"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... becoming the smiling seat of industry and the social arts; to see its hills and dales covered with bleating flocks, lowing herds, and waving corn; to hear the joyful notes of the shepherd, and the enlivening cries of the husbandman, instead of the appalling yell of the savage, and the plaintive howl of the wolf; and to witness a country which nature seems to have designed as her master-piece, at length fulfilling the gracious intentions of its all-bounteous Author, by administering to the wants and contributing ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... to the fact that it is and always has been an arch-enemy of mankind. Simultaneously, in widely separated parts of the world, a "pogrom" has been proclaimed, and the accounts of the massacre which come to us from great cities like Calcutta and Bombay are appalling and almost incredible. They would move to pity the most callous heart, if pity could be associated with ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... north-eastern counties even during the winter months. Seven cases of it occurred on the banks of the Thames just below London early in February, 1832, and though its virulence in England was alleged to be less than on the continent, further experience hardly justified that opinion. The appalling violence of its first onslaught on some vulnerable districts may be illustrated by the example of Manchester, where a whole family just arrived from an infected locality was swept away within twenty-four hours. The government did its duty by disseminating ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... blood of a man innocent of offense against him. After the first glance at Tira, he did not look at her again, but passed her, threw open the door, and went in. His thoughts, becoming every instant more confused, as the appalling moments in the woods beat themselves out noisily, seemed to favor closing the door behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pass. It was she who had locked his door upon herself and, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... we are degenerating, good has become evil in our eyes, and is being undone in the name of progress precisely as evil is undone and replaced by good on the lines along which we are evolving. This is indeed the Illusion of Illusions; for it gives us infallible and appalling assurance that if our political ruin is to come, it will be effected by ardent reformers and supported by enthusiastic patriots as a series of necessary steps in our progress. Let the Reformer, the Progressive, ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... and speaking in a tone sad and patient, "than we who to-day understand that there is no such thing as death can resist the overwhelming power of the belief of the masses of the race. The might of the will of the majority, directed by an appalling delusion, compels us to submit to that which we yet know to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... of bulk and output. This is appalling to a laborious writer, a student or a thinker. Week by week there pours forth an unending deluge of love fiction, and week by week this deluge is absorbed into the systems of millions of human beings. We speak glibly of the world-wide fame of some classic, when, in point of fact, the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the religion and the loves of the Middle Age. Nowhere has the impression of this delirium been conveyed as by Victor Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris. The [218] strangest creations of sleep seem here, by some appalling licence, to cross the limit of the dawn. The English poet too has learned the secret. He has diffused through King Arthur's Tomb the maddening white glare of the sun, and tyranny of the moon, not tender and far-off, but close down—the sorcerer's moon, large and ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... "David, it is appalling to hear you speak," said Mrs. Dolman. "Orion, I hate to pronounce your name, but listen to me, little boy. I forbid you to go if ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... of touch. His charm was the spontaneity of his spoken words, his enthusiastic personality disarming all criticism; what the labored productions of his fancy might prove to be, I hardly dared think. It was this dread that induced me, upon receipt of the box, appalling in its bulk and unpleasantly suggestive of the departure to other worlds of the original consignor, since it was long and deep like the outer oaken covering of a casket, to delay opening it for some days; but finally I nerved ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... two of the arms, with a glancing motion, with appalling force. They sliced into the close-packed forward ranks of the armored men; cut out of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... never smashed himself up in the coal-lighter. The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was like another night seen through the starry night of the earth—the starless night of the immensities beyond the created universe, revealed in its appalling stillness through a low fissure in the glittering sphere of which the earth is ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... only member of that committee that approached the question with an open mind found that his first impressions were wrong. He went down into the tenement houses to see for himself. He found cigars being made under conditions that were appalling. For example, he discovered an apartment of one room in which three men, two women, and several children—the members of two families and a male boarder—ate, slept, lived, and made cigars. "The tobacco was stowed about everywhere, alongside the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... suggestive of grief," said Katherine, "and she, too, refuses to be comforted. I am sure she will tell me her story later. Her landlady says she never receives or sends a letter, and does not seem to have a creature belonging to her. Such desolation is appalling." ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... miserable, and if he does, he wishes he were dead. By the time he has learned wisdom he leaves the world, is hustled into a hell of fire or an orthodox heaven, and for forty years I've been trying to figure out which of these appalling evils to avoid. In one place the climate is hot and unhealthy, in the other the inhabitants never entertained an original idea—believed everything they were told. Think of having to live through all eternity with the strictly orthodox—people who ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... with a beautiful, haughty-faced woman beside him. Verily an appalling picture to the sleepy Swabian peasant accustomed to the heavy swaying motion of ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... mornings. As for Hugh Knox, he never ceased to whittle at the boy's ambition and point it toward a great place in modern letters. Had he been born with less sound sense and a less watchful mother, it is appalling to think what a brat he would have been; but as it was, the spoiling but fostered a self-confidence which was half ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... whom were:—"God bless you, Blackwood; I shall never see you more." He had a presentiment that, while he was certain of victory, it would, nevertheless, be gained at the price of his own life. Yet, with this prospect before him, appalling as it must have been to his mind, he was calm and serene. His whole attention was fixed on Villeneuve, who was wearing to form the line in close order upon the larboard tack, thereby to bring Cadiz under his lee, and to facilitate, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sinking of the heart. "You can say that you don't know, if anyone should be so rude as to ask." Suddenly she caught her breath and stared at him in a sort of panic. "Heavens," she whispered, the toast poised half-way to her lips, "you're not, by any chance, engaged, are you? Appalling thought!" ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... inconvenience without any touch of the gruesome. Precautions have, of course, to be taken to meet the emergency which has arisen: but in the dead body of a man per se, the lovers can detect nothing more appalling, or more to be shrunk from, than would be apparent if the lifeless object in the walkway were a dead flower. The thing ought to be removed, if only in the interest of tidiness, but there is no call to make a ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... according to reports of the time, was an appalling mixture of grandeur and effeminacy with respect to its architectural lines. Surrounding that portion where the legislators actually sat was the great amphitheatre which for three years was occupied by a curious, vociferous public, more demonstrative, even, than those that had attended ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... as if some evil fairy had prompted the imprudent minister to act in this way, who, eager and impatient for his own ruin, had summoned his King to witness his appalling system of plunder in its entirety, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it in its earlier and more lawful days, forgetting that their minds had not been opened, that they regarded the negro as we regard a beeve. If in some future super-refined state men should come to abstain from all animal food, perhaps the history of the Chicago stock-yards will be as appalling as is that of the Bight of Benin to-day, and that the name of Armour should be given to a great industrial school will seem as curious as to us it is inexplicable that the founder of Fanueil Hall should have dealt in ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... trembling. The thought of the prowling beasts out there in the darkness was appalling. Then, with a sudden brave toss of her head, she attacked the thorny boma wall with her delicate hands. Torn and bleeding though they were, she worked on breathlessly until she had made an opening through which she could worm her body, and at last ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... assistance I managed it. Rob got frightened, and had many leaps before he got up. From this ridge such a lovely scene opened out in the evening light, lofty peaks all around, and below, grassy, fern-covered ravines. It made one almost giddy to look down. The descent appeared appalling, but the ferns were long, and we could get a good foothold in them. As we neared the bottom we picked up a quantity of wood. Some of it rolled into a gulch, and in going after it Graham got "blocked" and had to let himself slide, ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... tell you now, sir, and I won't," he said, abruptly and fiercely, and with a countenance darkened with a wild and appalling rage that was wholly unaccountable. "I see you searching me with your eyes. Suspect what you will, sir, you shan't inveigle me into admissions. Aye, pry—whisper—stare—question, conjecture, sir—I suppose I must endure the world's impertinence, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... mad; and as drunk with fear now, as they had been in the commencement of the war with France with folly and boasting. We long since began to feel the baneful effects of that war, and we are now tasting its bitter fruits, with all their appalling evils. We have now a standing army in good earnest; and now that army is kept up, in the sixth year of peace, to compel John Gull to pull out of his pocket the last shilling, to pay the interest of that debt, which, in his drunken, insane folly, he suffered his rulers, to borrow, in order, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... now, understood too clearly, the meanings of Ravengar's strange utterances on the telephone. The man had determined to commit suicide, and he had chosen a way which was calculated with the most appalling ingenuity to ruin, if anything would ruin, Hugo's peace of mind for years to come—perhaps for ever. For the world, Ravengar was drowned. But Hugo knew that his body was lying in ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... most carefully arranged, and it had the best machinery. The mouth opened and closed, threw flames from its nostrils, and let loose upon the crowd devils armed with hooks and emitting awful yells. From the back of the mouth appalling noises were heard, being meant for the moans of the damned. These moans were produced by a simple process: pots and frying-pans were knocked against each other. In "Adam," the heroes of the play are ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... knows he is being robbed of what he earns, how long do you think he will carry the capitalistic system on his back? From the beginning of the world we have tried it. With what result? An injustice that is staggering, a waste that is appalling, an ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... towns; and so frequent are the attacks of typhus among them, that in some parts of the country the disease is known as "the Irish fever." It is not merely the loss of life that is so frightful; there is also the moral death that is still more appalling in these unhealthy localities. Vice and crime consort with foul living. In these places, demoralization is the normal state. There is an absence of cleanliness, of decency, of decorum; the language used is polluting, and scenes of profligacy are of almost hourly occurrence,—all tending ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... States, became so profitable that the slaveholders were able, for many years, largely to influence, if not control, every department of the National Government. The slave power became something more than a phrase—it was a definite, established, appalling fact. The Missouri controversy, South Carolina nullification, the Texas controversy, the adoption of the compromise measures of 1850, and the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, were all occasions when the country was compelled to see the magnitude, the energy, the recklessness, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... a Nevian—a malodorous reek of over-ripe fish—does in time become tolerable, especially if sufficiently disguised with creosote, which purely Terrestrial chemical is the most highly prized perfume of Nevia. But the head! It is that member that makes the Nevian so appalling to earthly eyes, for it is a thing utterly foreign to all Solarian history or experience. As most Tellurians already know, it is fundamentally a massive cone, covered with scales, based spearhead-like upon the neck. Four great sea-green, triangular eyes are spaced ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... have been rather appalling were the necessities of daily life, the intercourse of current trifles. That naturally had to go on. They wished good morning to each other, they sat down together to meals—and I believe there would be a game of cards now and then in the evening, especially at first. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... northern Antrim coast is defended from the Atlantic. No engineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, dared lay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipice of Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are no sandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for a mile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it is swept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passing the ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath him the white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... seem to be overwhelmed. We are witnessing a perfect carnival of insensate materialism. The narratives which fill the columns of the daily press reek with the fierce spectacle of labor and achievement. And yet, in spite of all this appalling outrage upon the sense, we must steadily beware of becoming the victims of the apparent and the transient. Behind the uncharted riot there hides a power whose invisible energy is the real master of the field. The ocean can be lashed by the winds ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... strange lady, and stood Face to face with a Thing not of flesh nor of blood. In this Mask of the Passions, call'd Life, there's no human Emotion, though mask'd, or in man or in woman, But, when faced and unmask'd, it will leave us at last Struck by some supernatural aspect aghast. For truth is appalling and eldrich, as seen By this world's artificial lamplights and we screen From our sight the strange vision that troubles our life. Alas! why is Genius forever at strife With the world, which, despite ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... was not wanting. Flowers in fanciful baskets on the tables and in great banks on the mantels and in the fireplaces deservedly attracted much attention and praise, though the sum expended on their transient beauty was appalling. Their delicious fragrance mingling with perfumes of artificial origin suggested a like intermingling of the more delicate, subtile, but genuine manifestations of character, and the graces of mind and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... at the moment did not stand in such urgent need of Miss Armytage as Miss Armytage imagined. She had heard the appalling story of her brother's escapade, but she had been unable to perceive in what it was so terrible as it was declared. He had made a mistake. He had invaded the convent under a misapprehension, for which it was ridiculous to blame him. It was a mistake which any ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Raoul, "the thunder of heaven could scarce be heard amid the howling of yonder Welsh wolves." Eveline turned as he spoke, and looking towards the bridge, she beheld an appalling spectacle. The river, whose stream washes on three sides the base of the proud eminence on which the castle is situated, curves away from the fortress and its corresponding village on the west, and the hill sinks downward to an extensive plain, so extremely level as to indicate its alluvial ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... walked on, the dark, lowering clouds that had been gathering overhead, broke into a terrific storm of rain; the wind whistled and howled through the valleys, and from the mountain gorges the lightning flashed with a vividness almost appalling; but, undismayed by the storm and the tempest, which seemed at that time to accord with the emotions of his own wicked heart, Nat continued on his way, which lay past the unpretending, but comfortable farm-house, where, in the peace and contentment ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the inn?" she stammered, looking about her, bewildered. Then, as the appalling truth struck home, she grew ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... appalling clearness that which before she had uncertainly experienced, the immodest character of that mother's beauty. With the pearls in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage the delicate green tint of which showed ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... McIvor's broad back. The country was full of stories of men being overwhelmed by the choking, drifting whirl of snow. He knew how swift at times the on-fall of the blizzard could be, how long the storm could last, how appalling the cold could become. What should he do? He must think and act swiftly. That gleaming water near which his camp lay was, at the very best going, two hours distant. The blizzard might strike at any moment and once it struck all hope of advance would be cut off. He resolved to seek the best cover ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... mouth, quivering and human, that had smiled and trembled and bent down from the Cross to kiss poor souls that could not hope, nor help themselves, that had smiled upon Isabel ever since she had known Him. It was appalling to this gentle maiden soul that had bloomed and rejoiced so long in the shadow of His healing, to be torn out of her retreat and set thus under the consuming noonday of the Justice of this Sun ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... four-footed beasts, be they large or small, I have a prejudice against having my jugular vein breathed, at midnight, by small animals of the weasel tribe,—an act of which Mungo, probably, would have been incapable. His relations will do such things, however, and newspapers recording appalling instances of it may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hardly less terrifying than their brothers. They had their father's fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... appalling. She puts her hands in our plates and helps herself, and when the dishes are passed, she grabs them and takes out whatever she wants. This morning I would not let her put her hand in my plate. She persisted, and a contest of wills ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... success of the antisubmarine campaign is not mentioned, important as it proved to be. This was the policy adopted by the Allies of not giving out the news that any U-boat was captured or otherwise accounted for. Confronted with this appalling veil of mystery the morale of the German submarine crews became seriously affected; volunteering for this service gradually ceased; arbitrary detail grew necessary; ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms, lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries, where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their earlier practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it would answer for men the question, why so many thousand glad, active children come to a middle life without joy,—a life whose best estate is a sort of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which most men seem to feel ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had now reached a point that was almost unendurable. The emptiness at the stomach and the pangs of hunger had given way to the fierce pains and the appalling weakness that come to ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... famous Essay on Population appeared, and in 1803 a second greatly enlarged. Its leading proposition, supported by much learning, is that while population increases approximately in a geometrical ratio, the means of subsistence do so in an arithmetical ratio only, which, of course, opened up an appalling prospect for the race. It necessarily failed to take into account the then undreamed-of developments whereby the produce of the whole world has been made available for all nations. The work gave rise to ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... when, in vengeance clothed, Thou shalt come down to stamp the seal of fate On erring mortal man. Thy chariot wheels Then shall rebound to earth's remotest caves, And stormy Ocean from his bed shall start At the appalling summons. Oh I how dread, On the dark eye of miserable man, Chasing his sins in secrecy and gloom, Will burst the effulgence of the opening Heaven; When to the brazen trumpet's deafening roar Thou and thy dazzling cohorts shall descend, Proclaiming the fulfilment of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... "It is appalling," conceded Aunt Lucy, at length, "but the most regrettable circumstance, to my mind, is your connection ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... number of coats, and you will doubtless agree with me that one's form would not be much improved thereby in appearance. The noise increased until New-Year's Eve, and when at last the New Year broke in upon them, it was something appalling. The air was full of false notes, vocal and otherwise, and I need scarcely say that at the "Dai butzu" also grand festivities went on for the greater part ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... experience, known to us as death, must in reality be a very simple and even a natural affair, and that when we can look back upon it, it will seem to us amazing that we can ever have regarded it as so momentous and appalling ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... force. We are surrounded by country-houses and city abdomens of appalling size and arrogance. Mansions crown the slopes and line the water-front. The dialect of the lazy Yankee and his industrious hens are heard no more in the hills of Pointview. Where the hoe and the sickle were stirred by the fear of hunger, the golf-club ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... the disaster was appalling; and Jefferson described it in moderate terms by admitting that the policy of peaceable coercion brought upon him mortification such as no other president ever suffered. So complete was his overthrow that his popular influence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the silence seemed quite appalling, for they felt as if they were on the eve of some discovery—what, neither could have said; but upon comparing notes afterwards each said he felt convinced that something was about to happen, but paradoxically, at the same time, as if it never would; and when a quarter of an hour must ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... jealousy after her husband's death she seems to have become quite insane, and the recklessness of her tongue knew no bounds. To Tacitus all her ravings, collected from hearsay or preserved in the memoirs of her equally appalling daughter, the mother of Nero, represent serious historical documents; and the portrait of Tiberius is from first to last deeply influenced by, and indeed largely founded on, the testimony ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Appalling, do you say? What other word describes it adequately? There are twenty-one teaching periods in the morning; twenty-four in the afternoon. Forty-five times each day that teacher must call up and teach a new class. The college professor is "overloaded" with fourteen classes ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... perished in this catastrophe. The news produced a profound sensation in the Union. Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings. Eight months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy: ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... despatches. The captain at length appeared; but with him were others, the sight of whom awakened strange sensations in his breast. For there was Florian, and with him was Pere Michel; Claude was there also, and beyond he saw some soldiers. The sight was to him most appalling, and something in the face and bearing of De Brisset and Florian ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... twenty-odd engineers who scarcely see their bunks from the Elbe to the Hudson. And, in that cool, grey, pearly dawn, think of those passengers sleeping in their palatial state-rooms, with never a thought of the slaves who drive that monstrous ship across the Atlantic at such an appalling speed. I say "appalling" because I know. The smoking-room nuisance will say, "Pooh! My dear fellow, the Lusitania licks us clean with her twenty-five knots." He is coldly critical because he does ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... appalling to look upon. His face was that of a snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where he thought he might find a friend. "Alee, don't you know me?" "Mohammed, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... when in place of the superb building she saw only an appalling ruin—in place of the magnificent trees and rare flowers which surrounded it, only briers and thorns, nettles and thistles, could be seen. Terrified and most desolate, she tried to force her way in the midst of the ruins, to seek some knowledge of her kind friends. ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... the camp now, and cheerful lights could be seen in the pavilion where the whole camp community was congregated, safe from the storm. The noises which had seemed weird enough at camp were appalling now, as out of that havoc far above them, great bowlders came tumbling down into the ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... leaning against a tree. Why did not Benedetto turn aside, either to the right or the left? He could not; something stronger than his will drew him toward the nameless Thing. Finally Benedetto laid his hand on the shoulder of the Thing. It turned and lifted its head. Then an appalling shriek, which was like nothing human, came from Benedetto's lips. This spectre was that of his mother, whom he had stabbed in the breast at Beausset so many years before. And the ghost stood gazing at him with her large eyes, while her gray ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... the potato famine of 1846-47, which, undoubtedly, dealt a stunning blow to Irish agriculture. It was not the first, nor the worst, of Irish famines—there is evidence that the famines of 1729 and 1740 were, proportionately, more widespread and more appalling in their effects. But, occurring as it did, in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the press of the world as witnesses, it attracted immense attention, and the nations, whom England, then high and mighty in the undisputed supremacy of the doctrines of laissez ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... interminable games of chess, sick at heart with a longing that almost amounted to anger. He could not tell his aunt. As far as that went, the wise old lady had divined that their first trouble had come to them in all the appalling and exaggerated proportions that such troubles assume, but she smiled gently to herself, for she, too, had been young, and the ways of lovers had been her ways, and the paths of love she had trodden, and she had drained ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... the manikins of Herr Hippe was not alone the artistic truth with which the limbs and the features were gifted; but on the countenance of each little puppet the carver's art had wrought an expression of wickedness that was appalling. Every tiny face had its special stamp of ferocity. The lips were thin and brimful of malice; the small black bead-like eyes glittered with the fire of a universal hate. There was not one of the manikins, male or female, that did not hold in his or her hand some miniature weapon. The little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... out, on the next. Thus James settled summarily the question between himself and his kinsmen. The house of Albany ended upon the scaffold, and however just their doom might have been, there was something appalling in this swift and sweeping revenge, carried out rigorously without a sign of hesitation by a young king, a happy bridegroom, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... horseman was seen riding up the mountain alone. It was the Duke, about to join his troops. One of Campbell's Portuguese battalions first descried him, and raised a joyful cry; then the shrill clamour, caught up by the next regiment, soon swelled as it ran along the line into that appalling shout which the British soldier is wont to give upon the edge of battle, and which no enemy ever heard unmoved. Suddenly he stopped at a conspicuous point, for he desired both armies should know he was there, and a double spy who was present pointed out Soult, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... longer contain the multitudes that flocked to it, was thrown into such consternation on the eruption of the plague that the citizens destroyed themselves, as if in frenzy. When the plague ceased, men thought they were still wandering among the dead, so appalling was the livid aspect of the survivors, in consequence of the anxiety they had undergone, and the unavoidable infection of the air. Many other cities probably presented a similar appearance; and small country towns ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... unendurable; past bearing; not to be borne, not to be endured; more than flesh and blood can bear; enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson swear, enough to gag a maggot. shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing; dreadful, fearful, frightful; thrilling, tremendous, dire; heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening; harrowing, rending. odious, hateful, execrable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... off. A bald skull, as shining as a death's head, showed the man's real countenance. It was appalling. Lucien sat on his divan, his hands hanging limp, overpowered, and gazing at the Abbe ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... represented in so profound and dramatic a manner. For it is not only in his color in which this man so easily surpasses all the world, but in his life-like, flesh-and-blood action,—the tragic power of his composition. And is it not appalling to think of the 'large constitution of this man,' when you reflect on the acres of canvas which he has covered? How inspiriting to see with what muscular, masculine vigor this splendid Fleming rushed in and plucked up drowning ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... estates at Paris, all of whom promised the king their aid. In the language of the chancellor, "The commons offered to help their king with their bodies and their wealth, the nobles with their advice, and the clergy with their prayers." This appalling news ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... firmly believed throughout the United States that this appalling disaster was caused by a submarine mine, deliberately placed near the mooring buoy to which the Maine had been moved, to be exploded at a favorable opportunity ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... This was stated with great exactness. It was the amount of this appalling sum that had, no doubt, crushed out her last ray ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... rapidly reaching a point where his favourite gems might become all at once a mere drug in the market. Depreciation is the one bugbear that perpetually torments Sir Charles's soul; that winter he stood within measurable distance of so appalling a calamity. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... contempt of anything but popular sway, he never came into the presence of the quiet and well-bred without a feeling of distrust and uneasiness, that had its rise in the simple circumstance of his not being used to their company. Indeed, there is nothing more appalling, in general, to the vulgar and pretending, than the simplicity and natural ease of the refined. Their own notions of elegance lie so much on the surface, that they seem at first to suspect an ambush, and it is probable that, finding so much repose where, agreeably ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the sum raised in England by taxation has, in a time not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied forty-fold, is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those who are alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase of the public resources. In the year 1685, the value of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... execution for women murderers should be altered in her case to beheading by "the Maiden.'' Had she been of lesser rank she would certainly have been burned, after being strangled at a stake, as were her nurse and the serving-woman. This was the appalling fate reserved for convicted women[4] in such cases, and on conviction even of smaller crimes. The process was even crueller in instances where the crime had been particularly atrocious. "The criminal,'' says the Pitcairn account ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... by the indignation it had aroused, sent an embassador to London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and sombre sadness ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... away with her. Whereupon ensued so sore a pain that it brake my sleep, and as I awoke I laid my hand to my side to feel if aught were amiss there; but finding nothing I laughed at myself that I had searched. But what signifies it all? Visions of the like sort, ay, and far more appalling, have I had in plenty, and nought whatever, great or small, has come of any of them. So let it pass, and think we how we may ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... aching hearts that wait Today in homes made desolate By one sharp blow appalling— For all who kneel by altars lone, And strive to say "Thy will be done," That awful ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... was an appalling crash that overturned everything in the vessel. Our hero was himself wrenched from his position, and hurled against the bulkhead of the boiler-room; the masts went over the sides as if they had been pipe-stems, and the wire-ropes snapt like pack-thread. A ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... half torn off; blood covered him; he strained and flung himself weakly in that iron clutch. He was beaten and bent back. His tongue hung out, bloody, fluttering with strangled cries. A ghastly face, appalling in ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... the Germans. Losses, appalling though they were, did not seem to hold them in check. They were almost over the spot now. Jacques set his jaw firmly and steeled himself to do his duty. It was for France he told himself. He had selected with his eye a spot which he had determined to be one hundred feet distant; when the Germans ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... prolonged stutter. Every now and then he remembered a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened his back, and gave it off like Henry Irving, and the next moment he was bent double and crooning over his papers. It was the most appalling rot, too. He talked about the 'German menace', and said it was all a Tory invention to cheat the poor of their rights and keep back the great flood of social reform, but that 'organized labour' realized this and laughed the Tories to scorn. ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... from noticing the firmness and presence of mind evinced by Captain Burgess under the most appalling circumstances. After having adopted every available means for saving the ship without effect, he superintended for many hours the disembarkation of the crew, and during all that tedious process he was standing in a heavy surf up to the middle in water; ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... again between me and the wretched makeshift pallet. Nay, when I stood and looked down at him, as he moaned and rolled in senseless agony, with livid face and distorted features (which the cold grey light of that miserable room rendered doubly appalling), she hung over him and fenced him from me: so that looking on him and her, and remembering how he had treated her, and why he came to be in this place, I felt unmanly tears rise to my eyes. The room was still a prison, a prison with ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the dead could quicken, We then might turn to that life again. But on lonely nights we would hear them calling, We should hear their steps on the pathways falling, We should loathe the life with a hate appalling In our lonely rides by the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... the ship, the—the admiral! They won't have a chance for their lives. It is appalling to think of! I cannot bear ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... coarsely unpopular. In the order of nature, a new assembly must come before long, and he will be indisposed to shock the feelings of the electors from whom that assembly must emanate. But though the interest of the Minister is inconsistent with appalling jobbery, he will be inclined to mitigated jobbery. He will temporise; he will try to give a seemly dress to unseemly matters: to do as much harm as will content the assembly, and yet not so much harm as will offend the nation. He will not ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... hand on Halsey's brow, "You know, dear, I don't know whether you and baby are anywhere—anywhere"; wildly, as if the appalling loneliness of its meaning had flashed upon her dulled brain, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... this appalling form that the projected operation with the sixpence made its way through the Corporal to Lady Eleanor, who was horrified. She at once sent for both Mrs. Mugford and Mrs. Fry to get at the truth of the story, and gave them such a scolding for their folly and their quarrelsomeness that they departed ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... fell beside the howitzer and burst with appalling sound. The gun was blown from position, and out of the smoke came a fearful cry of wounded men. "O God!—O God!" The smoke cleared. All who had served that gun were down. Their fellows about the six-pounder, the other gun of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... have scalped him. But somehow the scoundrel gets round me! I suppose its because, though he is provoking, he is never irritating. And he's as much of a fool as I was at his age! That keeps me fair to him. Well, he has stuff in him, that boy. He's as truthful as Edith; an appalling tribute, I know—but you like it in a cub. And there's no flapdoodle about him; and he never cried baby in his life. And he has imagination and music and poetry! Edith is a nice little clod compared ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... of this task seemed to Juliette like unto the last Judgment Day; a thing so terrible, so appalling, so impossible, that it would take a host of angels ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fills me with lynx-eyed vigilance and alarm; it is the dreaded possibility of taking a header among these awful vegetables that unnerves one, starts the cold chills chasing each other up and down my spinal column, and causes staring big beads of perspiration to ooze out of my forehead. No more appalling physical calamity on a small scale could befall a person than to take a header on to a cactus-covered greensward; millions of miniature needles would fill his tender hide with prickly sensations, and his vision with floating ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the situation had become sinister. The smiles around him were dreadful-looking things, all except Laurie's. With an appalling howl Samuel detached himself from the surgeon's grasp and fled to Laurie, who picked him up and held him firmly and comfortably in his lap until a lady in white came with something nice for Samuel ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... to match, provisions for a lengthened period, and plenty of beads and other articles which can be bartered for ivory. Moreover, a number of native servants must be kept, and the amount of meat which they consume daily is almost appalling. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the thunder and the gust had passed. "My soul recoils from the bare idea of pronouncing my own accursed name! But—unhappy as you see me—crushed, overwhelmed with deep affliction as you behold me—anxious, but unable to repent for the past as I am, and filled with appalling dread for the future as I now proclaim myself to be, still is my power far, far beyond that limit which hems mortal energies within so small a sphere. Speak, old man—wouldst thou change thy condition? For to me—and to me alone of all human ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... described. But I think of myself, too; comforts, luxuries, indulgences, I value highly. Since my father's death I have tasted enough of poverty to know something of its bitterness; and to be doomed to it for life is appalling to me. The sordid cares of narrow means are so distasteful, that I cannot contemplate them with any degree of patience. After a day of exhausting mental effort, to return to a dingy, ill-furnished home,—to relieve professional labors by calculations about the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... youth: And turned to smite what he no more could see. Then sped the singing pebble-messenger, The chosen of the Lord from Israel's brooks, Fleet to its mark, and hollowed a light path Down to the appalling Babel of his brain. And like the smoke of dreaming Souffriere Dust rose in cloud, spread wide, slow silted down Softly all softly ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... He was really appalling. Again his wandering stare went round the table, with an expression incredibly incongruous with the words. It was as though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that visit. He still held Dona Rita's hand, and, now ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... colonel, pursuing his inquiry, undertook to investigate the operation of these laws, he found an appalling condition. The statutes were mild and beneficent compared with the results obtained under cover of them. Caxton spent several weeks about the State looking up the criminal records, and following up the sentences ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt |
