the legionaries prepared for the Emperor's invasion of the East, with ambassadors and tributary kings from all parts of the East. The city shook through all its streets; houses, palaces, ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... of murder I of course knew, and, indeed, during the years of my magistracy, I had heard vague rumours of robbers habitually resorting to this method of dispatching their victims rather than to clubs or swords. But such appalling dexterity as this man displayed in the handling of an innocent-looking silken scarf I ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... soul, and we wonder who can lie there, and what things may be done there at night, at an hour when the alley is a cut-throat pit, and the vices of Paris run riot there under the cloak of night. This question, frightful in itself, becomes appalling when we note that these dwelling-houses are shut in on the side towards the Rue de Richelieu by marshy ground, by a sea of tumbled paving-stones between them and the Tuileries, by little garden-plots and suspicious-looking hovels on the side of the great galleries, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... removed from my family, of whom I heard no more. The new faces that appeared wore a gloom at once strange and appalling. Report had greatly exaggerated the struggle of the Milanese and the rest of Italy to recover their independence; it was doubted if I were not one of the most desperate promoters of that mad enterprise. I found that my name, as a writer, was not wholly ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... soul of loveliness; and, although from henceforth the precept to 'Work while it is day' will doubtless gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that 'the night cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it,—at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... same situation had arisen in space. There were humans, and there were Plumies. Both had interstellar ships. To humans, the fact was alarming. The need for knowledge, and the danger that Plumies might know more first, and thereby be able to exterminate humanity, was appalling. ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... the girls washed up and put all tidy for the night. Rachel worked at accounts in the sitting-room. She had sold the last hay she had to spare wonderfully well, and potatoes showed a good profit. Threshing charges were very high, and wages—appalling! But on the whole, they were doing very well. Janet's Jersey cow had been expensive, but they ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was indeed near, not the catastrophe desired, for destiny never finds to her hand precisely the thing we asked for, but a turn of things so sudden and appalling as to threaten his work, his honour, fortune, and fame, all that he was and all that he had. As he strode away towards the Cour des Comptes, deadly pale and talking to himself, the booksellers and print-dealers along the quay scarcely recognised ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... were under the control of some species of discipline and moved toward the houses of the condemned, of whom printed catalogues had been furnished the officers. The shouts, the yells, the delight were appalling. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... then that his footfall was audible in the late housekeeper's room, as he walked to and fro; but not audible in its true meaning, or it would have had an appalling sound. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 14th of October, the Queen opened the Glasgow waterworks at the outflow of Loch Katrine, the construction of which had necessitated engineering operations at that time considered stupendous; a few days later an appalling shipping calamity occurred, in the wreck of the Royal Charter near Anglesey, and the loss of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... it did not blow the canvas like a feather from its path; but the tent held its position, and the appalling rush and roar ceased with more suddenness than it had begun. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... for crime Should watch (when slumbers innocence, and guilt Or wakes in sleepless pain, or dreams of blood) The convict stretched on his reposeless bed. Then conscience plays th' accusing angel; Spectres of murder'd victims flit before His eyes, with soul-appalling vividness; Hideous phantasma shadow o'er his mind; Guilt, incubus-like, sits on his soul With leaden weight,—types of the pangs of hell. His memory to the scene of blood reverts; He hears the echo of his victims' cry, Whose agonizing eyes again ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... disagreeable. The night was cold and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of hail was falling,—each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents. A ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... she did not know it; she had had colds before, and she had always got well. Why should'nt she now? It is a strange vagary of old people to consider themselves just as young as they used to be, notwithstanding their advanced years. To the majority of the old people, the idea of death is not so appalling as the inability to work and the incapacity to enjoy the customary ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... into full consciousness, with the din of some appalling explosion of thunder in his ears, and sat up in bed with racing heart. Then for a moment, as he recovered himself from the panic-land which lies between sleeping and waking, there was silence, except for the steady hissing of rain ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... songs and counts in different languages, but it is not supposable that he understands every word he utters. If, however, his understanding develops as it promises to do, he will become a decided polyglot. He has mastered an appalling array of statistics, such as the areas in square miles of hundreds of countries, the population of the world's principal cities, the birthdays of all the Presidents, the names of all the cities of the United States of over 10,000 inhabitants, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... reduced to such a state, no eye but that of God himself can see the appalling wretchedness to which a year of disease and scarcity strikes down ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... which is so chilling to the poor distressed heart; and the horror grew darker with their fancies; the cold of early morning, the comfortless grey of dawn, the dead white mist, the ever-dripping tears of the dew, the deluging rains, the appalling thunder bursts and the echoes, and the wonderful play of the dazzling lightning. And when the night comes with its thick palpable darkness, and they lie huddled in their damp little huts, and they hear the tempest overhead, and the howling of the wild winds, the grinding an groaning ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... We know not how. Then the last agents to appear in this world's history are on the stage of action, the close of this dispensation is at hand, and the Lord cometh speedily to judge the world. Then an issue of appalling magnitude is before us. It is no less than this: To yield to unrighteous human enactments soon to be made, and thus expose ourselves to the unmingled wrath of an insulted Creator, or to remain loyal to ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... said: "It is not necessary to array the appalling statistics of misery, pauperism, and crime that have their origin in the use and abuse of ardent spirits. The police power, which is exclusively in the state, is competent to the correction of these great evils, and all measures of restraint or prohibition necessary to effect that purpose ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... were appalling. Some field batteries behind Kephez had joined in, and the whole night echoed with the quick crashes of the guns, while the air was full of the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... many a ducking in the course of my life, and in general cared little about it; but the accumulated horrors of that night, the deathlike coldness of the place, the appalling darkness and the dismal sense of our ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... literature of Germany, of France, and of England has exceeded the multiplicity of the productions of Italy, and an appalling population of authors swarm before the imagination.[235] Hail then the peaceful spirit of the literary historian, which sitting amidst the night of time, by the monuments of genius, trims the sepulchral lamps of the human mind! Hail to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Cloncurry, Mountjoy, Glentworth, and Caledon, were founded for as many convenient Commoners, who either paid for their patents, in boroughs, or in hard cash. It was the very reign and carnival of corruption, over which presided the invulnerable Chancellor—a true "King of Misrule." In reference to this appalling spectacle, well might Grattan exclaim—"In a free country the path of public treachery leads to the block; but in a nation governed like a province, to the helm!" But the thunders of the orator fell, and were quenched in the wide spreading ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... whole crowd rush elbowing in. How provokingly calm are the countenances of the five legislators! Not a twinkle in the eye of any of them to betray the nature of their decision—nay, with a refinement of cruelty positively appalling, the chairman is elaborating a quill into a toothpick until order shall be partially restored. Now for the dictum—"The Committee, having heard evidence, are of opinion that the preamble of the Dreep-daily Extension Bill has not been proved, and further, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... with a rush, and took seats wherever they could find them, and their attack on the boiled potatoes and chicken should have been appalling to the women, but it was not. They enjoyed seeing them eat. Ed Green was prodigious. One cut at a big potato, followed by two stabbing motions, and it was gone.—Two bites laid a leg of chicken as bare as a slate pencil. To us ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... moments when its veracity and power are at the highest point. A great work of art may be tragic in the view of life which it presents, but it must show no sign of the succumbing of the spirit to the appalling facts with which it deals; even in those cases in which, as in the tragedy of "King Lear," blind fate seems relentlessly sovereign over human affairs, the artist must disclose in his attitude and method a sustained energy of spirit. Nothing shows so clearly ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... other extreme, younger than the youngest of the Young Men he joined, came George W. Steevens, fresh from Oxford, Balliol Prize Scholar, shy and carrying it off, in the Briton's way, with appalling rudeness and more appalling silence. I remember J., upon whose nerves as well as mine this silence got, taking me apart one Thursday evening to tell me that if that young Oxford prig was too superior to talk to anybody, why then he was too superior ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of the air-hole. "Oh! oh!" she cried, with an appalling laugh; "'tis the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... upon the ice with the fierce wolves forming a ring around him, whose diameter was not the six lengths of his gun, and every moment growing shorter and shorter. The prospect was appalling. It would have caused the stoutest heart to quail, and Lucien's was terrified. He shouted at the top of his voice. He fired his rifle at the nearest. The brute fell, but the others showed no symptoms of fear; ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... commanded him to stop. The Spaniard turned a glance from Framtree to Bedient.... The woman at the wheel, straining downward, saw the Glow-worm rise with an appalling shudder, as the eyes of her lord left her; saw her body huddle forward toward him, her hands fumbling ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his fatal notion that Wavre was the one point to be aimed at and attacked. Despite the heavy cannonade on the west he persisted in this strange course; while Napoleon staked everything on a supreme effort against Wellington. This last was an act of appalling hardihood; but he explained to Cockburn on the voyage to St. Helena that, still confiding in Grouchy's approach, he felt no uneasiness at the Prussian movements, "which were, in fact, already checked, and that ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... followed Maurice," he says again, "in his work as a religious and social reformer—a true apostle of the gospel of humanity. He saw clearly, and in advance of his clerical brethren, the necessity of wise and righteous dealing with the momentous and appalling questions ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... I was, I shall never forget the days of the Famine, for Liverpool, more than any other place outside of Ireland itself, felt its appalling effects. It was the main artery through which the flying people poured to escape from what seemed a doomed land. Many thousands could get no further, and the condition of the already overcrowded parts of the town in which our people lived became terrible, for the wretched people brought with them ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... was almost annihilate: one hundred and ninety galleys were captured, besides galleots, and fifteen more burnt or sunk; probably twenty thousand men had perished, including an appalling list of high dignitaries from all parts of the empire. The Christians lost seven thousand five hundred men, including many of the most illustrious houses of Italy and Spain. Cervantes, who commanded a company of soldiers on board the Marquesa, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... that so many good people are shocked at the revolting ideas, so contradictory and so appalling, which hurl mortals into a state of uncertainty and doubt as to the existence of the Deity, or even to force them into absolute denial of the same? It is impossible to admit, in effect, the doctrine of the Deity of priestcraft, in which ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the Beast People, tainted him to me. Several times I let him go alone among them. I avoided intercourse with them in every possible way. I spent an increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some liberating sail that never appeared,—until one day there fell upon us an appalling disaster, which put an altogether different aspect upon ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... the appalling mischiefs which have already resulted, and which threaten to ensue on a still more extensive scale hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage, are of a properly geographical, we may almost say geological, character, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was appalling; one could almost hear the shiver of apprehension running down the silk-and muslin-clad backs. The sign was given, however, by the docile Maria, and immediately two enormous baskets were brought in: one, the smaller, containing every possible implement for unlimited sewing by unlimited hands; ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... sick commander, General McDonald, and fell upon what he had been led to believe was Colonel Caswell's camp; but his spies had been misled, and his foes were to be reached only by crossing the bridge before him. The prospect was appalling, but McLeod was brave, and putting himself at the head of a picked band of broadswordsmen, he charged across the remaining two logs of the bridge. It was a terrible moment when the Whigs saw these dauntless Highlanders, who had so often broken the strongest ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... process was to oil the surface of the medal, and to bind a strip of brown paper about its edge, so as to form a shallow little well. The next business was to melt enough of the sulphur to secure a cast of the medallion. This part of the process resulted in the production of a most appalling smell, which was not lessened in pungency when the odour of singed brown paper was added to that of melting sulphur. When the cast was cool it also was bound round with brown paper, and a compound of plaster-of-paris ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... action, and the earth was felt to tremble. The moment this singular alternation of the lightning passing to and fro ceased, the hurricane burst forth with a violence which exceeded all that had yet been experienced. The winds blowing with appalling velocity, changed their course frequently and almost instantaneously, occasionally abating but only to return in gusts from S. W.-W. and ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... chiefly struck perhaps with the plainness and simplicity of the doctrines there unfolded. You would say that much which you found there, relating to the right conduct of life, you had already found scattered through the books of the Greek and Roman moralists. You would be startled by no strange or appalling truth. You would turn over their leaves in vain in search of such dark and puzzling ingenuities as try the wits of those who resort to the pages of the Timaeus. A child can understand the essential truths of Christ. ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... ruthless cruelties as that of hurling a page into the fire to punish his clumsiness; he could rack and stab and hang men with the least shadow of compunction or twinge of conscience, but to slay a man who professed himself to be in mortal sin was a deed too appalling even for ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... appalling, spectral-like, uprose before his mental vision, and he spent a bad quarter of an hour trying to adjust himself to his surroundings; his previous sunny philosophy having a tough tussle with the sudden realities of things as they were. Then his ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... it was to trifle with such a sad affair, at my age, too, ruined for life! It was dreadful! Too sad! Hereupon, as continuing the story, he remarks that being asked his opinion by the Colonel, he agreed perfectly and thought with him it was an appalling sacrifice, and oh, all sorts of things! Anything, just to ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... above and cover the ground beneath and fill the air whichever way one looks. The breeze carries them swiftly past, but they come on in fresh clouds, a host of which there is no end, each of them a harmless creature which you can catch and crush in your hand, but appalling in their power of collective devastation. Yet here in southern Matabililand there had been only a few swarms. We were to see later on, in the eastern mountain region, far more terrible evidences of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... an unlucky moment, a fresh arrival of persons at the door made the monster turn his thousand eyes in that direction. I mistook it for an indication that he was getting weary of my talk. My attention was distracted. Then came a suspension of all thought, an appalling paralysis of memory. Having learnt the first part of my discourse by heart, I had been reciting it without turning over the leaves of the manuscript; and now I was unable to recollect at what point I had left off, or whether I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... only be described as a gilded Inferno. Unfortunately evil is more contagious than good. Certain medical authorities aver that the atmosphere of Mentone used to be impregnated with microbes of phthisis; the germs of moral disease infecting the immediate neighbourhood of Nice are far more appalling. Nor are symptoms wanting of the spread of that moral disease. The municipal council of this beautiful city, like Esau, had just sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. They had conceded the right ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... at Ethel, who was surreptitiously concealing a yawn, and was apparently quite undisturbed by the appalling news. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. The assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a kind of barometrical measurement. We do not gauge the weather by adding together the figures of all the storm-glasses in the world; the rise or fall of the mercury in any one of them, especially the best one among them, comprehends the whole. Here is the problem of pain in a nutshell. The whole appalling tale of cosmic suffering can be compressed within the limits of the individual consciousness which ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... it was not yet dawn—Samuel set forth to the trial, escorted by his son. The reverberation of his appalling cough from the cab was the last ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the awful withdrawing heavens. These were a region of endless hopes, and ever recurrent despairs: that his beloved, an earthly finite thing, should rise there, was added joy, and gave a mighty hope with respect to the unknown and appalling. But from the sky, he was sent back to the earth in further pursuit; for, whence came the rain, his books told him, but from the sea? That sea he had read of, though never yet beheld, and he knew it was magnificent in its might; gladly would he have hailed it as an ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Russel Wallace has argued) the geocentric theory was not so far out after all, and the earth, holding a specially favored place in the universe, is the only home of life, then the disproportion of mechanism to result seems absolutely appalling. If, on the other hand, all the million million of suns are pouring out vital heat to a like number of inhabited planetary systems, the sheer quantity of life, of struggle, of suffering implied, seems a thought at which to shudder. We are inclined to say to the inventor of sentience: "Since ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... progress of science, which has enormously increased the wealth of the world, it is doubtful if this war, which is mainly a war about wealth, would have taken place at all. Or if a war had broken out, it would not have involved the appalling destruction of human life and property we are now witnessing—such that, within a space of two years, about six million human beings have been killed, thirty-five millions wounded, and wealth destroyed to the extent of about fifteen thousand millions sterling—though ...
— Progress and History • Various
... and Marston Will, and Harry Bell, and a host of out and outers, came up to the scratch, and floored many a youkel with their bunch of fives. It was at this period that the conflict assumed its most appalling feature, for the townsmen were completely hemmed into the centre, and fought with determined courage, presenting a hollow square, two fronts of which were fully engaged with the infuriated gown. Long and fearful was the struggle for mastery, and many ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the rule of their Order without the slightest mitigation, who renounce the possession of any property whatsoever, whether private or in common, who live wholly on alms, and in such a state of rigorous austerity, that the stronger sex would find to be quite appalling. ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... readings of the thermometer, the reports of ice-fairs, of coaches driven across the river at Hampton, of the skating on the fens; and hence the iron roads, the beleaguered silence and the heavy folds of mist appeared as amazing as a picture, significant, appalling. He could not look out and see a common suburban street foggy and dull, nor think of the inhabitants as at work or sitting cheerfully eating nuts about their fires; he saw a vision of a grey road vanishing, of dim houses all empty and deserted, and the silence seemed eternal. And ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... inaction, before he could completely liberate himself from the bonds of sloth, of worldly vanity, dissipation, and unworthy love, before he could step forth and walk steadily along the new road which had appeared to him. His ignorance was appalling. He could no longer construe a line of Latin, he had not for months opened a book; and as to Italian, he knew it no better than any Piedmontese street porter. His idleness, his habit of absolute vacuity, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... appear in times of great calamity, and we have accepted the verdict of later scholarship, that this Apocalypse of St. John appeared about 68 or 69 A.D. Was this a time of trouble in that Eastern world? Verily it was; the most appalling hour perhaps in the world's history. The unspeakable Nero was either still upon the throne of the Roman Empire, or had just reeled from that eminence to the doom of a craven suicide. The last years of his life were gorged with horror. The murder of his brother, the burning of Rome, probably ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... The prospect is appalling, for these wild robbers of the desert fear neither man nor devil, and when once they retreat to their hiding-places in the mountains, it is next to folly ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... or more distant estates. The other was, that during the whole insurrection the negroes did not make a single attempt to destroy life. On the other hand, the sacrifice of negroes during the rebellion, and subsequent to it, was appalling. It was a long time before the white man's thirst for blood ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... first time in their married lives they quarrelled—quarrelled hotly. And, as always at such times, many a covert criticism a secret disapproval which neither had ever meant to breathe to the other, slipped out and added fuel to the fire. It was appalling to both to find on how many points they ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... vessel, we lingered near for a couple of hours to see what her fate would be. At the end of that time, the dense smoke which had nearly hidden her from our view, suddenly became one enveloping mass of flame. It was a beautiful, yet appalling sight, to see that noble vessel thus burning upon the breast of the sea! For nearly an hour her form, sheeted in fire, stood out distinctly against the face of the sky, and then she went down, and left only a few ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... the attack. As they advanced, the guns of the fort poured in upon them a tremendous fire. This they met manfully, and, though some fell, the others seemed the more determined. But, just as they were beginning the attack in good earnest, a concealed body of Indians rose upon them, and the appalling war ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... was with a purpose that they had exchanged photographs. It had not occurred to him that marriage hung over him like a sword. He perceived the sword now, heavy and sharp, and suspended by a thread of appalling fragility. He dodged. He did not want to lose her, never to see ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... of a boat accident, or in a season like 1869, the prospect is most appalling. In that year the crop was very largely a failure; many of the people had gone as deep in debt as they could go; and but for the aid sent by the Society of Friends, some of the people would assuredly have died, and a still larger number could not have ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... fortunately been rough-shod, to a tablet of slanting rock glazed over with an enamel of ice; and his comrades came up in time to save both the trooper and his horse. Meantime the harsh and sudden shock of this abrupt halt, together with the appalling character of the incident which led to it, had roused Bertram; and he was still further roused by the joyful prospect of a near termination to his journey as well as by the remarkable features of the road on which his eyes now opened from ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... trades. On that high seat, one hand grasping an iron railing at the side, sitting by grim-faced Starling Tucker in his battered hat, who drove carelessly with one hand and tugged at his long red moustache with the other, it was pleasantly appalling to reflect that he might be at any moment dashed to pieces on the road below; to remember that Starling himself, the daily associate of horses and a man of high adventure, had once fallen from this very seat and broken bones—the most natural kind of accident, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... old, with a head as round and about as large as a pumpkin, and fever-and-ague fits had dyed his face of a corresponding color. He wore an old white hat, tied under his chin with a handkerchief; his body was short and stout, but his legs of disproportioned and appalling length. I observed him at sunset, breasting the hill with gigantic strides, and standing against the sky on the summit, like a colossal pair of tongs. In a moment after we heard him screaming frantically behind the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... considerable part of the city, looking like a moving and walking corpse, while yet an inhabitant of this world; but, as the ultimate purpose of punishment has in view the prevention of crimes, it may at least be doubted, whether, in abridging the melancholy ceremony, we have not in part diminished that appalling effect upon the spectators which is the useful end of all such inflictions, and in consideration of which alone, unless in very particular cases, capital sentences ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... they are all women but one, a middle-aged man. They do not feel the occasion except so far as there is a certain solemnity connected with it. Silent and grave, they watch a process going on whose real nature they cannot understand except as a momentous and appalling change. Change is ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... sincerest piety is the most exalted patriotism. It commends itself to us as worthy of the most serious attention of the thoughtful of both races in the North and in the South. The gravity of the Southern problem, as set before us, is little less than appalling. The colored race now looks back over a quarter of a century of freedom and recognized rights. The traditions and customs and conservative ties of slavery are broken with its chains. The ideas, aspirations and manly instincts of liberty have taken hold upon the colored people and ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... the double purpose of rescuing any wounded dervishes there might be and counting the dead. The large number of the enemy who for days survived shocking wounds, to which a European would have instantly or speedily succumbed, was appalling. These wretched creatures had been seen crawling or dragging themselves for miles to get to the Nile for water or into villages for succour. Food and water were sent out to them by the Sirdar's orders on the ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... on it all, showing up with its fierce light the true and appalling desolation of the place. There was not one thing in the enclosure upon which the eye ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the infinite azure, Alternate turning to earthward and falling, Measuring life with Damastian measure, Finite, appalling. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Bad Madigans were, no doubt, serious enough, but the fiction was even more appalling. As to facts, the father drank, the mother followed suit, the appearance of the house—a ramshackle old place beyond the fair-grounds—was a scandal; the children could not be got to go to school for any length of time, and, when they were there, each class in which they ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... I expected and deserved," said Mr. Dickerson, with a magnanimity that was appalling. "I did behave like a perfect scallawag to you, Nie; but I was young then, and Tweet got round me before ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... shaken to think of being ashamed. This was a most appalling revelation to him—it opened quite a new ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... falling stones at long intervals, were the low, terribly earnest moanings of the wind or distant waterfalls coming through the thickening gloom. After two hours of hard work I came to a maze of crevasses of appalling depth and width which could not be passed apparently either up or down. I traced them with firm nerve developed by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on dizzy edges after cutting footholds, taking ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... exhaustion, due, perhaps, to the prolonged wrestle with his great book. Rest, it was believed, would fully restore him. He was, indeed, already at work again upon what turned out to be his last considerable literary undertaking. The old project for a series of law-books probably seemed rather appalling to a man just emerging from his recent labours; and those labours had suggested another point to him. The close connection between our political history and our criminal law had shown that a lawyer's ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... revolutions, and as yet had not learned the first principles of good government. In civil affairs, her code was the most barbarous, her feudal customs the most revolting, her whole history the most appalling of all Christendom. In social habits, she had scarcely been able to retain a few precious fragments of good old Catholic times; and the fearful scenes through which the nation had passed, which, according to J. J. Rousseau, for once expressing the truth, render the reading of that period of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... bowed down with a heavy sorrow, who journeyed across the mountains to take the great prize. The cruel campaign scandal about his marriage had aggravated a heart trouble from which his wife had long suffered. She died in December, and his grief was appalling to those who gathered at The Hermitage to do honor to "Aunt Rachel." It was not in Jackson's nature, as indeed it would not have been in the nature of many men, to forget, in his grief, the enemies who had helped to cause it. His old age, ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... seems; and much as I have had to do with public affairs, I feel now as if I knew nothing about them, and was quite incompetent to so great an office—to rule over such vast concerns, with such parties. With so many great things and so many little things to decide it is quite appalling. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... things steadily until some degree of preparation was made; and I have no doubt at all that the war would have been averted had not the Maine been destroyed in Havana harbor. The country forced us into it after that appalling catastrophe. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... sound of astonishment and rage—and simultaneously a strange, a phenomenal thing occurred. An unseen hand appeared to strike down both Mallow and his accomplice where they stood, and it smote them, moreover, with appalling force and terrifying effect. One moment they were in complete mastery of the situation, the next they were groveling in the road, coughing, sneezing, barking, retching, blaspheming poisonously. Baffled fury followed their ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... first placed in a mangle, and the slow, crude, and obnoxious process was gone through of crushing them. The pugnacity of the smell arising from this progress became appalling."—Grocers' Journal. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... of the Holy Spirit are confined to those who have taken part in a certain ecclesiastical ceremonial, narrow and mistaken as it may be, is surely a mild and simple form of error, compared with the appalling notion that those gifts are confined to men, and are to be for ever withheld from the other half of the human family. The Churches of the world seem at length prepared to debate within themselves whether they should venture to ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... stillness was rent by the most horrible and appalling shrieks! Peal after peal rang out. I have never heard anything so ghastly nor so blood-curdling either before or since. For a moment it seemed that one must be dreaming. What horrors, to justify such awful shrieks, could be taking place at this quiet ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... made a discovery—one which to a girl of honest nature was almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and little in life. His homeliness no longer ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... dragged on: the weather was appalling: the grousers gave tongue with no uncertain voice, each streaming field-day. But Wee Pe'er enjoyed it all. He did not care if it snowed ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay |
