"Detestable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the fact that the distillation plot had not ruined him as they expected it would have done. His disgrace, however, and unjust ejectment from Ahadarra filled them with that low, ruffianly sense of exultation, than which, coming from such scoundrels, there is scarcely anything more detestable in human nature. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... How detestable are the Roman numerals! why should not the President's addresses, which are often, and I am sure in this case, worth more than all the rest of the number, be paged ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Mary had made it politically imperative for her to kill her. All this we had threshed out many times before, and had said that, cat for cat, Mary was the more dangerous because she was the more feminine, and Elizabeth the more detestable because she was the more masculine in her ferocity. We were therefore in the right mood to visit Mary's prison, and we were both indignant and dismayed to find that our driver, called from a mews at a special price set upon his intelligence, had never heard of it and ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... resembling sailors, in white trowsers and blue jackets. Thus they are obliged to expose themselves to a multitude, while they walk to Salt Hill, where they dine. As an Eton boy, I have witnessed four Montems, and could never think of each but as a ridiculous, tedious, and detestable performance; the only good resulting is, that the captain of the collegers receives several hundreds of pounds, which are collected from the crowd by other collegers in fancy dresses, and denominated "salt-bearers," and "runners," who dun high and ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... you should ask pardon of all three boys, openly and honestly. You cannot expect them to respect and trust you for a time, but you can live down this disgrace if you try, and I will help you. Stealing and lying are detestable sins, and I hope this will be a lesson to you. I am glad you are ashamed, it is a good sign; bear it patiently, and do your best ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Durer blush. He did not say a word in answer. The little man, who was very clear-sighted, said—"This young fellow is ashamed to own that he belongs to a poor shepherd in the village hard by. Bad heart—strong head—detestable nature! This boy will never make anything but a diplomatist." Then, after a moment's reflection, he said to himself—"But it's ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... conspicuous by the fact that his trousers were too high. He had a feeling of unmitigated mental nausea, too, when he noticed how Carovius lifted first one foot and then the other from the floor, and then set it down, heel first. It was a detestable habit; and indulging in it made ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... gradually more elevated, and its general features much more English, consisting of corn, woody copses, and pastures full of cowslips. I cannot say, however, that we found any thing to remind us of England at the detestable inn where we were quartered for the night, and have no doubt but that Lucy le Bois or Avalon would have afforded somewhat much better. The only civilized person was a large black baker's dog, who, like Gil Blas's first travelling acquaintance, seemed free of ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... annihilation of American nationality, American power, and American freedom. All the bad, restless, retrogressive elements of our own population sought alliance with the foreign enemies of human liberty; and, for the most selfish and detestable of all social and political schemes, attempted to prostrate the paternal government of their country, before the expiration of the first century of its unexampled career. Vast armies of deluded citizens, led by degenerate sons of the republic—ingrates, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... some they sent over sea to the book-binders, not in small number, but at times whole ships full, to the wondering of the foreign nations. Yea, the Universities of this realm are not all clear of this detestable fact. But cursed is that belly which seeketh to be fed with such ungodly gain, and shameth his natural country. I know a merchant man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... baser passion, rouses them into vicious activity, and fastens their fangs on men whose characters are far superior to his own. With this fact before them, it is strange that Christians should continue to regard these detestable laws as a bulwark of their faith, or in any way calculated to defend it against the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat. The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works' (Amos 8:4-8). So detestable and vile a things is this in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... master should think that my silence was either neglect or want of duty; but, in reality, my situation is such that I have nothing to say but imprecations against the fatality of being born in such a detestable age." An unhappy and uncongenial marriage tended still more to embitter his existence; and if at last he yielded to frailties, which inevitably insure degradation, it must be remembered that his lot had been one to which few men have ever been ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Dignity of Behaviour, whereby to awe the Presumption of the Bold and Forward: So that, while we behold them as Angels of Light, they would be pleased not to give too convincing Evidence of their Fall from that to a lower Character; a detestable one too, which will in a short time sink them as much in the Esteem of their flattering Admirers, as those very Deceivers had before persuaded them, that they were elevated above the common ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... look at his father. He had been touched by the bent figure, the wasted face; the evident signs of sickness and suffering. He had resolved to be very tender with him. But not even pity could blind him to the detestable cunning of that move. It revolted him. He had not yet realized that the old man was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated fine wrinkles. More than ever he recalled ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Chilton, have occupation for thought and hands; are not tied down to a detestable routine of vapid pleasures ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... though convinced that the motto of all atheists was "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die," criticized his food almost as severely as he criticized human beings. The mulligatawny was not to his taste. The curry was too not. He was sure the jelly was made with that detestable stuff gelatine; he wished his wife would forbid the cook to use it if she had seen old horses being led into a gelatine manufactory as he had seen, she ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Art enucleating and discouering the ignorance that wee worke in, our detestable presumption, and publike ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... Professor of Greek in the College De Propaganda Fide expressed his admiration in some detestable hexameters and pentameters, of which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... submitted to the fellow's companionship. This absurd delicacy must be corrected before it became his tyrant. The idea of scrupling to hurt the sensibilities of Andrew Peak! The man was coarse-hided enough to undergo kicking, and then take sixpence in compensation,—not a doubt of it. This detestable tie of kindred must no longer be recognised. He would speak gravely to his mother about it. If Andrew again presented himself at the house he should be given plainly to understand that his visits were something less than welcome,—if necessary, a downright blunt word must effect their ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... contemptible bits of tools, and he had an amateurish, ladylike air of flinching from the chips. But he did it much more quickly than I could have done it, I felt humbly. I only wished he would not smile in such a detestable fashion and suddenly assault me with 'How are you now? All right, eh?' I suppose he was practising his English. And as the finishing touch was put on the washer with a thin, snaky file, he asked suddenly ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... king over them all; and they shall be no longer two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any longer; nor shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them from all their apostasies wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them; so shall they be my people, and ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... "Those detestable Balkans!" quoth one diplomat in an undiplomatic moment: and expressed well the official mind. "They are six of one and half a dozen of the other," said the man in the street when he heard of massacres, ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... he thinks about love and wisdom. But these things will be treated of in detail in treatises on The Lord's Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence. Let every man guard himself against falling into the detestable false doctrine that God has infused Himself into men, and that He is in them, and no longer in Himself; for God is everywhere, as well within man as without, for apart from space He is in all space ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... age commits suicide. Indeed, Monsieur, I trust this century will see one more great event, the end of this Parisian tyranny, and the resuscitation of provincial life; for I must repeat, my dear sir, that your centralization, which was once an excellent remedy, is a detestable regimen! It is a horrible instrument of oppression and tyranny, ready-made for all hands, suitable for every despotism, and under it France stifles and wastes away. You must agree with me yourself, Durocher; in this sense the Revolution overshot its mark, and placed in jeopardy even its purposes; ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... sister's confinement; but that is a thing which my honour would not suffer me to make public; and, after so damnable an action, he came and enclosed himself and her in this place, which he has supplied, as you see, with all sorts of provisions, that he might enjoy his detestable pleasures for a long time, which ought to be a subject of horror to all the world: but God, who would not suffer such an abomination, has justly punished them both. At these words he melted into tears, and I joined mine ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... up my mind that I would not speak to Richard Dawson, although I was forced to sit by him, and that was a contact which I found most detestable. But he would talk to me and sit close to me, and once when I had turned away from him and addressed Sir Arthur Ardaragh, who was on the other side of me, I caught my grandmother's eye on me with a look ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... the lights, the crowd ... He saw it all, hour after hour. He was not an imaginative man, but it seemed to him that he had actually been present at this scene. He had to attend the inquest. That had been horrible. With all eyes upon him he stood up and answered their detestable questions. He had trembled before those eyes. Suddenly the self-confidence of all his life had left him. He had stammered in his replies, his hands had trembled and he had been forced to press them close to his sides. He had given his ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... inasmuch as the inventor will indubitably be the object of pressing solicitations, and as Engineer Serko will employ every means in his power to obtain the composition of the explosive and deflagrator, of which he will make such detestable use during future piratical exploits. Yes, it would have been far better if I could have remained Thomas Roch's keeper here, as ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... the increased regularity of her boarder's habits with complacency, when those little excursions of his had been so much to her interest. She attributed the change not so much to a gradual diminution of fortune as to a spiteful wish to annoy his hostess. It is one of the most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... conversation; for two hours my mind was quite made up to do my duty instantly—and at each particular instant I postponed it till the next. To screw up my faltering courage, I called at dinner for some sparkling wine. It proved when it came to be detestable; I could not put it to my lips; and Bellairs, who had as much palate as a weevil, was left to finish it himself. Doubtless the wine flushed him; doubtless he may have observed my embarrassment of the afternoon; doubtless he was conscious that we were approaching a crisis, and that that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the rest of her social schemes. I took her at the valuation, told her she could have the house and I'd take the money, and behaved generally like a young fool. I was only—what? Only twenty-six then. And sham seemed to me the most detestable thing on earth. So Apsley Manor went over to her and I came up to live in London. I don't know really that I regret it so very much. This life suits me in a way, though sometimes it's a bit lonely. That's, at any rate, the gist of the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... did Rebekah gain by this detestable contrivance? She saw, indeed, her favourite son inheriting the blessing; but this would have descended upon him without her interference, according to the predeterminations of Providence. She saw also a just recrimination upon her deceit on the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the harangues of the duke's advocate in defence of assassination, which he termed tyrannicide; and that assembly, partly influenced by faction, partly overawed by power, pronounced no sentence of condemnation against this detestable doctrine.[*] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... sternly said, as the pallid wretches stood ranged before him, "that so vile a treachery, so detestable a cruelty, against a King so potent and a nation so generous, would go unpunished? I, one of the humblest gentlemen among my King's subjects, have charged myself with avenging it. Even if the Most Christian and the Most Catholic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... desire for peace and seclusion. A taxi would have solved my difficulty (had I been able to solve the taxi difficulty first), but George himself anticipated me by suddenly holding up a private car and asking for a lift. I could have smiled at this further lapse had not the owner, a detestable club acquaintance whom I had been trying to keep at a distance for years, been the driver. He was delighted, and I was borne away conscious of twenty years' work ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the stupidest of all pride, the vainest and the meanest, the pride of the poor man. It's detestable. I thought you were greater. There's some excuse for the pride of wealth, but there's none ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... be a long way off," she replied calmly. "You see, Barry and I quarrelled yesterday. We both have vile tempers,—perfectly detestable tempers. Of course, we will make up again—we always do—but there may come a time when he will say, 'Oh, what's the use trying to put up with you any longer?' and then it ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that enthusiasm for the beaux arts, which shows its produce in execrable music, detestable pictures, abominable sculpture, and a droll something that I believe the French call POETRY. Dancing and cookery,—these are the arts the French excel in, I grant it; and excellent things they are; but oh, England! oh, Germany! you need not be ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... out the traditions of the Palais Royal, had acquired the detestable taste and habit of embroiling people one with the other, so as to profit by their divisions. This was one of his principal occupations during all the time he was at the head of affairs, and one that he liked the best; but which, as soon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... father should express his approval thus graciously, but she was not uplifted. It was Mr Ffolliot's way. He had been detestable all day, and now he was going to be charming. His compliments counted for little with Mary. Yesterday he had told her she moved like a Flanders mare, and hurt her feelings very much. Her dress was made in the ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... three-quarters profile with all the airs of a king of the poultry-yard, airs which were prodigiously admired by the aristocratic circle of which he was the beau. There was a strain of eighteenth century grossness, as a rule, in his talk; a detestable kind of conversation which procured him some success with women—he made them laugh. M. du Chatelet was beginning to give this gentleman some uneasiness; and, as a matter of fact, since Mme. de Bargeton had taken him up, the lively interest taken ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... the queen gave birth to a princess, which innocent babe underwent the same fate as the princes her brothers; for the two sisters, being determined not to desist from their detestable schemes till they had seen the queen their younger sister at least cast off, turned out, and humbled, exposed this infant also on the canal. But the princess, as had been the two princes her brothers, preserved from death ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... they tell me,—unless Percival refuses to agree. This house is mortgaged, but not for its value. And there are some jewels. But all that is detestable,—a mere grovelling among mean hundreds; whereas ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... no correction from anyone. Glapio, then the Emperor's confessor and diplomatist, addressed himself, with expressions of wonderful friendship, to Frederick's chancellor, Bruck. Even he found much that was good in Luther's writings, but the contents of his book, the 'Babylonian Captivity,' were detestable. All that need be done was that Luther should disclaim or retract that offensive work, so that what was good in his writings might bear fruit for the Church, and Luther, together with the Emperor, might co-operate in the work of true reform. He might be invited ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Melick, "I only referred to the intention of the writer. His plan is one thing and his execution quite another. His plan is not bad, but he fails utterly in his execution. The style is detestable. If he had written in the style of a plain seaman, and told a simple unvarnished tale, it would have been all right. In order to carry out properly such a plan as this the writer should take Defoe as his model, or, still better, Dean Swift. Gulliver's ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... of the preceding week he mentions having gone to Bath to drink the waters there, but "is disappointed in the city. Their new buildings, that are so admired, look like a collection of little hospitals. The rest is detestable, and all crammed together, and surrounded with perpendicular hills that have no beauty. The river [the Avon] is paltry enough to be the Seine or the Tiber. Oh! how unlike ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... think it detestable—but of course that doesn't matter. When I talk about books you think me a nincompoop.—That word used to amuse me so when I was a child. I remember laughing wildly whenever I saw or heard it. It is ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... have I seene under the sunne-shine of the Gospell: but by how much, zeale is more glorious then common profession, by so much is dissembled fervency more detestable then usuall hypocrisie; yea, no better then divellish villany & double iniquity: such painted walles and whited sepulchers, the Lord will breake downe. Let all Timothies & Nathanaels learne to descry them, and discard ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... de Coverley was the tamest and most humane[89] of all the brutes in the country. I was told she said so, by one who thought he rallied[90] me; but upon the strength of this slender encouragement of being thought least detestable, I made new liveries, new-paired my coach-horses, sent them all to town to be bitted, and taught to throw their legs well, and move all together, before I pretended[91] to cross the country, and wait upon ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... at war is a mob whose very blatancy, injustice and cruelty drive one to hatred and opposition. The enemy mob seems less detestable because it is out of sight and one thinks almost involuntarily: "It cannot be ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... Antioch. Now he hurried to Constantinople, but too late. The East Goths had joined the West Goths; and hordes of Huns, Alans, and Taifalae (detestable savages, of whom we know nothing but evil) ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Detestable Plujii! With malice aforethought, they brought about high winds that destroyed the banana plantations, and tumbled over the heads of its occupants many a bamboo dwelling. They cracked the calabashes; soured the "poee;" induced the colic; begat the spleen; and almost rent people in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... stupidity, informing a bright and soft and delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when it is accomplished. You are, when all is done, not even detestable, not even a worthy peg whereon to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures whom poets—oh, and in youth all men are poets!—whom poets, now and always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... so ugly, so revolting, so despised, that soon they will toss bread to us as they do to the dogs. Alas! my poor mondes [people], take pity on us! take pity on me! I don't deserve my fate, and no woman ever had a filthier, more detestable husband. Help me to pick him up, or else the wagons will crush him like an old broken bottle, and I shall be a widow, which would kill me with grief, although everybody says it would be great good fortune ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... good-humouredly complies with all or nearly all their requests. These are the national and legislative follies of this wise and prosperous people, and such is the false position into which we are drawn by a long course of detestable policy—policy arising at first out of circumstances, and eventually adhered to from those powerful prejudices which struck their roots so deep into the soil that the force of reason and philosophy has not yet been sufficient to tear them up. Peel, in one of his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Difference of habit and manners at the time will account for much: but the wiser apologists will simply say that Fielding's attitude to certain deviations from the strict moral law was undoubtedly very indulgent, provided that such deviations were unaccompanied by the graver and more detestable vices of cruelty, treachery, and fraud—that to vice which was accompanied by these blacker crimes he was utterly merciless; and that if he is thus rather exposed to the charge of "compounding by damning"—in the famous phrase—the things ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Clemenza Lodi was not, perhaps, more signal than many which have occurred. It threw detestable light upon the character of Welbeck, and showed him to be more inhuman than the tale of Mervyn had evinced him to be. That man, indeed, was hitherto imperfectly seen. The time had not come which should fully unfold ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... 100 degrees to 50 degrees! A brickfielder is a southerly wind, and it takes its local name from the circumstances of its blowing over, and bringing into town the flames [sic] of a large brick-field: it is nearly as detestable as ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... detestable son was wrought up to the resolution of murdering her to whom he owed his life. But how? He was too cowardly and irresolute to take open means. Should he remove her by poison or the poignard? The first was doubtful. Agrippina was too practised in guilt, too accustomed to vile deeds, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... conciliatory, and in this respect he was the absolute reverse of his father. Upon his first journey out of Spain, in 1548, into his various dominions, he had made a most painful impression every where. "He was disagreeable," says Envoy Suriano, "to the Italians, detestable to the Flemings, odious to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Mr. Lawrence, whence the sensitive soul looked so distrustfully forth, as ever ready to retire within, from the offences of a too rude, too uncongenial world. Wretch that I was to harbour that detestable idea for a moment! Did I not know Mrs. Graham? Had I not seen her, conversed with her time after time? Was I not certain that she, in intellect, in purity and elevation of soul, was immeasurably superior to any of ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... 15. MX DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,—I came away from Fredonia ashamed of myself; —almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye. For I began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... confidential advisers were three eunuchs, who ruled the empire in his name—Artoxares, who had taken such a prominent part in the campaign which won him the crown, Artibarzanes, and Athoos; but the guiding spirit of his government was, in reality, his wife, the detestable Parysatis. She had already borne him two children before she became queen; a daughter, Amestris, and a son, Arsaces, who afterwards became king under the name of Artaxerxes. Soon after the accession of her husband, she bore him a second son, whom she named Cyrus, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... manage French, and do pretty well in history and geography, but I can't learn Latin," groaned Winnie. "I didn't mind so much when we only did sentences, but now we've begun Caesar it's simply detestable. I'm an absolute ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... at a suburb theatre in Vienna. He had nothing to do with the theatre then; I did not understand what he did, but I think he was continually at a gambling house, though he was careful always about taking me to the theatre. I was very miserable. The plays I acted in were detestable to me. Men came about us and wanted to talk to me: women and men seemed to look at me with a sneering smile; it was no better than a fiery furnace. Perhaps I make it worse than it was—you don't know that life: but the glare and the faces, and my having to go ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... you—to put stripes upon you. I tell you, Alfred Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one feels for a reptile, whose cunning is as detestable as his sting is deadly. I loathe you from instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a villain, but I feel you ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... said; several people have blamed me for not calling attention to the use of the word "Herod" by Mr. Chamberlain. But really the Speaker was so generous; I entered so fully into his idea that recrimination would only prolong an odious, detestable, and degrading scene—that I could not haggle about terms; and was determined to do my part towards getting back the House to a sense of its ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... outrageously, or to the limits of brutality. I do not mean even the less brutal blows administered by undisciplined teachers and parents, who avenge themselves in excesses of passion or fatigue or disgust,—blows which are simply the active expression of a tension of nerves, a detestable evidence of the want of self-discipline and selfculture. Still less do I refer to the cruelties committed by monsters, sexual perverts, whose brutal tendencies are stimulated by their disciplinary power and who use it to force ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... Pierre had vainly sought one night with the object of sending him to the Asylum for the Invalids of Labour. He had been sent there a little later, but he had fled three days afterwards, unwilling as he was to submit to the regulations. Wild and violent, he had the most detestable disposition. Nevertheless, he could not be left to starve. He came to Abbe Rose's every Saturday, it seemed, and received a franc, which sufficed him for the whole week. Then, too, there was a bedridden old woman in a hovel in the Rue du Mont-Cenis. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... buildings, that are nearly all bizarre and Gothic; with the gardens, where the affectation of imitating nature is worse than the monotonous symmetry of art; with the taste that heaps up in the palaces what is first-rate, what is good, what is bad, what is detestable, all pell-mell. He is disgusted at the amusements, which have the air of religious ceremonies; with the men, on whose countenances you never see confidence, friendship, gaiety, sociability, but on every face the inscription, 'What is there in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... should probably run into a bullet whilst trying to avoid it. My one idea being to get through the zone of fire, I paid no attention to his remonstrances, and soon reached a safe place. The Boers only learnt these detestable volleys from our troops, and carried them out indifferently well; but the possibility of their occurrence, in addition to the projectiles from "Creechy," added greatly to the excitement of an evening stroll, and we had many such episodes when ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... I: "he was a pure virtuous character, and perhaps the only pure and virtuous character that ever went over to Rome. The only wonder is that so good a man could ever have gone over to so detestable a church; but he appears to have ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of course, if wanting vitality, crave for stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not the original want of vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallows—and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what I know, from eye-witnesses—have been the cause of the Red Indians' extinction, then how is it, let me ask, that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to their great harm, been drinking ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... presumptuous in anticipating what I think will be the verdict of posterity) the Witch in Coleridge's Christabel, may rank even with the creations of Shakespeare. It may be doubted, indeed, whether Shakespeare had bile and nightmare enough in him to have thought of such detestable horrors as those of the interchanging adversaries (now serpent, now man), or even of the huge, half-blockish enormity of Nimrod,—in Scripture, the 'mighty hunter' and builder of the tower of Babel,—in Dante, a tower of a man in his own ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the evening about, five." Majesties wait at Berlin, with their Party,—among whom, say the old Newspapers, "is his Royal Highness the Crown-Prince:" Crown-Prince just come in from Custrin; just blessed with the first sight of his Charmer, whom he finds perceptibly less detestable than ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it, if He did not mean us to enjoy it? That is contrary to common sense, and contrary to the whole teaching of the Old Testament. But if by the world you mean the world of man, the society in which we live—dare you compare a Christian and civilized country like England with that detestable Roman world, sunk in all abominable vices, against which St John and St Paul prophesied? Are not such thoughts unjust and uncharitable to your neighbours, to your country, to all mankind? Then the first party will say, But you do away with all devoutness; and the second ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... awakened conscience, are standing records of your exalted merit, and of my detestable baseness: but your forgiveness will lay me under an eternal obligation to you.—Forgive me then, my dearest life, my earthly good, the visible anchor of my future hope!—As you, (who believe you have something to be forgiven for,) hope for pardon yourself, forgive me, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... et la difference que l'on met entr'eux les porte a detester meme les auteurs de leurs jours. On en a vu un grand nombre, dans le massacre de Saint-Domingue, porter sur eux leurs mains parricides. Les plus delicats se chargeoient mutuellement de cette detestable commission. Vas tuer mon pere, se disoient-ils, je tuerai ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... jails, in addition to the ordinary spy system operated by officials, organize a supplementary one composed of convicts themselves—stool pigeons—certain carefully selected prisoners, who are rewarded for treachery to their fellows by various indulgences and secret liberties. The principle is detestable, and has evil effects. The stool pigeons themselves are of course the basest members of the community, and the other prisoners, soon learning to suspect them, come at last to a miserable distrust of one another—for the comrade apparently most sincere may be at heart only a more artful traitor. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... unexceptionably; his disposition was seemingly to comport with the desires of the People to convey the Teas to the original proprietors. The Consignees have behaved like Scoundrels in refusing to take the consignment, or indemnify the owner of the ship which conveyed this detestable commodity to this port. Every possible step was taken to preserve this property. The People being exasperated with the conduct of the administration in this affair, great pains were taken and much policy exerted to procure a stated ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... made the mistake of associating with him in power his son Commodus, who was eighteen years old when his father died, and reigned alone from 180 to 192. He began his despicable career as sole ruler by buying peace of the Marcomanni and the Quadi. He turned out to be a detestable tyrant, who was likewise guilty of the worst personal vices. He was strangled in his bedroom by one of his concubines, Marcia, with the assistance of others, all of whom he was intending to kill. At this time the army, where ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... eleves de la patrie. The abbe, become a member of the Committee of Public Safety, denounced Madame de Fleury, in the strange jargon of the day, as "the fosterer of a swarm of bad citizens, who were nourished in the anticivic prejudices de l'ancien regime, and fostered in the most detestable superstitions, in defiance of the law." He further observed, that he had good reason to believe that some of these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and abetted Monsieur de Fleury's escape. Of their having rejoiced at ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... had great ambitions for me. They sent me to a boarding school while I was very young. No one knows what a boy may suffer at school through the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young people are often more sensitive than one supposes, and by shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may develop to an exaggerated extent a sensitiveness which is overwrought and may become sickly ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... returned to offer us a collation, served up in the shells of cocoa-nuts. It was a sort of paste, composed, I believe, of different sorts of fruit, mixed up with a kind of flour and the milk of the cocoa-nut. This mixture was detestable to me; but I made up for it with some kernel of cocoa-nuts and the bread-fruit. Perceiving that I liked these, Bara-ourou ordered some of them to be gathered, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... I never shall be." She laughed wearily. "Do you think a clever woman would own up to an unpleasant past to the man she wanted to marry? And if you want to hear more detestable things about me, ask the Colonel, ask Mrs. Berry, ask the Rajah. They know all about me, for I told them yesterday. You don't need to look so white and haggard. I am not going to marry you. That is what I came to say. And ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... thee— 25 Rede of the Lord— Because Me thou hast wholly forgotten And trusted in fraud. So thy skirts I draw over thy face, 26 Thy shame is exposed. Thine adulteries, thy neighings, 27 Thy whorish intrigues; On the heights, in the field have I seen Thy detestable deeds. Jerusalem! Woe unto thee! Thou wilt not be clean— ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... from the author and popped it into his portfolio. He had no policy, and did not want another's. He had bottled his wasp. Seward was obedient as the spaniel. His powers were recognized by the villains who comprised him in the detestable plot. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... days. But in those "Tom Sawyer" days it was a great and sincere satisfaction to me to see Peter perform under its influence—and if actions do speak as loud as words, he took as much interest in it as I did. It was a most detestable medicine, Perry Davis's Pain-Killer. Mr. Pavey's negro man, who was a person of good judgment and considerable curiosity, wanted to sample it, and I let him. It was his opinion that it ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... from his family by the midnight robber, and transported to the mournful regions of perpetual slavery, while his wife and his little ones are left to struggle alone, in poverty, for the bread of mere existence. This is a melancholy but a faithful picture of the miseries occasioned by the detestable kidnapper. Let us exert our best faculties for the purpose of eradicating such evils. Those societies who form the line of demarcation between the states in which slavery has been partially or totally abolished, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead of an argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has it all his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism—those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety—I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if religious instruction ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was induced to do so by fraud. Well-informed in all things, the Devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the Devil ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... lips together. "I see," she said brightly. "But then, was I not detestable too? so stubborn, so wilful, so ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... Tipps? The great accident did little for her beyond shaking her nervous system, and confirming her in the belief that railways were unutterably detestable; that she was not quite sure whether or not they were sinful; that, come what might, she never would enter one again; and that she felt convinced she had been born a hundred years too late, in which latter opinion most of her friends agreed with her, although they were glad, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... he continued, lowering his voice, and leaning towards Mademoiselle Cormon's ear, "that a young man brought up in those detestable lyceums should have ideas? Only sound morals and noble habits will ever produce great ideas and a true love. It is easy to see by a mere look at him that the poor lad is likely to be imbecile, and come, perhaps, to some sad end. See how ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... associate any such feelings with it. It was from the Norman, the worst of all robbers and miscreants, who built strong castles, garrisoned them with devils, and tore out poor wretches' eyes, as the Saxon Chronicle says, that the English got their detestable word genteel. What could ever have made the English such admirers of gentility, it would be difficult to say; for, during three hundred years, they suffered enough by it. Their genteel Norman landlords were their ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... as his sincere exertions in the cause of the suffering Indians is creditable to himself; but neither his exertions, nor the royal authority, could baffle the selfish cruelty and avarice of the people of that captaincy; they broke out into open rebellion in defence of their detestable practices, and even when they returned to obedience, there was a compromise between humanity and avarice, to which ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... hush followed, broken only by the sound of breathing, and an occasional ticking as of some long-legged creature on the wall and window-blind. Mrs. Murphy could never remember if she actually went to sleep, but she is sure her husband did, as she distinctly heard him snore—and the sound, so detestable to her as a rule, was so welcome to her then. She was lying listening to it, and wishing with all her soul she could get to sleep, when she suddenly became aware of a smell—a most offensive, pungent odour, that blew across ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... or a virtue, or a kind of virtue; and they had not in the age of Plato reached the point of regarding it, like justice, as a form or attribute of virtue. They had another perplexity: 8) How could one of the noblest feelings of human nature be so near to one of the most detestable corruptions of it? (Compare ...
— Lysis • Plato
... has placed restrictions on unions that are not blessed by Heaven. Benedict XIV. has called them DETESTABLE. A sad experience has proved the wisdom of the warning. When the love that has existed in the blinding fervor of passion has subsided into the realities of every-day life, the bond of nuptial duty will be religion. But the conflict of religious ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... servant of mine shall be hanged for a crime he didn't commit, so long as I have a voice to speak or a dollar to spend. There'll be no trouble after I get there, William. The people are naturally wrought up at such a crime. A fine old woman,—she had some detestable traits, and I was always afraid she wanted to marry me, but she was of an excellent family and had many good points,—an old woman of one of the best families, struck down by the hand of a murderer! You must remember, William, that blood is thicker than water, and that the provocation ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lost his crown and his liberty in the cause of her country and for her sake, to give her person to him, the capital foe of that unfortunate husband. He must, in spite of his passion, have thought her a perfidious, a detestable woman. But I esteemed Berenice; she deserved my esteem. I was certain she would not have accepted the empire from any other hand; and had I been a private man she would have raised me to her throne. Yet I had the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from his scaffold, the weaver from his loom. Men accepted this mission of causing the immense public calamity to fall, morsel by morsel, upon the humblest walks of life. Detestable task! To crumble a catastrophe upon the little and on ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... to his confederate a plan against the peace and honor of his viscountess of so detestable and revolting a nature that even this ruthless assassin shrunk in loathing and disgust from the thought of becoming a participator in it. But he was, as he had said, absolutely and unreservedly at the disposal of Lord Vincent, who held one end ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of this timely tuition had been that George had grown up, not a boisterous, over bearing prig, showing off his learning at every available chance, and making himself detestable, and everybody else miserable, by his conceited air, but a modest, quiet scholar, with plenty of hidden fire and ambition, and not presuming on his talents to scorn his humble origin, or be ashamed of his home and parents—on the contrary, connecting them with ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... calamities, are as loudly vociferating for his blood, as they did for the blood of Marshal Ney. They tell us, that he attributed all the sufferings of himself and others 'to the Oligarchy;' but, not a word does he seem to have said, that can justify these detestable writers in imputing to him any share in any Plot ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... had commanded such a cheerful outlook into one of the pretty gardens, with a pink thorn, a laburnum-tree or two, and some sycamores which still flourish fresh and fair on Campden Hill—was obscured now by some detestable contrivance in transparent paper imitating ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... going to marry Casaubon, and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed that opinion even if he had believed her. As it was, he took her words for a covert judgment, and was certain that she thought his sketch detestable. There was too much cleverness in her apology: she was laughing both at her uncle and himself. But what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp. This must be one of Nature's inconsistencies. There could be no sort of passion ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... quickly slipped into the lock, and the lid rose quickly. The paper? That new, detestable paper, which might deprive her of everything. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... and warmth, and is an instrument of art to all those who know how to use it.[502] Consider also in the case of the enemy, if he is in other respects injurious and intractable, he somehow or other gives us a handle to make use of him by, and so is serviceable. And many things are unpleasant and detestable and antagonistic to those to whom they happen, but you must have noticed that some use even illnesses as a period of rest for the body, and others by excessive toil have strengthened and trained ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... grouching back to the clubhouse and I took 'em home to breakfast. When we got down to the table old Judge Ballard says: 'What might have been an evening of rare enjoyment was converted into a detestable failure by that cur. I saw from the very beginning that he was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... secular press. An unrelenting warfare was carried on against the dangerous occasions of sin peculiar to our country and people, and the Fathers were from the beginning, and their community is yet well known for particular hostility to drunkenness, and to the most fruitful source of that detestable and widespread vice, the saloon. Their antagonism to drunkenness showed their appreciation of its evil supremacy among the masses, and the condemnation of the saloon ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... I would not seek to force upon other nations our principles and our liberty if they did not want them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, in truth, they have established it,—we have a right, as a sovereign power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest require. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... New Testament word for word as it was written, and removed my prefaces and glosses, replacing them with his own. Then he published my New Testament under his name! Dear Children, how it pained me when his prince in a detestable preface condemned my work and forbid all from reading Luther's New Testament, while at the same time commending the Bungler's New Testament to be read—even though it was the very same one ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann
... theocracy in Geneva, modeled after the old testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed, except the one from which ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... here. Majesty has read with open eyes and throat: Letter from the Crown-Prince to Lieutenant Katte in Berlin: treasonous Flight-project now indisputable as the sun at noon!—His Majesty stept on board the Yacht in such humor as was never seen before: "Detestable rebel and deserter, scandal of scandals—!"—it is confidently written everywhere (though Seckendorf diplomatically keeps silence), his Majesty hustled and tussled the unfortunate Crown-Prince, poked the handle of his cane ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... policy. They loaded him with adulation, and said that when he marched in the procession, with his blue coat and nosegay, he reminded them of Orpheus. They even thought it desirable that he should live to clear off a few more of the most detestable men in France, the very men who were making advances to them. They believed that time was on their side. Tallien, Collot, Fouche were baffled, and the rigid obstinacy of the Plain produced a moment ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the Duke of Cumberland's orderly-book shows how closely that able general and detestable individual had studied the habits of those whom it was his lot to conquer; and mark also his contempt for the "Lowlanders and arrant scum" who sometimes made up the lines ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... an imagination so calculated to be a bugbear to itself and a plague to others. Abjectly and vilely servile even to lackeys, he scrupled not to use the lowest and paltriest means to gain his ends. Unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship, without friends—incapable of having any jealous, suspicious, ever restless, full of slyness and artifices to discover and to scrutinise all, (in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme vivacity and a surprising penetration,) ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Coventry!" said he, with his detestable leer. "Of course you smoke; any one who can tool 'em along as you do must be able to smoke. Mine are very mild, let me choose ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... did what they could, and yet could make little or no earnings at it; for this little step of prosecution had made them so known, and their late apparent perjury had made them so detestable, that even the common sort of bad men shunned them, and would not willingly yield them ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... without reason take unto yourself the title of King." He declares that he wants peace and then adds forthwith: "Not a peace hollow, corrupt, feigned, violated, perjured, like that of Montereau, on which, by your fault and your consent, there followed that terrible and detestable murder, committed contrary to all law and honour of knighthood, on the person of our late dear and greatly loved Father, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... protecting, and so long as there are gentlemen worth cutting. The Brighton Bridge Battery is a delightful promenade on a warm summer's day, it is so shady; but it is closed, I may say, every Wednesday and Thursday, to accommodate these detestable pets of the public. It seems, as my brother informs me, that the drovers, from humane considerations, are in the habit of driving their cattle over to Brighton, (when the weather is pleasant,) and back again on the next day, in order that their health may be improved by the sea-air ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... find the word she wanted; nothing in the language she spoke seemed detestable enough to fill the measure of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... I detected fastened to the trunk of the tree, in a manner that was not at first apparent, nine human corpses, some of them so far advanced in decomposition that even the birds would not approach them! Then I understood that I saw before me that detestable thing of which I had often heard as the most prominent object in the typical African native town or village, the "crucifixion tree," upon which the petty despot who rules over that particular community is wont summarily to put to a cruel and lingering death such of his subjects as may be unfortunate ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, bestows fitting altars upon reprobate and wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve. Now the story of their initiation of young novices is as detestable as it is well known. An infant covered with meal, so as to deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be defiled with their rites; this infant is slain with dark and secret wounds by the young novice, who has been induced to strike harmless ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D. |
