"Execrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all you Gods! By heaven, I would rather Embrue my arms, up to my very shoulders, In the dear entrails of the best of fathers, Than offer at the execrable act Of damned incest: ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the vulgar pedestrian. The windows, on a level with the eyes of the passer-by, are draped with cheap lace curtains. The broad expanse of cotton wadding between the double windows is decorated, in middle-class taste, with tufts of dyed grasses, colored paper, and other execrable ornaments. Here, as everywhere else in Moscow, one can never get out of eye-shot of several churches; white with brilliant external frescoes, or the favorite mixture of crushed strawberry and white, all with green roofs and surmounted with domes of ever-varying and original forms and colors, crowned ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... constant assumption of the partisans of slavery, or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the most execrable feature of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... valley had much to recommend it at that season, when grapes, peaches, and other fruits were literally being thrown away on every hand. So I repacked my trunk, and the 'busman who had brought me took me once more along the execrable streets, past the corner pub., near the railway station, and, it being late afternoon, the railway employes, as they came off duty, were streaming towards it for the purpose of "wetting their whistle" ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... insolences which this excellent prince was forced to submit to before that odious judicatory, his majestic behaviour, the pronouncing that horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world, the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour, and the circumstances thereof, are all so well-known that the farther mentioning it would but afflict and grieve the reader, and make the relation itself odious; and therefore no more shall be said here of that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... for anxiety, I tell you—none," Rodriguez replied in his execrable French, smiling uneasily, and making little movements all the time as if ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... have been considered as definite and final. The kaiser, however, when the list was submitted to him for final approval, substituted, in lieu of the name of Professor Wallot, that of his favorite portrait painter, Madame Palma Parlaghy, whose work is, in the eyes of Germany's leading artists, so execrable that the hanging committee of the Berlin Academy have repeatedly refused to accord places to any of her ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... thousand a year: And having daily deserved the gibbet for what he did, Was at last condemned for what he could not do. Oh! indignant reader! Think not his life useless to mankind! Providence connived at his execrable designs, To give to after ages A conspicuous proof and example Of how small estimation is exorbitant wealth In the sight of God, By his bestowing it on the most unworthy of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of such pleasure as he may derive from literature or the fine arts? In short, civilization is little else than getting something for nothing. Like other vested interests, it is "the legitimate right to something for nothing".[32] How much execrable reasoning and how many stupid accusations would fall away if this truth were accepted as a basis of discussion! Of course there is no more flagrant example of a systematic endeavor to get something for nothing than the present business system based on profits, ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... receive a still more mournful hue from a touching tomb—touching even though its taste be execrable—which records a husband's sorrow on account of the death of his young wife—a princess of both the distinguished houses of Chigi and Odescalchi—who passed away at the age of twenty, in the saddest of all ways—in childbirth. It goes to one's heart to think of the desolate home and the bereaved ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... which henceforth they were to hear rising from all things. Besides, they were not difficult to please; they showed the voracity of youth, a furious appetite for all kinds of literature, good and bad alike. So eager were they to admire something, that often the most execrable works threw them into a state of exaltation similar to that which the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Christian king of Great Britain determined to keep open a market and where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold: execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad but execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not love our sovereign ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Amherst's views, but further proposed that dogs should be used to hunt them down. 'You will do well,' Amherst wrote to Bouquet, 'to try to inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad if your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.' And Major Henry Gladwyn, who, as we shall see, gallantly held Detroit through months ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging an humanity and goodness to mankind, that, if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed Civil War than that single loss, it must be infamous and execrable to all posterity." Falkland has been made the hero of a romance by Lord Lytton. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Our Saviour to be a deceiver, the sacred scriptures to contain nothing but idle stories, and all religion to be a device of policy and priestcraft; but Marloe came to a very untimely end, as some remarked, in consequence of his execrable blasphemies. It happened that he fell deeply in love with a low girl, and had for his rival a fellow in livery, who looked more like a pimp than a lover. Marloe, fired with jealousy, and having some reason to believe that his mistress granted the fellow favours, he rushed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Kididimo is exceedingly bleak in aspect. Even the faces of the Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... pre-eminently of selfishness in all its forms, because we see more plainly than ever that there is but one vice which is quite irremediable. The elder Chuzzlewits are bad enough, but they bring their self-inflicted punishments; the Jonases and Tigg Montagues are execrable, but the law has its halter and its penal servitude; the Moulds and Gamps have plague-bearing breaths, from which sanitary wisdom may clear us; but from the sleek, smiling, crawling abomination of a Pecksniff, there is no help but self-help. Every man's hand should be against ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... my shooting today has been execrable; for I have known that at any moment my fellow might ride up with the order for me to return at once, and we are all in such a fever of impatience, that I am surprised I brought down ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... Sappho fell in love with him. Mine are those herbs, if yet there be any such, mine those charms, and mine that fountain that not only restores departed youth but, which is more desirable, preserves it perpetual. And if you all subscribe to this opinion, that nothing is better than youth or more execrable than age, I conceive you cannot but see how much you are indebted to me, that have retained so great a good and shut out so ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... patently, was not to be balked without physical encounter, consequently he was permitted to advance some paces from the lilac bushes, where he delivered himself, in an earnest and plaintive tenor, of the following morbid instructions, to which the violin played an obligato in tremulo, so execrable, and so excruciatingly discordant, that Mr. Chenoweth's subsequent charge that it was done with a deliberately evil intention ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... place of a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military doctor whom I ever met. As a rule, they are not an attractive set. Almost invariably Constantinopolitans, they jabber execrable French fluently enough, and affect European manners in a way which is truly disgusting: add to this a natural disregard of cleanliness, and an obtrusive familiarity, and nothing more is wanted to complete the picture. Of their professional ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed Civil War than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity." From the same authority we learn that although he was ever anxious for peace, yet he was the bravest of the brave. At the battle of Newbury he put himself in the first rank of Lord Byron's regiment, when he met his end through a musket shot. "Thus," says Clarendon, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... flattery. As to his companions they soon had to give it up as a bad job, though they did their best to make themselves agreeable by tucking their partners' arms under theirs, and chattering away in execrable Spanish. Tom noticed that their host and his spouse kept a bright lookout on them, and no sooner was a dance finished than they were taken up and introduced to other partners, who were quite ready to forgive their mistakes; the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... more cruel thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's lifeless form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate furies that belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The blood of generations of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in her veins. The spirits of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired her with new fury. She was at this moment like a pantheress that has brought down ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... on the hillside. They have all fled back into the impenetrable shade whence they came; our minds are free; and if social equity is not a chimera, Marie Antoinette was the protagonist of the most barbarous and execrable of causes. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... relations and the hideous torture of his followers. His arguments made no impression on the mind of Philip II. The King even showed some favour to the children of Tupac Amaru by putting them in the succession to the Marquisate of Oropesa. In the Inca pedigrees Toledo is called "el execrable regicidio." When he presented himself on his return from Peru the King angrily exclaimed: "Go away to your house; for I sent you to serve kings; and ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... be an impious and execrable maxim that, politically speaking, the people has a right to do whatever it pleases; and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the majority. Am I ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... "prone to superstition, opposed to religion." [48] And as far as they made any distinction between Jews and Christians, it was for the latter that they reserved their choicest and most concentrated epithets of hatred and abuse. A "new," "pernicious," "detestable," "execrable," superstition is the only language with which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to notice it. Seneca,—though he must have heard the name of Christian during the reign of Claudius (when both they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, "because ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... of the most uncomfortable weeks I ever spent. Battersea is so far off, the roads so execrable, and the rain so incessant.... There is not a yard of flagging, I believe, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... of the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted, especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor, on the contrary, went ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... judge about to mount the tribunal to pronounce sentence with inexorable severity on some execrable crime. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a free passage, while, according to others, he did so from revenge against the king of Aracan, for the Portuguese who had been slain by that king in Bangael of Dianga[429]. However this may have been, Gonzalez was guilty of a most execrable treachery, as, by leaving open the mouth of the river Dangatiar, he left a free passage to the Moguls. After this he went with his fleet into a creek of the island Desierta[430], and assembling all the captains of the Aracan vessels on board his ship, he murdered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... was indeed Woman, for here she gave rein to her ardent and cruel temperament. She was living, more refined and savage, more execrable and exquisite. She more energetically awakened the dulled senses of man, more surely bewitched and subdued his power of will, with the charm of a tall venereal flower, cultivated in sacrilegious ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... to ourselves, and reached Longjumeau a little before daybreak without having encountered a living creature. Here we knocked up the proprietor of a cabaret, who assured us between yawns that we were going to our doom, and after baiting the grey and dosing ourselves with execrable brandy, pushed forward again. As the sky grew pale about us, I had my ears alert for the sound of artillery. But Paris kept silence. We passed Sceaux, and arrived at length at Montrouge and the barrier. It was open—abandoned—not a sentry, not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... practically identical source, and it is therefore probable that Shawish, having apparently been employed to make up the missing portion of Galland's Arabic text and not having the Hanna MS. at his command, had (with the execrable taste and want of literary morality which distinguished Cazotte's monkish coadjutor) endeavoured to bring his available text up to what he considered the requisite standard by modernizing and Gallicizing its wording and (in particular) introducing ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... one was always in the way. To make sure I next day slipped an envelope into her hand, in which was one addressed to myself, and a scribble asking her to say where I was to meet her. It came back by post containing in execrable writing the words, "My dear, same time, and place, if he be out, on Saturday night." I did not comprehend, but waited outside her cottage that night. She did not show. On Sunday I went to ———, and long after eleven she appeared. Soon we were in ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... that it must be very disagreeable to ride in; but the reverse is the fact, and when seated the motion is most agreeable, like being rocked in a cloud. It makes nothing of the deep ruts and inequalities upon the execrable roads, but sways gently its low-hung, chaise-like body, and dashes over and through every impediment with the utmost facility. Strange as it may seem, it is very light upon the horse, which the postilion also bestrides. When traveling any distance, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... however, that whilst the taste of the whole "Story" is execrable, the facts upon which it ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... moral path decline, 'Lured by the toys that captivate the throng; 'To herd in cabinets and camps, among 'Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; 'Or chaunt of heraldry the drowsy song, 'How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide, 'Rolls to a thousand thrones its execrable tide. ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... boots and shoes, the former of which are worn chiefly, of Buenos Ayres make; and ready-made garments of linen and poor cloths. The imported liquors and articles of food are principally a small quantity of sugar, lard, wine of an execrable quality, and Hamburg gin, together with a few boxes of candles and some oil and soap. To this list of imports must be added the inevitable Chinese fire-crackers, without which noisy accessories no Paraguayan holiday would be complete. Throughout South America ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Harvey sauce, and a bottle of port wine, from that warehouse, the carriage, in which his master seemed desirous of carrying England about the world with him. Every thing, however, according to the Englishman, was execrable. The tureen of soup was a black sea, with livers and limbs and fragments of all kinds of birds and beasts, floating like wrecks about it. A meagre winged animal, which my host called a delicate chicken, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of themselves, must admit that the Pope and all his brood of cardinals, bishops, monks, and canting mass-priests, with all who consent thereunto, are false prophets, damnable deceivers, apostates, wolves, false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars and execrable blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus Christ, of his death and passion, false witnesses, traitors, thieves, and robbers of the honor of God, and more detestable than devils." After citing from the book of Hebrews some passages to establish the sufficiency ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and finally, the North Mountain, which looks down upon a graceful spur to the east, Kiskatom Round Top, and then sweeps away to the northwest. Beyond the North Mountain is a considerable depression, down which passes an execrable road, leading from East Jewett, within the mountain range, to Cairo, at its foot. Finally, we reach Windham High Peak,[1] and the fine road crossing the mountains from Catskill to Delhi, and passing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with 1,000 inhabitants, following a system of production and consumption in common, but not with full equality; carrying on both agriculture and other business. A principal feature here is an entirely new system of education. The author says that man has hitherto been the slave of an execrable trinity: positive religion, personal property and indissoluble wedlock. (Declaration of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... as good on service. It has eight guns attached to it, well provided and served. The artillery-men, drivers, &c., are as well dressed and as fit for their duties as our own. Stores and ammunition are abundant, but the powder is execrable. Captain Magness is a good officer. The guns are six 6-pounders, drawn by bullocks; and two gallopers of very small calibre, drawn by horses. They are not adapted for the duties they have to perform, which is chiefly against mud-forts and strongholds; and four 9- pounders, two howitzers, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the charge," ran the last words of what was at best but a fragment, "I must have broken my promise to you, and have compromised your name. Keeping silence myself, but letting the trial take place, law-inquiries so execrable and so minute, would soon have traced through others that I was with you that evening. To clear myself I must have attainted your name with public slander, and drawn the horrible ordeal on you before the world. Let me be thought guilty. It matters ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of the year 1648 the ill-fated Charles was brought a prisoner to Windsor, where he remained while preparations were made for the execrable tragedy soon afterwards enacted. After the slaughter of the martyr-monarch the castle became the prison of the Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Duke of Hamilton, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to that execrable man, Williamson; the man who but the other day murdered such a number of Moravian Indians, knowing them to be friends; knowing that he ran no risk in murdering a people who would not fight, and whose only ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... front of the great crowned statue of the Virgin. It was illuminated by means of blue and yellow globes which encompassed it with a gaudy splendour; and despite all his piety M. de Guersaint could not help finding these decorations in execrable taste. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... edition, which contains the last improvements made by the author, was published in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the engraver had early been called in; and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delight on execrable copper plates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword into Apollyon, or writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland, and in some of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his native country. Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... youth's horror at the sight of this obnoxious husband, "who seems to him," as M. Janin says in his preface, "a hero—what do I say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, la Franaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity can hardly be controlled. It seems as if M. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... punishment for crimes other than murder. Writing at later dates upon this subject, Joseph John Gurney says: "I cannot say that my spirit greatly revolts against life for life, though capital punishment for anything short of this appears to me to be execrable." And, again, "I cannot in conscience take any step towards destroying the life of a fellow-creature whose crime against society affects my property only. I am in possession, like other men, of the feelings of common humanity, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... eighty-three years well, like an old drunkard saturated with liquor, whom the alcohol seemed to preserve. At Plassans he had left a terrible reputation as a do-nothing and a scoundrel, and the old men whispered the execrable story of the corpses that lay between him and the Rougons, an act of treachery in the troublous days of December, 1851, an ambuscade in which he had left comrades with their bellies ripped open, lying on the bloody pavement. Later, when he had returned to France, he had preferred to the good place ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... but mix with it that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault, even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is, that they stir laughter in sinful things, which are rather execrable than ridiculous; or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, and a beggarly clown; or against the law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... was one to live in our memories, it brought the execrable hooters again. No pen-picture can be drawn of their effect on the nerves; their unearthly melody must be heard. It sounded incidental to carnage, and wailed forth that the enemy was at last about to grapple with ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... pain. A man who dies in agony cannot examine himself—cannot survey the past with calmness or feel convinced of the greatness of his offenses. I thank God for that; but, Jack, although I have committed many a foul and execrable murder, for which I am full of remorse—although I feel how detestable has been my life—I tell you candidly that, although those crimes may appear to others more heavy than the simple one of theft, to me the one that lies most heavy on my soul is the robbing ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Mile. Rio, took one of the instruments and played and sang a piece for us, but I was not more fortunate in my guess with her. It was a wedding chorus, which I was willing to wager was the Japanese "Miserere"; but this error may have its significance after all. To us, in short, the music was execrable. A falsetto, and a grinding, singsong falsetto at that—the most disagreeable sound I ever heard in music—is very common, and highly esteemed. The instruments resemble banjos, and there is a harsh kind of drum accompaniment; but there ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... meaning, that ther was no merites in the virgin, which procured her that honor, to be made the mother of Christ, and to be preferred before other women, but Gods only free mercy exalted her to that estate. Which wordes were counted most execrable in the face of the Clergie ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... for me to state that her Highness had her own ideas of what a husband should be like, gathered, no doubt, from execrable translations from "Ouida" and the gentle Miss Braddon. A girl of twenty usually has a formidable regard for romance, and the princess was fully up to the manner of her kind. If she could not marry romantically, she ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... had begun early in January, rendered the roads execrable, and the Savannah River became so swollen that it filled its many channels, overflowing the vast extent of rice-fields that lay on the east bank. This flood delayed our departure two weeks; for ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not upon such scornful matters as stir laughter only: but mixed with it, that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... admitted with equal credulity, and similar abhorrence, the reality of that infernal art, [46] which was able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs, and execrable rites; which could extinguish or recall life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from the reluctant daemons the secrets of futurity. They believed, with the wildest inconsistency, that this preternatural ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... family; and all his friends; and all his work,—the savior of his father! Then he became incoherent again. He cursed the baseness of mankind. "It was noble," he said, "to crush a rotten world for revenge, or for justice' sake; but to sell out a trust, for fifty millions of the first plunder, was execrable—it was damnable. It was a shame to have to use such instruments. But the whole world was corrupt to the very core; there was not enough consistency in it to make it hang together. Yet there was one consolation—the end was coming! Glory be to God! ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... swashbuckler—"demon des braves"—CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1619-55), Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune, and Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires du Soleil. Cyrano's taste, caught by the mannerisms of Italy and extravagances of Spain, was execrable. To his violences of temper he added a reputation for irreligion. His comedy Le Pedant Joue has the honour of having furnished Moliere with the most laughable scene of the Fourberies de Scapin. The ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback. The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea. That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of Taylor, the water-poet—who deplored the introduction ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... me kiss you any more.' Baner sends you a hearty greeting, and my son-in-law told me to say he had found out that Psamtik, the crown-prince, and your rival, Petammon, had been the sole causes of this execrable deed. I could not make up my mind to trust myself on that Typhon's sea, so I travelled with an Arabian trading caravan as far as Tadmor,—[Palmyra]—the Phoenician palm-tree station in the wilderness," and then on to Carchemish, on the Euphrates, with merchants from Sidon. The roads from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was never that for very long; after a few days the shining, crafty eyes lost their brightness and their duplicity, that picture of an execrable Odette saying to Forcheville: "Look at him storming!" began to grow pale and to dissolve. Then gradually reappeared and rose before him, softly radiant, the face of the other Odette, of that Odette who al^o turned with a smile to Forcheville, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... to the left, as well as a very ancient one, and the plashing fall known as the "Chute de Lapaca," we turned round in the opposite direction, and passing the "Hotel de la Cascade" and a wooden hut, again turned to the left, down what, though an execrable road, led, nevertheless, to the object of our desires. At this turn the Pic d'Aspe reared above us on the right, succeeded by barren hills covered with loose stones, but as we proceeded, the famous central excursion—the Pimene (9193 ft.)—came in sight on the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... of parties, encourage informations to obtain amercements, extort property, seize persons; and when their short-sighted avarice has accumulated into one mass all the riches of a country, the government, by an execrable perfidy, under pretence of avenging its oppressed people, takes to itself all their spoils, as if they were the culprits, and uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for a crime of which it ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... come to anchor," said our dirty Polish host to us in execrable English. "And we may be off on board," said Smith. "Not yet," he said; "they must put their cargo out first." I saw, however, that Smith was uneasy, and I made up my mind to go off to the vessel at once. When they should see an English portmanteau making an ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... chance"—everything, that is, that does not depend on human will—and considers them as non-existent: the ailments of the body, pangs, sufferings, misfortunes, and humiliations are not evils, they are things indifferent. On the contrary, crimes and errors are such evils that they are equally execrable, and the wise man should reproach himself as severely for the slightest fault as for the greatest crime—a paradoxical doctrine which has aroused the warmth of even respectful ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Rolling Stone, which flourished, or at least wavered, in Austin during the years 1894 and 1895. Years before, Porter's strong instinct to write had been gratified in letters. He wrote, in his twenties, long imaginative letters, occasionally stuffed with execrable puns, but more than often buoyant, truly humorous, keenly incisive into the unreal, especially in fiction. I have included a number of these letters to Doctor Beall of Greensboro, N. C., and to his early friend ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... spoke:—"Clithero! Curses light upon thy lips for having uttered that detested name! Thousands of miles have I flown to shun the hearing of it. Is the madman here? Have you set eyes upon him? Does he yet crawl upon the face of the earth? Unhappy? Unparalleled, unheard-of, thankless miscreant! Has he told his execrable falsehoods here? Has he dared to utter names so sacred as those ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... regarded them as vermin, and treated them according to the unrestrained edicts of the Reign of Terror, organized and administered by their late compatriots Sardanapalus, Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and their literary colleague, the execrable Marat, who, by the way, was expeditiously dispatched by the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... cast their eyes upon the proceedings and manners of the French court (wild and chimerical as such an appeal will no doubt appear to them) during the dominion of Catharine of Medicis and her offspring, those execrable deceivers, corrupters, and executioners of their people. To what are the almost incredible abominations, familiar as household words to the French court of that day, to be ascribed? To what are the persecutions, perjuries, the massacres that pollute the annals ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... mantle of snow, Germain stopped, looked about for a house, and waited for a passer-by, but could find nothing to set him right. Then he retraced his steps and reentered the wood. But the mist thickened yet more, the moon was completely hidden, the roads were execrable, and the quagmires deep. Twice the gray almost fell. Her heavy load made her lose courage, and although she kept enough sagacity to avoid the tree-trunks, she could not prevent her riders from striking the great branches which overhung the road at the height of their heads and caused them great danger. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... it really was not. But when at last he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sickening. The cicerone looked amazed at my bad taste, he assured me it was un vero Correggio (which by the way I can never believe), and that the duke had refused for it I know not how many thousand scudi. It would be difficult to say what was most execrable in this picture, the appalling nature of the subject, the depravity of mind evinced in its conception, or the horrible truth and skill with which it was delineated. I ought to add that it hung up in the family dining-room and in full view ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... for a Social Revolution, it is no doubt, first of all, to give bread to everyone; to transform this execrable society, in which we can every day see capable workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer who will exploit them; women and children wandering shelterless at night; whole families reduced to dry bread; men, women, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... is usually prodigiously careful of her little self: she regards men as her natural enemies. Poor innocent!—This absurdity is the fault of her education. They have made her believe that love is the most abominable, execrable, infernal thing in existence. They have taught her to lie and to dissimulate her most innocent emotions. But the time is not far distant when the natural impulses of her heart will break down the barriers that hypocrisy has placed around her. Woman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... temporary exile. It happens in this wise. The first aim of a baby—not yours, madam; yours is well known to be an exception, but of other and common babies—is to make itself as widely offensive as possible. The end, indeed, is execrable, but the method is masterly. The baby has an a priori intuition that the note of the domestic cat is repulsive to the ear of the human adult. Consequently, what does your baby do but betake itself to a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... quality, are made at Athens, Corinth, and Tripoliza, and are exported in moderate quantities to Russia. Algeria, too, is turning its attention to the production of sparkling wines, but solely for home consumption, and at the Paris Exhibition there was a sparkling wine from Uruguay, but of execrable quality. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c. (malevolent) 907. unadvisable &c. (inexpedient) 647; unprofitable &c. (useless) 645; incompetent &c. (unskillful) 699; irremediable ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Aulaire," he said, wearily. "We forgive you this unfortunate plaisanterie, since its execrable taste carries with it its own worst punishment. But be careful, sir, how you offend again!" With a last glance of warning, which, however, had lost its severity, the King turned away, followed by the Due de Broglie, and, seeking the Queen, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Richard Riker was "an imbecile and obsequious pettifogger, a vain and contemptible little pest, who abandoned the Federal standard on the third day of the election, in April, 1800;" John McKisson, "an execrable compound of every species of vice," was the man whom Clinton "exultingly declared a great scoundrel." The attack thus daringly begun was steadily maintained. Ambrose Spencer was "a man as notoriously infamous as the legitimate offspring of treachery and fraud can possibly be;" Samuel Osgood, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a critic to argue with a bishop concerning the merits of a religious picture—it would be irreverent, anomalous, and in execrable taste. For it must be clear to every one that the best and truest critic of a religious picture is a bishop; and it is still more clear that if the picture contains a view of Jerusalem, the one person ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... together. He stopped that ram and felt him, and had his hand once in the hair of Ulysses, yet knew it not, and he chid the ram for being last, and spoke to it as if it understood him, and asked it whether it did not wish that its master had his eye again, which that abominable Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they had got him down with wine; and he willed the ram to tell him whereabouts in the cave his enemy lurked, that he might dash his brains and strew them about, to ease his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled in it. After a deal ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... say a word here about the roads in this province, or perhaps the absence of roads. They had been execrable, the worst I had met, aggravated by heavy rains. With all the reforms to which the province of Yuen-nan is endeavoring to direct its energies, it has not yet learned that one of the first assets of any district or country is ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... interest. Nor shall we leave anything undone for extirpating all fanaticism, but especially those fanatical murderers and assassins, and for detecting and punishing the late conspirators, whose pernicious and execrable designs did so much tend to subvert your majesty's government, and ruin us and all your majesty's faithful subjects. We can assure your majesty, that the subjects of this your majesty's ancient kingdom are so desirous ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defense. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... as a poet, approved of the sentiment; Dr. Steingass, who wrote execrable verses in English which neither rhymed nor scanned, though they were intended to do both, was no less satisfied; Mr. Ashbee, who looked at matters solely from a bibliographical point of view, dissented; and Mr. Arbuthnot sweetly changed the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Hucheloup died. With him disappeared the secret of stuffed carps. His inconsolable widow continued to keep the wine-shop. But the cooking deteriorated, and became execrable; the wine, which had always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his friends continued to go to Corinthe,—out of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Monsieur Sandeau, smiling; "he is mortified to death; his play is execrable, and it ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to be an impious and an execrable maxim that, politically speaking, a people has a right to do whatsoever it pleases; and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the majority. Am I, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... in that ugly old fortress, with its fine stone-work and the execrable decorations covering every inch of it. The days passed oddly. I did a little writing, and I saw my committee, whom I like. Colonel Dennis is an excellent fellow, and so are Mr. Needle, Mr. Vivian Reece{7}, and Mr. Harrison. A ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... not to that end and purpose proposed, that these functions should be opposed one against another, in a hostile posture, or in terms of enmity, than which nothing is more hurtful to the church and commonwealth, nothing more execrable to them who are truly and sincerely zealous for the house of God (for they have not so learned Christ); but the aim is, first, and above all, that unto the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ, the only monarch of the church, his own prerogative ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... politeness to his guests, seemed that day to be in an execrable temper. Again and again he levelled annoying and even galling remarks at his wife, carrying things to such a point at times that tears came to the unfortunate woman's eyes. Now that he scarcely set ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... uncle and others, undertakes to make away with the regent, when a convenient opportunity offered itself: He first lay in wait for him at Glasgow, and then at Stirling, but both failed him; after which, he thought Linlithgow the most proper place for perpetrating that execrable deed; his uncle had a house near the regent's, in which he concealed himself, that he might be in readiness for the assassination. Of this design the regent got intelligence likewise, but paid not that regard to the danger he was exposed to, which he should; and would go no other way than that ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... awaking such a din that existence was unbearable within ten feet of them. Philidor went on with his portraits and was so absorbed that for at least twenty minutes he neither saw nor heard what was going on about him. He had been aware of his companion's execrable performance a while ago, and now realized with a suddenness which surprised him that she played no more. He rose and peered about over the shoulders of his rustic admirers. Somebody directed his glance. There ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... as free; for the clause ran thus: "Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... 1535, so savage were the persecutions, that Pope Paul III., with that gentleness which almost invariably has characterised the popes of Rome in dealing with heresy, wrote to Francis protesting against the horrible and execrable punishments inflicted on the Lutherans, and warned him that although he acted from good motives, yet he must remember that God the Creator, when in this world, used mercy rather than rigorous justice, and that it was ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... people derived from this execrable amusement, induced the candidates for office to gratify, them frequently with this spectacle. The exhibitions were no longer confined to funerals; they formed an integrant part of every election, and were found more powerful than merit in opening a way to office. The utter demoralization of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... conveniences of travelling, even between our main cities, were few, and the roads execrable. The party, therefore, travelled in Virginia style, on horseback, attended by their black servants in livery. [Footnote: We have hitherto treated of Washington in his campaigns in the wilderness, frugal and scanty in his equipments, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving |
