"Monstrously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... White Nile to shoot big game; but when he met it face to face, on a social equality, so to speak, he wondered how he could ever have harboured so monstrously caddish a design. He found the animals he had thought he wanted to kill so much handsomer and more important than himself that he felt like begging the alleged "game's" pardon for calling on it without invitation in its country home (as if he'd been ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... laughed the chamberlain; "with monstrously important air he whispered his name in my ear, as if he had been the Pope in disguise or the Emperor himself. I laughed outright, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... People, and of Louis the Just. Monseigneur, too, moved by this indignation, so unusual, of his son, sided with him, and showed anger at so many exactions as injurious as barbarous, and at so many insignificant men so monstrously enriched with the nation's blood. Both father and son infinitely surprised those who heard them, and made themselves looked upon, in some sort as resources from which something might hereafter be hoped for. But the edict was issued, and though ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... trade. It must co-operate with the Trade Unions in fixing this moral minimum wage for the citizen soldier, and in obtaining for him a guarantee that the wage shall continue until he obtains civil employment on standard terms at the conclusion of the war. It must make impossible the scandal of a monstrously rich peer (his riches, the automatic result of ground land-landlordism, having "no damned nonsense of merit about them") proclaiming the official weekly allowance for the child of the British soldier in the trenches. That allowance is eighteenpence, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... to realize that there was more than a touch of obvious indecency in bringing the girl to the house of the man she had tragically loved, and manoeuvering to work her into it as the wife of the man who, monstrously unfit as he was, had taken his place. Captain Palliser knew well that the pressing of the relationship had meant only one thing. And how, in the name of the Furies! had she dragged Lady Joan ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 2l. l3s.; and so on through the other rooms—"Mrs. Powell's chamber," as the best furnished of all, counting for 8l. 4s., while "Mr. Powell's study" goes for only 1l. l4s. Altogether the household stuff amounts in their estimate to a little over 70l. It was a monstrously good bargain to any one who would give that sum for it. Nor, in fact, had the sequestrators been taking all the trouble of the inventory without inducement. Going about with them all the while, and possibly haggling with them over the values, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... sudden expansion of which, from a peace to a war footing, depended upon impressment from the protected merchant ships. It will be seen also that with such precedents of entrepot, for the nourishing of British commerce, it was natural to turn to the same methods,—although in a form monstrously exaggerated,—when Napoleon by his decrees sought to starve British commerce to death. In conception and purpose, the Orders in Council of 1807 were simply a development of the entrepot system. Their motto, "No trade save through England,"—the watchword of the ministry ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... mother to help look at some houses in New King Street, towards which she felt some kind of inclination, but their size has now satisfied her. They were smaller than I expected to find them; one in particular out of the two was quite monstrously little; the best of the sitting-rooms not so large as the little parlour at Steventon, and the second room in every floor about capacious enough to admit a very small ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... so: and that selfe chaine about his necke, Which he forswore most monstrously to haue. Good sir draw neere to me, Ile speake to him: Signior Antipholus, I wonder much That you would put me to this shame and trouble, And not without some scandall to your selfe, With circumstance and oaths, so to denie This Chaine, which now you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... this condition of affairs will be adequately appreciated when it is remembered that every popular movement to right public wrongs must have the fullest publicity or the effort is doomed to failure. The patent medicine business has been shown to be a monstrously evil institution, yet every effort to enlist the public press in an effort to arouse the necessary degree of indignation which precedes every public demand for the righting of a wrong has failed, because, "it is agreed that the —— Company may cancel this contract in case any matter ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... weird, mysterious—fleeing by me, all in one direction; ideographs white and dark, upon signboards, upon paper screens, upon backs of sandalled men. They seem to live, these ideographs, with conscious life; they are moving their parts, moving with a movement as of insects, monstrously, like phasmidae. I am rolling always through low, narrow, luminous streets in a phantom jinricksha, whose wheels make no sound. And always, always, I see the huge white mushroom-shaped hat of Cha dancing up and down before me as ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... deadly discharge touched, would appear horrible burns that ate away the tissues. But that isn't what paralyzed us. We had known these vermin to be short of twelve inches tall, but now they reared monstrously four feet into the air! Their black, hairy limbs lashed in an ecstasy of murder-lust, their beady eyes gleamed with fiendish purpose. And ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... compress into a little hat, my objectively large hands concealed themselves in subjective pockets, my poor generous feet went the way of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. The result is a lop-sided mind, developed monstrously in certain sensitive directions, otherwise not at all. A born stumbler in this world, I naturally lurched up against society—but, as often happens I have lost the thread of my thought: my thoughts, at the critical moment, frequently desert me, as my family did; they seem ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... it is only possible within the limits of the brief span allotted to us upon earth to acquire a certain number of facts. It is monstrously absurd to sacrifice our best years in stuffing so many facts into the brain, in order to avoid being laughed at by a few thin-minded pedants as an ignoramus. Some consolation, at least, might surely be derived from the reflection that ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... pleasure, nor had any taste for 'Hudibras' or 'Gulliver;' and that what we call wit and humour in these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A] Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that we understand as humour, nor can I discover a word which exactly corresponds with our term humour in any language, ancient or modern. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... two Brothers, whose Deformity in Shape was made out by the Clearness of their Understanding: It must be owned however, that (as it generally happens) they had each a Perverseness of Humour suitable to their Distortion of Body. The eldest, whose Belly sunk in monstrously, was a great Coward; and tho' his splenetick contracted Temper made him take fire immediately, he made Objects that beset him appear greater than they were. The second, whose Breast swelled into a bold Relievo, on the contrary, took great pleasure in lessening every thing, and was perfectly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to fight while the seas were still monstrously swollen and their crests were breaking across the decks of these vessels of less than five hundred tons burden. Wildly they rolled and pitched, burying their bows in the roaring combers. The merchant ships ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... in stone or wood, is generally polychromatic. Figures are piled one on the top of another as in the sculptures of Central America and there is a marked tendency to emphasize projections. Leaves and flowers are very deeply carved and such features as ears, tongues and teeth are monstrously prolonged. Thus Balinese statues and reliefs have a curiously bristling and scaly appearance and are apt to seem barbaric, especially if taken separately.[458] Yet the general aspect of the temples is not unpleasing. The brilliant colours and fantastic outlines ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... up these opinions, I have no doubt that Mr Mitford was influenced by the same love of singularity which led him to spell "island" without an "s," and to place two dots over the last letter of "idea." In truth, preceding historians have erred so monstrously on the other side that even the worst parts of Mr Mitford's book may be useful as a corrective. For a young gentleman who talks much about his country, tyrannicide, and Epaminondas, this work, diluted in a sufficient quantity of Rollin and Berthelemi, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is usually the owner of the pony. He may be a man or a boy, but whether man or boy he almost invariably wears a red worsted nightcap. He also wears coarse homespun trousers, immensely too long in the body, and a waistcoat monstrously too short. He will hold the reins and drive if you choose, but most travellers prefer ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... an audible gasp of shock from a spinster-appearing female sunning herself hard by and angularly in the sand in a swimming suit monstrously unbeautiful, Lee Barton was aware of an involuntary and almost perceptible stiffening on ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... with enormous bats and large L's beside the coat of arms; then, to the sound of the flageolet, the retinue of brave Indians, shepherds from Belen, Catalans and Mallorcans; following these passed the dwarfs with their monstrously huge heads, clicking the castanets to the rhythm of a Moorish march; behind these came the giants of the Corpus and at the end, the banners of the guilds; an endless row of red standards, faded with the years, and so tall that their tops reached higher than the first ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... immobility they moved with a certain amazing monstrousness, interminably. No, they were never still. One wondered what they could be at. Surely he could not have had enough work now to keep those insatiable hands so monstrously in motion. Even far into the night. Tap-tap-tap! Blows continuous and powerful. On what? On nothing? On the bare iron last? And for what purpose? ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... never scrupled to exhibit before the world all that was worst in him. There are few chapters that will not recall defects publicly shown by the preacher and author. The reader can scarcely miss a corroboration of a shrewd observation of Macaulay, that there is no proposition so monstrously untrue in politics or morals as to be incapable of proof by what shall sound like a logical demonstration from admitted principles. Theodore Parker was a strong and honest man. Yet few strong men have so lain at the mercy of some narrow bit of logic; few honest ones ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... women from twenty to twenty-four years of age. Therefore it may safely be said that, on the average, and looking at the question, for the present, solely from this point of view, a girl of twenty-one to twenty-two is by no means too young to marry. Of course it would be monstrously absurd to take such a statement as this and regard it as conclusive, even had it been communicated from on high, for any particular case; but as an average statement it may be confidently put forward. At this age, the all-important bones of the pelvis ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... storm of passion, monstrously childish and dreadful. She beat her hands upon the coffin. She wept loudly and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... did not in any wise reflect his monstrously heaving, oil-dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceans of repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily. An exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deep brown eyes of a visionary rested beneath the gentle, scythe-like curves ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... mankind. Ah! he had confessed everything, this fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior captain—a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch, muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and its associated cloisters, set far away from any population as it seemed in a flat wilderness of reedy ditches and patchy cultivation. The distilleries and outbuildings were deserted—their white walls were covered by one monstrously great and old wisteria in flower—the soaring marvellous church was in possession of a knot of unattractive guides. One of these conducted them through the painted treasures of the gold and marble chapels; ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... done in red and green," I put in, eagerly, "and where there will be an ingrowing sideboard in the dining-room that won't fit in with the quaint old dinner-set at all, and a kitchenette just off that, in which the great iron pots and kettles that used to hold the family dinners will be monstrously out ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... a projecting piece of the rock, at the corner of one of these murky entrances, moved on a sudden, and proved to be a human figure, that beckoned to him. He approached, and saw his father. He could barely recognise him, he was so monstrously altered. ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... faith, if not also by more effective organisations; then, all who hold such views as these have as distinctly a function in the community as the ministers and upholders of the churches, and the zeal of the latter is simply the most monstrously untenable apology that could be invented for dereliction ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... very often difficult to make thieves and robbers tell lies, according to the English fashion, to avoid running a risk of criminating themselves. In England, this habit of making criminals tell lies arose from the severity of the penal code, which made the punishment so monstrously disproportionate to the crime, that the accused, however clear and notorious his crimes, became an object of general sympathy.[8] In India, punishments have nowhere been, under our rule, disproportionate to the crimes; on the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... with the bodice cut low and the skirt gathered in loops to show her white silk petticoat, which swelled from under a flowered stomacher so monstrously, that the tiny blue-heeled slipper upon the second stair seemed smaller than ever. Deep frills of lace fell from her short sleeves and a little lace cap was set on ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... detachment as they would clearly to-day both know. For each to be so little at last to the other when, during months together, the idea of all abundance, all quantity, had been, for each, drawn from the other and addressed to the other—what was it monstrously like but some fantastic act of getting rid of a person by going to lock yourself up in the sanctum sanctorum of that person's house, amid every evidence of that person's habits and nature? What was going to happen, at any rate, was that Murray would show himself as beautifully ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... goes for cheating you." Robbie had caught Liza about the waist, and was drawing her to that rose-covered thicket. She found he was holding her tight. He was monstrously strong. What ever was the good of ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... monstrously furnished. Its frank, opulent ugliness was a relief to the girl after the rarefied atmosphere of aesthetics in which for three years she had lived with Charles, upon whom all her thoughts were still concentrated. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... matter. I don't quite see moreover why you speak as if I were paying an abrupt and unnatural attention. What have I done the last three months but talk to you about her? What have you done but talk to ME about her? From the moment you first spoke to me—'monstrously,' I remember you called it—of the difference made in your social life by her finally established, her perpetual, her inexorable participation: from that moment what have we both done but put our heads together over the question ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... a larger proportion to the whole population than in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a community of honest dealers and faithful workmen. It is a matter of the highest interest to know how it could happen that, in such a city, a bequest for such a purpose should be so monstrously misappropriated. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... sides, but terror at his heels, Sam Buzza tore up the hill. Lights danced before him, imaginary voices shouted after; but he never glanced behind. The portmanteau was monstrously heavy, and more than once he almost dropped it; but it was tightly packed, apparently, for nothing shook inside it. Only the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to sea, for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick as a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on a clear, westerly blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Wellington. At the first meeting of the Association after the recall of the Marquis of Anglesea was known, Mr. O'Connell remarked;—"In my own knowledge of Irish history, and I believe I know Ireland's history well, I never heard any thing so monstrously absurd as the recall of this gallant and high minded-man. The Duke of Wellington said he would be worse than mad if he became premier. He is therefore a self-convicted madman! And yet, gracious Heaven! ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... clergyman promised to stand my friend, and to lend me sufficient money to satisfy the brewer, and to get my soul out of the snares of the man in black; and sure enough the next morning the two young ladies brought me the fifty pounds, which I forthwith carried to the brewer, who was monstrously civil, saying that he hoped any little understanding we had had would not prevent our being good friends in future. That a'n't all; the people of the neighbouring country hearing as if by art witchcraft ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... then of Europe,— Italy,—sat in conclave over the matter for nearly three years, deliberating in every possible way how to avoid suspicious management and faulty performance: consequently, the forgery is anything but plain and palpable; nay, it is wonderfully obscure and monstrously difficult: nevertheless, like all forged documents, it is bungled—ay, in spite of the pains taken to keep free from bad and blundering work, it is, occasionally (as will be seen in the present book, from this point until ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... none too good Renaissance carving is in the nave, and the organ case over the western doorway is supported on the shoulders of a series of huge, grotesque, but monstrously human, wooden caryatides. This, with the gigantic, high canopied carven wood pulpit, one of the most extraordinary in the country, forms a relief to coldly chiselled stone, certainly;—but few will consider their charms such as would warrant counting ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... intended to have commenced this book with something quite terrific, a murder or a marriage; and all our great ideas have ended in a lounge. After all, it is, perhaps, the most natural termination. In life, surely man is not always as monstrously busy as he appears to be in novels and romances. We are not always in action, not always making speeches or making money, or making war, or making love. Occasionally we talk, about the weather generally; sometimes about, ourselves; oftener about our friends; as often about our ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... where rich, or at all events prodigal people, go to dine in the summer months, this is especially the case. All these establishments affect fine dinners, yet how seldom it is they give you good ones! Their wines, though monstrously dear, are very fair; indeed, of the champagnes at least you may make certain by looking at the corks; but the food! How many of their fancifully named dishes might be included ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... the field clear," said Strudwarden, "but unfortunately my brain is equally a blank as far as any lethal project is concerned. The little beast is so monstrously inactive; I can't pretend that it leapt into the bath and drowned itself, or that it took on the butcher's mastiff in unequal combat and got chewed up. In what possible guise could death come to a confirmed ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... made an advance; insomuch that he had heard of himself as harshly blamed in London for not having countenanced her recent and rather imprudent move. In other words, whenever she gave a violent tug at their game of Pull, he was expected to second it. But the world of these English is too monstrously stupid in what it expects, for any of its extravagances to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... often discussed the remarkable feature of Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the symbolic gateways of ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... indicated, we think the common estimate of the actual influence of even the costliest preceptive sayings is monstrously exaggerated. That an aphorism should really be of use, it must virtually be reproduced by the faculties of your own soul. But the mental energy and acquirement which thus recreate it in a great degree supersede the necessity of it, render it an expression ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Carlisle and I crossed the water to Battersea, and went in his chariot to Greenwich, where we dined at Dr. Gastrell's, and passed the afternoon at Lewisham, at the Dean of Canterbury's;(15) and there I saw Moll Stanhope,(16) who is grown monstrously tall, but not so handsome as formerly. It is the first little rambling journey I have had this summer about London, and they are the agreeablest pastimes one can have, in a friend's coach, and to good company. Bank Stock is fallen three or four per cent. by the whispers about the town of the ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... terrifying than she had feared, lying in wait for her. Then the moment passed. She raised her head, her hands tightened on the reins, and she drove resolutely into the shadows of the awful front. "Now," she said, not quite steadily, "now I know how monstrously alive a ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... prefaces will take up exactly the number of pages I mentioned, and I am extremely anxious to have the work as perfect as possible, and which I cannot do, if it be finished immediately. The "Religious Musings" I have altered monstrously, since I read them to you and received your criticisms. I shall send them to you in my next. The Sonnets I will send you with ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of an unsubstantial i.e. immaterial First Cause, outrage every admitted rule and every sound principle of philosophising. Only pious persons with ideas like unto an atmosphere of dust superintended by a whirl wind would write books in vindication of the monstrously absurd assumption that there exists an unsubstantial Great First Cause of all substantialities. Nothing can be wilder than the speculations of such 'hair brained' individuals, excepting only the speculations ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the last hillock and dropped down into the lighted bowl of the launching site. The rocket towered, winged and monstrously checkered in white and orange, against the first flickerings of ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... diabolical cruelty is resorted to as in the case of the Strasburg goose. The poor birds are nailed by the feet to a board placed close to a fire, and, in that position, plentifully supplied with food and water. In a few days, the carcase is reduced to a mere shadow, while the liver has grown monstrously. We would rather abstain from the acquaintance of a man who ate pate de foie gras, knowing ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... King's face!" said one of the majority; "our business is to fly in the King's face. We were sent here to fly in the King's face." With this patriotic object a paragraph about Lady Orkney's grant was added to the report, a paragraph too in which the value of that grant was so monstrously exaggerated that William appeared to have surpassed the profligate extravagance of his uncle Charles. The estate bestowed on the countess was valued at twenty-four thousand pounds a year. The truth ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... protesting the honesty and ardor of his passion, but still concealing his name and station. He is delighted to hear his lady-love's voice bidding him to continue his song. (It is the phrase, "Segui, o caro, deh segui cosi," which sounded so monstrously diverting at the first representation of the opera in Rome.) After the second stanza Rosina essays a longer response, but is interrupted by some of the inmates of the house. Figaro now confides to the Count a scheme ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... man who disguised his feelings of repugnance by shewing him what gifts nature had given her. I am sure, ladies, that the most prudish—nay, the most virtuous, amongst you, if you were unfortunate enough to be so monstrously deformed in the face, would introduce some fashion which would conceal your ugliness, and display those beauties which custom hides from view. And doubtless Madame de la Saone would have been more chary of her person if she had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "That monstrously clumsy waggon; the stubborn knave of a waggoner has gotten the middle of the road and there he sticks. He'll draw neither to the left or the right. I've a mind to get down and baste the surly ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... has been more lively of late," she admitted. "At first it was certainly monstrously dull here, and I began to think that we should have to change our plans and go down again to Weymouth, and settle there for a time. Now I am getting contented; but I admit, even at the risk of making you conceited, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... to Capel's Shakspeare, he said, "If the man would have come to me, I would have endeavoured to endow his purposes with words; for as it is, he doth gabble monstrously[15]."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... a person driving an aeroplane, able to move in all three dimensions. Pretty soon, of course, she'd have to come hack to earth, where certain monstrously terrifying questions were ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... fleeing, for after a while he stopped, and standing in one place began to turn with barely a slight movement, so as to have his enemy always in front, in his form and monstrously large head there was now something terrible. The spectators understood perfectly that that heavy body encased in bronze was preparing for a sudden throw to decide the battle. The retiarius meanwhile sprang up to him, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as the "Liquor Interest" plays a sinister part as an organized obstructive force standing in the way of needed reforms. The number of public-houses and drinking- bars in English towns and villages is monstrously out of proportion to any reasonable needs of the population: and it must be more than ordinarily difficult for brewers and publicans, under existing conditions, to resist the temptation to exploit for the sake of gain the weaknesses of others. A Christian need not be a teetotaller in order to have ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... gentlemen's doors with wallets or hats' full of good victuals, which they either carry to their trulls, or sell for a trifle. By this means, our butcher's, our baker's, our poulterer's, and cheesemonger's bills are monstrously exaggerated; not to mention candles just lighted, which sell for fivepence a pound, and many other perquisites best known to themselves and ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... you, Mr. Russell," the Englishman cried delightedly. "Thanks awfully, it is monstrously clever of you to know how to do everything. I wish I could go and live with you. I believe I could learn to farm ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... clever, gloomy story that Mr. HUGH WALPOLE wrote, some years ago, about a pack of schoolmasters who got so monstrously upon one another's nerves that the result was attempted murder? I have just been reading a new story that may be regarded as the female counterpart of the same tragedy. Regiment of Women (HEINEMANN) is described as a first novel; and there are indeed signs of this in a certain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... moment Shorty swung from his horse and joined the group. He gained his nickname from his excessive length, being taller by an inch or two than Jim Silent himself, but what he gained in height he lost in width. Even his face was monstrously long, and marked with such sad lines that the favourite name of "Shorty" was affectionately varied to "Sour-face" or "Calamity." Silent ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... level of his cheeks; that his cheeks are prominent, his lips very thick, his nostrils wide, his face beardless, and his head almost hairless—for the small kinky wool-knots thinly-scattered over his skull can scarcely be designated hair. You may notice, moreover, that his head is monstrously large, with ears in proportion, and that the eyes are set obliquely, and have a Chinese expression. You may notice about Swartboy all those characteristics that distinguish the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... "I should like it monstrously if I were not moped up in school," she answered. "So you have come back. How did you hurt your arm?" she said, in the most ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... taking the heap of wooden platters and the other the smoking bowl of stew, marched solemnly within. But before he went, Boris handed me his pistolet without a word, and the slow-match with it. Which, as I admit, made me feel monstrously unsafe. However, I took the engine across my arm and stood at attention as I had seen him do, with the match thrust through ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... humour. It is not from such a tradition as that, that the Yellow Press emerged. It does not want much pluck to hang about and sneak secrets. It is the pure negation of humour to preach Socialism in the name of the criminal and degenerate. To judge America by this product would be monstrously unfair, but it corresponds perforce to some baser quality in the cosmopolitans of the United States, and it cannot be overlooked. As it stands, it is the heaviest indictment of the popular taste that can be made. There is no vice so mean as impertinent curiosity, and it is upon ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... The Fellow talks Reason, i'faith;—but prithee, Mr. Nicknack, what Business can a Merchant have at this end o'the Town; for a Man that's bred up in a Counting-House to pretend to Airs and Graces, is as monstrously ridiculous, as a Play-House Orange-Wench with a ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I did not intend to wrong you—why have you so wronged me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget you. It is all injustice I have ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... all events, was invariably their fault. Why was it? She herself never changed. When she loved any one, her love lasted all her life. Her mind could not grasp the idea of neglect and desertion; such things seemed to her monstrously wicked, and never occurred to her little heart without giving it a deadly pang. She shivered as a host of vague ideas slowly awoke within her. So people parted one day; each went his own way, never to meet or love each other again. With her eyes fixed on the limitless and dreary ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... was alive. At one time she saw it plainly and at other times it vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her occasionally to greatly tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and faint lights. At last, however, she perceived a human head. It was monstrously dishevelled and wild. It moved slowly forward until its glance could fall upon the prisoner and then upon the sentry. The wandering rays caused the eyes to glitter like silver. The girl's heart pounded so that she put her ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... embraced? What persuasion could induce the loyal to abandon loyalty and become monsters of ingratitude? The traitorous had said that he desired to embody and make soldiers of twelve thousand of the people, and because the Assembly would not consent, that he had dissolved the Parliament? It was monstrously untrue, and it was particularly atrocious in being advanced by persons who might have been supposed to have spoken with certainty on the subject. It had been said that he wanted to tax the lands of the country people, that the House would only consent to tax wine, and that for such perverseness ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... this unfortunate moment that Miki decided to venture one more experiment with Neewa. With a friendly yip he swung out one of his paws. Now Miki's paw, for a pup, was monstrously big, and his foreleg was long and lanky, so that when the paw landed squarely on the end of Neewa's nose it was like the swing of a prize-fighter's glove. The unexpectedness of it was a further decisive feature in the situation; and, on top of this, ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... in the next Place, but his Majesty's grand Master of the Horse must make her a Minc'd-pye. The Gentleman took the Liberty to let her know, that he was no profess'd Cook; a Tart, however, he must make for her, and she got him turn'd out of his Place for being so monstrously careless, as to burn one Corner of the Crust. Whereupon she gave his Post to her favourite Dwarf, and made her Fop of a Page the Keeper of his Majesty's great Seal, and Confidence. Thus she reign'd arbitrary, and was the Female Tyrant of Babylon. All the World deplor'd ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... remembrance of the scene in the Baron's bedroom at the Badischer Hof was too vivid to leave the slightest ground for this theory. He was obliged to be content with the thought that he should soon place the broad Atlantic between himself and a creature so unnatural, so dangerous, so monstrously impossible as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... capable of acting thus. He was tyrannical, insolent, and corrupt enough, if need be he was inexorable, but he was not Tigellinus or Nero. Military life had left in him a certain feeling of justice, and religion, and a conscience to understand that such a deed would be monstrously mean. He would have been capable, perhaps, of committing such a deed during an access of anger and while in possession of his strength, but at that moment he was filled with tenderness, and was sick. The only question ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... before the new comer, paid for his beer, and betook himself again to his tub. He got pretty well off, and, the island shutting out his unconscious rival from his view, worked away at first under the pleasing delusion that he was holding his own. But he was soon undeceived, for in monstrously short time the pursuing skiff showed around the corner and bore down on him. He never relaxed his efforts, but could not help watching the enemy as he came up with him hand over hand, and envying the perfect ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... another his teeth; a pittifull and fearefull sight to behold. Then began the students to waile and weepe for him, and sought for his body in many places. Lastly, they came into the yard, where they found his body lying on the horse-dung, most monstrously torne and fearefull to behold, for his head and all his joynts were dashed in peeces. The fore-named students and masters that were at his death, have obtained so much, that they buried him in the village where he was so grievously tormented. After ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... foolish, to be sure," said Lady Cecilia; "still she might do mischief, and there is something monstrously treacherous in ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... my witness, uncle, I am wrong'd here monstrously, he charges me with stealing of his cloak, and would I might never stir, if I did not find it in ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... continence,—one of those loves possessed of overwhelming charm, an electricity of their own, which lead us to the skies through the ivory gates of slumber, or bear us thither on their powerful pinions. A love monstrously ungrateful, which laughs at the bodies of those it kills; love without memory, a cruel love, resembling the policy of the English nation; a love to which, alas, most men yield. You understand the problem? Man is composed of matter and spirit; animality comes to its end in him, and the angel begins ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... was full to the brim of a flippant, girlish humor that appealed to him monstrously. He felt that it was a man's place to think seriously, if serious thought were needed. And he intended when he married to do the thinking. His wife must be wholly delightful and feminine, in fact, just as Helen was. Pretty, laughing, smartly dressed, and always preferring to lean ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... very thing," cried Peggy. "Of course her mother would send for her on such a night. Only I like not to send her away before she hath finished her supper. 'Tis monstrously inhospitable." ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... he might hold up his face to public view; some of the mob, meanwhile, pelting him with dung and mud, whilst others called him "an incendiary and glutton." They also upbraided him with the defects of his person, for he was monstrously tall, and had a face usually very red with hard-drinking, a large belly, and one thigh weak, occasioned by a chariot running against him, as he was attending upon Caius [716], while he was driving. At ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... distinctness. With her the revelation began in a vague wonder at the scorn with which Crispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousy on his score. Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Then in a flash the answer came—and it was, that far from being a matter for derision, such an attitude in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... politician, and a great criminal, all in one, and he was as pitiless as a panther, more deadly than a moccasin. What influence had perverted such intellect into a weapon of iniquity? What evil of the blood, what lesion of the brain, had distorted his instincts so monstrously? ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... room dedicated to paintings of the Barbizon school, and of this I would advise instant search. I rested my eyes here for an hour. A vast scene of cattle by Troyon (who, such is the poverty of the Dutch alphabet, comes out monstrously upon the frame as Troijon); a mysterious valley of trees by Corot; a wave by Courbet; a mere at evening by Daubigny—these are like cool firm ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... on trestles, it was exposed to public view; but the body had become so black, so deformed and swollen, that it was horrible to behold; from its nose a bloody matter escaped, the mouth gaped hideously, and the tongue was so monstrously enlarged that it filled the whole cavity; to this frightful appearance was added a decomposition so great that, although at the pope's funeral it is customary to kiss the hand which bore the Fisherman's ring, not one approached to offer this mark of respect and religious ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... creatures following the procession swam into the chamber. Monstrously large as the place was, the floor soon was filled with the thick flood of cuttlefish which swarmed in from many doors. Keith, held with the other captives just to one side of the hole he had entered by, began to think that they must ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... feeble that you find it necessary to bluff him even when you have solid considerations to offer him instead. The campaigns of Napoleon, with their atmosphere of glory, illustrate this. In the Russian campaign Napoleon's marshals achieved miracles of bluff, especially Ney, who, with a handful of men, monstrously outnumbered, repeatedly kept the Russian troops paralyzed with terror by pure bounce. Napoleon himself, much more a realist than Ney (that was why he dominated him), would probably have surrendered; ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... way does the value of our educated class define itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course, but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that corresponds to the aristocracy in older ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... case his life is over and his 'occupation gone' with all its glories. But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceiving him—though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked that he can hardly conceive it credible—is a kind of hope. He furiously demands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he is demanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... wild crane succeeded in drawing it out on to the middle of his cheek from the rear of his skull. Its mate sprang forth till it came out on his cheek, [1]so that it was the size of a five-fist kettle, and he made a red berry thereof out in front of his head.[1] His mouth was distorted monstrously [2]and twisted up to his ears[2]. He drew the cheek from the jaw-bone so that the interior of his throat was to be seen. His lungs and his lights stood out so that they fluttered in his mouth and his gullet. He struck a mad lion's blow with the upper jaw [3]on its fellow[3] so ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... degree to the other cases. Offences in which sex is concerned are often needlessly magnified by penalties, ranging from various forms of social ostracism to long sentences of penal servitude, which would be seen to be monstrously disproportionate to the real feeling against them if the removal of both the penalties and the taboo on their discussion made it possible for us to ascertain their real prevalence and estimation. Fortunately there is one outlet for the ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... snobbishly playing the great lady in Mrs. Sarratt's small sitting-room! Whenever that was Cicely's mood she lisped; and as often as Marsworth, who was sitting far away from her, talking to Bridget Cookson, caught her voice, it seemed to him that she was lisping—affectedly—monstrously. She was describing for instance a certain ducal household in which she had just been spending the week-end, and ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... once felt rather troubled on Netta's account. Perhaps Elizabeth was on the verge of giving notice as a protest against the extra work involved by having that monstrously untidy man about the place. Why Netta tolerates him with his slovenly habits is beyond ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... his noble mind, he collected the legs of the Turkish trousers, straightened himself on his knees, and called out to Riah in the next room, 'Halloa, you sir!' At sight of the old man re-entering with a gentleness monstrously in contrast with the character he had given him, Mr Fledgeby was so tickled again, that he exclaimed, laughing, 'Good! Good! Upon my soul ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... . . . Yet, when he thought again Of the same dream, now dreamed three separate times, Always the same, and heard that whistling wind, And saw the windows flashing upward past him,— He slowed his pace a little, and thought with horror How monstrously that small tree thrust to meet him! . . . He slowed his pace a ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... she got anything more than a very small salary—governesses in those days were shockingly remunerated—and I know,—poor soul, she had to work monstrously hard. Drumming Latin and Greek into heads as thick as ours was no ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Hayes, and others." These journals of Courthop and Hayes are so intolerably and confusedly written, and so interlarded with numerous letters about the subject of these differences with the Dutch, that we have been reluctantly under the necessity of omitting them, being so monstrously inarticulate as to render it impossible to make them at all palatable to our readers, without using freedoms that were altogether inadmissible in a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and the sound should be made by the roaring and whistling of a burning gas that did issue forth among the rocks. Yet, truly, though it did be a natural matter, it was yet a wondrous sight, and set amazement on my senses; for the flame did dance, and sway whitherward monstrously, and sometimes did seem that it dropt so low as an hundred feet, and afterward went upward with a vast roaring unto the utter height, and did stand mighty and blazing, maybe a full thousand feet, so that the far side of the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... deep concern. The wind had thrown its weight on the ship, trying to pin her down amongst the seas. They made a clean breach over her, as over a deep-swimming log; and the gathered weight of crashes menaced monstrously from afar. The breakers flung out of the night with a ghostly light on their crests—the light of sea-foam that in a ferocious, boiling-up pale flash showed upon the slender body of the ship the toppling rush, the downfall, and the seething ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... the host, the Chateau-Margaux did not arrive until a late hour, and when the sumptuous supper supplied by "Old Charley" had been done very ample justice by the guests. It came at length, however,—a monstrously big box of it there was, too—and as the whole party were in excessively good humor, it was decided, nem. con., that it should be lifted upon the table and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hold it to be proven that the story of the Deluge is a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of the story of the Creation. [12] Between these two lies the story of the creation of man and woman and their fall from primitive innocence, which is even more monstrously improbable than either of the other two, though, from the nature of the case, it is not so easily capable of direct refutation. It can be demonstrated that the earth took longer than six days in the making, and that the Deluge, as described, is a physical impossibility; ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... monstrously unnatural all that kind of talk is when you come to put it into plain English!" proceeded Lottie after a moment, tapping the floor impatiently with her foot. "If you must preach such doctrines as you did this morning, I am sorry for you; and, if they are true, I ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... "Count Andrea Sperelli is a young man who pays, pays heavily, as we take it we are to understand, for an unbridled surrender to the life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately, as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we should scarce know where else to look for so complete and convincing an account of such adventures. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... medical officers had been using to gouge out the eyes of the wounded Germans who had fallen into their vindictive hands! From the knife he pointed to the medical officers sitting placidly in the train, as much as to say. "And these are some of the culprits." [It is not surprising that thus monstrously misinformed, and ready to believe all evil against the hated English, the soldiers] strained like bloodhounds on the leash. "Out with them!" said their irate colonel, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... this matter I am somewhat like Mr. Dick with King Charles' head; yet it is maddening, and indeed most monstrously unfair, that the work of these splendid men should pass unnoticed and unsung. It need hardly be said that I am not complaining on my own behalf. Heaven forbid! At the time the wire road was being made, we were away out East of Suez, digging holes ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... them. They removed from Ralph's dim quarters to a cheap and cheerful chamber upon the new Boulevard. It was on the fifth floor; the room was just adapted for so little a couple. Superficially observed, the furniture resolved itself into an enormous clock and a monstrously fine mirror; but after a while you might remark four small chairs and a great one, a bureau and a wardrobe, a sofa and a canopied bed; and just without the two gorgeously curtained windows lay a cunning balcony, where they could sit of evenings, with the old ruin of the Hotel Cluny ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... through back streets and unfrequented ways in a shiny prison-van. Who came at last to look upon the Owen Saxham of this hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel for the Crown reared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite a different person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocate described in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of an ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for him some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were so well suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these multitudes of birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark foliage, this hot scented air, these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere soaked through from the Terek and gurgled here and there ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... constantly growing many. If this step is not a colossal one, it is still of immense importance. The musical worthies who ran about wringing their hands after the first performance of each of Wagner's works, and lamented laws monstrously broken, and traditions shattered, were, for once, right. They gauged correctly from which direction the wind was blowing. They probably heard, faintly piping in the distance, the pentatonic scales of Moussorgsky and Debussy, the scales of Scriabine and Strawinsky and Ornstein, the barbarous, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the dazzling splendour of his countenance, which was so great that no mortal could behold it and live, but that, according to his enemies, only served to conceal the hideousness of his features, too monstrously deformed to be contemplated without horror. One of his miracles, which seems the most to have been insisted on, was that he nightly, for a considerable space of time, caused an orb, something like the moon, to rise from a sacred well, which gave a light ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... out of school the children were never free of them. The four faces haunted the minds of children falling asleep; they hung upon the minds of children waking at night; they rose forebodingly in the minds of children waking in the morning; they became monstrously alive in the minds of children lying sick of fever. Never, while the children of that schoolroom lived, would they be able to forget one detail of the four lithographs: the hand of Longfellow was fixed, for them, forever, in his beard. And by a simple and unconscious association ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... elephant kneels down, by command—one end of him at a time—and you climb the ladder and get into the howdah, and then he gets up, one end at a time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout bores into the back of his head with a great iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps the patience will not last; but it does, and nothing happens. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
