"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature. I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before, and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I experienced at the same time an odd feeling that in some way I had already encountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me. Afterwards it occurred ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... their delight at seeing him again. Every one of these savages was armed with half a dozen spears, a jade-headed club, or powerful bows and arrows, and a wooden shield. They were a much finer type of savage than the natives of New Britain, lighter in colour, and had not so many repulsive characteristics. Neither were they absolutely nude—each man wearing a girdle of dracaena leaves, and although they were betel-nut chewers, and carried their baskets of areca nuts and leaves and powdered lime around their necks, they did not expectorate ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... accident that she had noticed it; she had not noticed the door-plates or the wire-blinds of other solicitors. She did not know Mr. Q. Karkeek by sight, nor even whether he was old or young, married or single, agreeable or repulsive. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the steady current of good-humoured satisfaction with herself which makes her chuckle equally over mishaps and successes, Defoe has gone much more deeply into the springs of action, and sketched a much richer page in the natural history of his species than in Robinson Crusoe. True, it is a more repulsive page, but that is not the only reason why it has fallen into comparative oblivion, and exists now only as a parasite upon the more popular work. It is not equally well constructed for the struggle of existence among books. No book can live for ever ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... to which Mr. Mac-Carthy introduces us is the famous 'Devotion of the Cross'. We cannot deny the praise of great power to this strange and repulsive work, in which Calderon draws us onward by a deep and terrible dramatic interest, while doing cruel violence to our moral nature. . . . Our readers may be glad to compare the translations which Archbishop Trench and Mr. Mac-Carthy have given us of a celebrated ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... book of the day, and passed through countless editions and endless commentaries; and yet it is agreed on all hands that there exists not another work, admitted as literature, that would bear a moment's comparison with it, for indecency, profanity, and repulsive and disgusting coarseness. His work is now a mere curiosity for the student ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... then held. Our agents immediately waited on the bishop of Burgos, who was president of the council of the Indies, expecting a favourable reception, and requested him to transmit our letters and present them with all speed to the emperor, who was then in Flanders. The bishop gave them a haughty and repulsive answer, saying, That he would make a proper representation of our conduct, for having thrown off our obedience to Velasquez. The arrival of Benito Martinez, chaplain to the governor of Cuba, contributed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... attainable in this world, and consequently they are all clothed with the spotless purity of God himself. Not only are they all pure, but they are, moreover, totally free from those natural defects of character, which, in this world, make many holy persons unamiable, and even repulsive. As nature is not destroyed, but perfected by glory, our natural character will not be destroyed by our union with God. But whatever is faulty in it, or offensive to others, will disappear, leaving it amiable and ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... conceived that he was doing the next best thing to saving money, for, if a fatality befell, teaching would always be their resource. The thought, however, of his girls having to work for money was so utterly repulsive to him that he could never seriously dwell upon it. A vague piety supported his courage. Providence would not deal harshly with him and his dear ones. He enjoyed excellent health; his practice decidedly improved. The one duty clearly before him was to set an example ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... manifested any such desire. The nation does not want that kind of national unity of which Germany is so proud, and which seems so admirably adapted to her needs; for the English character and genius rest upon a conception of freedom which renders such a unity foreign and even repulsive to its temper. Whatever be the changes which lie before us, the worship of the State is the one form of idolatry into which the British people are ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... kind of Whitechapel Horror, and with hair in tufts upon my chin like the top of a Bosjesman's head, or else I have to spend all the morning being dabbed about the face by a barber with damp hands. In either case it is a repulsive thing to have, eating into one's time when one might be living; and I have calculated that all the hair I have lost in this way, put end to end, would reach to Berlin. All that vital energy thrown away! However, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the unknown and fearful creature who had allowed herself to be boxed up and carried, God knows, how many fearful miles, just for the purpose of assuming a position which she seemingly might have obtained in ways much less repulsive and dangerous! Was it in human nature to go through such an ordeal, and if it were, what could the circumstances have been that would drive even the most insensible nature into such an adventure! I question, and try to answer my own inquiries, but my ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... human beings have always considered Nevians grotesque and repulsive, the feeling has always been mutual. For those "monstrous" beings are a highly intelligent and extremely sensitive race, and our—to us—trim and graceful human forms seems to them the very quintessence ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... be glad to hear a few of them, my friend. You were good enough just now to call me young and beautiful. You are young too, and certainly not repulsive in appearance. You are gifted, you have led an interesting life—indeed, I cannot help laughing when I think how many reasons there are for my falling in love with you. But you are very reassuring, you tell me there is no danger. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... all. If Waller and Suckling and Carew sacrificed every thing to the Graces, Donne went into the other extreme. With a few splendid and admirable exceptions, his phraseology and versification are crabbed and repulsive. And, as poetry is read in the first place for pleasure, Donne is left undisturbed on the shelf, or rather in the sepulchre; and not one in an hundred even among persons of cultivation, can give any account of him, if in reality they ever ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... have known such a nice variety, and all have been so good to us that we owe them a tribute. You remember the dear, tow-headed one at Morlaix, who insisted on handing us dishes of snails, and papers of pins with which to pick out the repulsive delicacy?' ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... much thinner, so thin that the cheek-bones stood out from the level of his face, whilst the little blood-shot eyes seemed to protrude, giving to his general appearance, even with the mouth (his worst feature) hidden by the respirator, an unusually repulsive look. He was leaning on the arm of Lady Bellamy, who greeted Angela with a smile which the latter fancied had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... rejoice with trembling, for fear it should be only temporary, but I have trusted Him to purify the source, and I must say HE HAS DONE IT, and, instead of thinking these thoughts, I have holy thoughts, and if Satan presents anything to my mind, it is so repulsive to me that I cannot tell you the grief and horror with which it fills me." I wrote her again, encouraging her, and I got another letter, in which she said, "It is a fact that He has cleansed the ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... takes to-day the repulsive form of wage labor," he says, "many owners of small properties keep holding on to them with the greatest sacrifices, for the sole purpose of avoiding falling into the serfdom and insecurity of wage labor. Only Socialism can put an end to small production, not of course by the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Granted, if you will, that English history has been made too often a dry and repulsive study by those who have undertaken to teach it and write it; need it remain so? It must remain so as long as we keep to the old lines and content ourselves with the old methods. What is wanted to make any science interesting is that it should push its inquiries into new fields of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... seized with pity for this miserable creature, whom he had commenced to examine the day before. She was very ugly, in fact truly repulsive; but the expression of the eyes, when speaking of her soldier, returned to the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by approaching them with signals, that we too ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... respectable-looking. If they had been so once they had outgrown them all. The woman certainly had what is called the remains of a fine woman about her, but her face had so many marks of care, of evil passions, and of irregular living, that it was perhaps more repulsive than if it had been absolutely plain in features; her dress was slatternly and ill-fitting, her gray hair untidily gathered under a dingy black cap, with bright, though soiled yellow flowers stuck in it; her eyes, which had still some brightness, had a fierce, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... carpet snake, but the deadly brown and black-necked tiger variety; though against this were a corresponding number of iguanas, both of the tree-climbing and water-haunting species. The latter, to which I shall again allude, is a particularly shuddersome reptile. I had never before seen these repulsive creatures, and, indeed, had never heard ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... compelled myself to do it, without once hesitating or looking back. My low knock at her chamber-door was unanswered. I paused but a few moments before opening it. There stood my friend, with a pale yet firm countenance, and as I advanced she looked me steadily in the face with a cold, repulsive expression. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... be rubbed down with salt and scrubbed, they appear to be deformed. I speak now of the men of my age. Sometimes a boy comes in that looks like a Greek god; but generally the boys are as weird-looking as the men. I am rambling, however. Anyhow I am less repulsive than most of them. Yet, unless the human race has steadily deteriorated, I am surprised that the Creator was not discouraged after ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... song a few years back. You know the one. Phil Harris singing about a thing that you couldn't get rid of, no matter what you did, a thing so repulsive it made you a social outcast. Never thought I'd see one, ...
— See? • Edward G. Robles
... feeling thoroughly jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his hair. Also the boots he wore. He hated the station, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... terribly repulsive face. For some moments she seemed dazed; sat there dully, the onlookers forbearing to disturb her. Then her gaze encountered that of him who had slain the free baron and she sprang to her feet. On her features an expression of bewilderment had been ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... as little of importance that can be said of the internal politics of the Ch'i dynasty. The rulers of that dynasty were thoroughly repulsive figures, with no positive achievements of any sort to their credit. Confucianism had been restored in accordance with the Chinese character of the state. It was a bad time for Buddhists, and especially for ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... have to this place," Terrence McFane, who had just joined the group, announced. "Ever one hears but the one thing—work. 'Tis repulsive, the thought of the work, each on his twenty acres, toilin' and moilin', daylight till dark, and after dark— an' for what? A bit of meat, a bit of bread, and, maybe, a bit of jam on the bread. An' to what end? Is meat an' bread an' jam the end of it all, the meaning of life, the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... this insect achieved the very acme and culmination of repulsive villainy. Fortunately she has mitigated it in two ways. The stench is volatile and soon disappears; while settler's noses get used to it in a measure. Were it not for these merciful provisions, colonization in this land would be an utter impossibility for people ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... present benefaction, in any part, would be to sacrifice gratitude to an excessive and haughty delicacy. Convinced that nothing can be great that it is great to despise, he no longer hesitated to accept Lady Tinemouth's bounty, but smothered in his breast the embers of a proud and repulsive fire, which, having burst forth in the first hour of his misfortunes, was ever ready to consume any attempt that might oppress him with the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued farther, it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen, and charitable ladies, would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; forgetting, in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... putrefaction, was offered against the putrefaction; hyssop, which is a sweet-smelling herb, was offered up against the stench; a living sparrow was offered up against numbness; and scarlet, which has a vivid color, was offered up against the repulsive color of leprosy. The living sparrow was let loose to fly away into the plain, because the leper was restored to his ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... to a very late period, a large and somewhat repulsive-looking monkey, common to the Malabar coast, the Silenus veter, Linn., was, from the circumstance of his possessing a "great white beard," incorrectly assumed to be the "wanderoo" of Ceylon, described by KNOX; and under ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... slavery. I do not care what term you use to describe the feeling of the North in relation to slavery. One gentleman says that the North abhors it, and the use of the term has excited much comment. I may be still more unfortunate, but it is my duty to say that you cannot present an idea more repulsive to the northern mind or the northern conscience, than that of making the North responsible for the existence, expansion, growth, extension, or any thing else relating to slavery. Right or wrong, this sentiment ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... false view of the state of facts to present this as the relation which generally exists between agreeable and disagreeable employments. The really exhausting and the really repulsive labors, instead of being better paid than others, are almost invariably paid the worst of all, because performed by those who have no choice. If the laborers in the aggregate, instead of exceeding, fell short ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... more of the characteristics of the affection turn up. The queer, repulsive, pitiful face of the cretins, which makes them all seem brothers or twins, shapes itself. A yellowish, white or waxy pallor; rough, dry, scaly, bloated skin; swollen, often wrinkled brow; watery eyes, often almost concealed by the thickened eyelids; the depressed pug nose with its wide, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Germans indicate the man of a civilized state who lives on, contented with himself and devoid of any impulse towards further self-culture. To one who is always aspiring after an Ideal, such a one cannot but be repulsive. But how many are they who do not, sooner or later, in mature life, crystallize, as it were, so that any active life, any new progress, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... from the Hall of Independence, at Philadelphia. Nor sordid avarice, nor vulgar ambition, could point his footsteps to the pathway leading to that banner. To the love of ease or pleasure nothing could be more repulsive. Something may be allowed to the beatings of the youthful breast, which make ambition virtue, and something to the spirit of military adventure, imbibed from his profession, and which he felt in common with many others. France, Germany, Poland, furnished to the armies of this Union, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... govern. One of the most formidable rebellions that the Romans had to encounter during their disturbed and troubled sway in Britain was led on by a woman. Her name was Boadicea. Boadicea, like almost all other heroines, was coarse and repulsive in appearance. She was tall and masculine in form. The tones of her voice were harsh, and she had the countenance of a savage. Her hair was yellow. It might have been beautiful if it had been neatly arranged, and had shaded a face which possessed the gentle expression that belongs properly to ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... blue-black naked skins, like the bald head of an old negro, and their long white scattered whiskers. These white stiff hairs on their faces and their dim blinking eyes gave them a certain resemblance to very old ugly men with black blood in them, and made them all the more repulsive. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... of extreme talent, Madame Alla Nazimova, who has had special opportunities of studying the part of Hedda Gabler, has lately (1907) depicted her as "aristocratic and ill-mated, ambitious and doomed to a repulsive alliance with a man beneath her station, whom she had mistakenly hoped would give her position and wealth. In other circumstances, Hedda would have been a power for beauty and good." If this ingenious theory be correct, Hedda Gabler ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... family was revealed in the course of our conversation with Mademoiselle Heger, but the specific causes were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection of the Brontes; her knowledge of them is derived from her parents and the teachers,—presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's letters. One of the present teachers in the pensionnat had been a classmate of Charlotte's here. The Brontes had not been popular with the school. Their "heretical" religion had something ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... by whom the flame had been enkindled. A period of two hours had not elapsed from the commencement of the conflagration, before the whole edifice except the walls, was involved in one shapeless mass of smoking ruin, presenting a scene, as desolating and repulsive to the common citizen, as it was tearful and heart-rending to the church and congregation. Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised the Lord—to use the language of the Prophet,—was thus burned up with fire; and all ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... Never had she even imagined such a home. Indeed, it seemed like profanation of the word to call the bare, uncleanly room by that sweetest of English words. It contained not a home-like feature. Her eyes were not resting on decent poverty, but upon uncouth, repulsive want; and this awful impoverishment was not seen in the few articles of cheap, dilapidated furniture so clearly as in the dull, sodden faces of the man and woman who kennelled there. No trace of manhood or womanhood was visible—and no ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... indicated at the outset. 1. The period has the great variety of almost unlimited creative force; it includes works of many kinds in both verse and prose, and ranges in spirit from the loftiest Platonic idealism or the most delightful romance to the level of very repulsive realism. 2. It was mainly dominated, however, by the spirit of romance (above, pp. 95-96). 3. It was full also of the spirit of dramatic action, as befitted an age whose restless enterprise was eagerly extending itself to every quarter of the globe. 4. In ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... my voice. I was ordered to rest in Italy, and when I learned I should there meet General Laurance, I consented to go. Before leaving Paris, I saw the only child of that hideous iniquitous sham marriage; and, darling, when I contrasted you, my own pure pearl, with the deformed, dwarfish, repulsive daughter, whom the Nemesis of my wrongs gave to Cuthbert, in little Maud Laurance, I almost shouted aloud in my great exultation. You so beautiful, with his own lineaments in every feature, disowned for that misshapen, imbecile heiress of his proud name. Oh, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... despair, and had for a long time sought to sleep in vain, his heart full of misery which he thought he could not bear any longer, full of a disgust which he felt penetrating his entire body like the lukewarm, repulsive taste of the wine, the just too sweet, dull music, the just too soft smile of the dancing girls, the just too sweet scent of their hair and breasts. But more than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed hair, by the smell ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... as old Memnon's image, long renown'd By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch 110 Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string Consenting, sounded through the warbling air Unbidden strains, even so did Nature's hand To certain species of external things, Attune the finer organs of the mind; So the glad impulse of congenial powers, Or of sweet sound, or fair ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... healthily habituated to a diet which would have been positively injurious to their forebears, and no doubt individuals may be led by fortitude or by necessity in time (perhaps weeks, perhaps years) to acquire a tolerance, or even enjoyment, of food at first repulsive, and therefore injurious. The difficulty in the matter is not that of correctly determining what is physiologically sufficient for the human animal, nor even what would be a healthy diet for a community when ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... sought my protection in so extraordinary a manner. He was clean shaven, his features were good; his face, under ordinary circumstances, might have been described as almost prepossessing. Just now it was whitened and distorted by fear to such an extent that it gave to his expression a perfectly repulsive cast. It was as though he looked beyond death and saw things, however dimly, more terrible than human understanding can fitly grapple with. There were subtleties of horror in his glassy eyes, in his drawn ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him. To extremely devout persons, there is something objectionable in most of the great writers of antiquity. Horace, Lucretius, Terence, Catullus, Juvenal,—in each there is one quality or another definitely repulsive to a reader who is determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. From time immemorial, however, it has been recognized in the Christian church that this objection does not apply to Virgil. He is the most evangelical of the classics; he is ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... behind her, and in her hand she held a large slab of bread-and-butter covered with apple sauce and powdered sugar. Evidence that she had sampled this compound was upon her cheeks, and to her brother she was a repulsive sight. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... had to bear them and all their consequences, distress and calamity, until death, through death, and before God's judgment seat. He told us to look and see how many thousands were a burden to their fellows and an offense to God, dragging themselves around as repulsive creatures, visible witnesses to the thoughtful, how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... column of smoke took people up. Another tells of a tree which, when it fell, was sixty miles in length. Another tree is mentioned which formed a sort of ladder, but on different sections of it there were repulsive or stinging insects, through which few but the very courageous persevered in forcing their way. First there was a part swarming with cockroaches; then a place full of ants; then a section covered with large venomous ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... is in the air," he began. "If Lilia was determined to disgrace us, she might have found a less repulsive way. A boy of medium height with a pretty face, the son of a dentist at Monteriano. Have I put it correctly? May I surmise that he has not got one penny? May I also surmise that his ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... on his lips, and thus formed a striking contrast to his morose monosyllabic master, who had grown old before his time, and whose withered, wrinkled features, with the faint sad look from his hollow eyes, were no less repulsive to all, than Edward's cheerful frankness was attractive ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... me sullenly, he flipped the knife toward the fire and resumed his attitude of abstraction. I had never killed an unarmed Indian. I had never shot one in cold blood. The office of executioner did not appeal, but repulsive as it was it would not do for the boy to kill his savage brother-in-law. Lost Sister and the savage were man and wife, even if married according to ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... which were plainly antagonistic to the doctrine that the life is more than meat. The triumph of the mind over the body excited an admiration scarcely less marked than the voluntary sacrifice of life to a sacred cause. Asceticism, repulsive in many of its aspects, and even unnatural and inhuman, drew a cordon around the Christians, and separated them from the sensualities of ordinary life. It was a reproof as well as a protest. It attacked Epicureanism in its most vulnerable point. "How hardly shall they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... him, and found him more repulsive to her at that moment than he had ever been before. Even his daintiness repelled her—the modified perfume about his clothes, his waxed moustache, his rounded finger-nails, and all the other refinements of the man who loves himself and sets out ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... "The Redemption", is intended to portray a righteous transformation from conventional false morality to true Christian life, but in reality presents a very repulsive picture of bestial atavism. The meaner character was not "reformed by mercy", but merely withheld from wholesale vice by isolation. Mr. Hart is so plainly in earnest when he relates this dismal tale as a sermon, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... ragged, turned over on his side. His appearance was little short of repulsive. His voice when he spoke was, curiously enough, the voice of a gentleman, thick and a ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could be more repulsive than the tenement in which Madame Paul had installed herself. It was but one story high, and built of clay, and it had fallen to ruin to such an extent that it had been found necessary to prop it up with timber, and to nail some old boards over the ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... crew had boldly contradicted him. He did not swear at anybody in particular; there was the roar and the crash of the thunder and the flash of the lightning, but no direct stroke descended upon any one. He was angry that such a repulsive and offensive thing as his marriage to Maria Port should be mentioned, or even thought of, but he was enraged when he heard that his niece had believed him capable of such disgusting insanity. With a jerk he ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... hag, with a leering, repulsive face, with her feet planted firmly on her mattress, her knees elevated, her long, ape-like arms closely embracing these—her fingers, strung with brass and silver rings, intertwined with ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... to lower all culture to the level of their interests and comprehension—evincing the while a defiant self-assertion? And on the side of individualism, what do we see? Paltry meanness in abundance, embroidered selfishness, idle self-absorption, the craving to be conspicuous at all costs, repulsive hypocrisy, lack of courage despite all boastful talk, a lukewarm attitude towards all spiritual tasks, but the busiest industry ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... the Roman fatria, or gens, of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon guild, and of the mediaeval sworn commune, were all solemnly bound to avenge the blood of any of their brethren, unlawfully slain. So that the repulsive repetition of reprisals, which so disgusts the modern reader in our old annals, is by no means a phenomenon peculiar to the Irish state of society. It was in the middle age and in early times common ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... yelling slummers hovered on each flank, frantic with impotent rage; willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, knowing that to themselves open conflict meant annihilation. A savage, unsavoury horde of rat-like ruffians, these same allies of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, a peculiarly repulsive residuum these Dublin off-scourings. They screamed "To hell with Balfour," "To hell with the English," "To hell with your Unionists," "To hell with Queen Victoria." Some of them sang ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... into a wild whirl that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very POSE of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... what there might be too austere in that abode, by opening relations with some of the neighbors for Clotilde's benefit, and by procuring her, at intervals, her mother's society. Madame de Pers was kind enough to lend herself to that combination, although the country was generally repulsive to her, and Vastville in particular had in her eyes a sinister character. She pretended that she heard at night noises in the walls and moans in the woods. She slept with one eye open and two candles burning. The magnificent cliffs that bordered ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... looking rather sulky. He was curious to know what she actually meant, but, of course, could not ask, and somehow the whole affair—Ena's deep solemnity and secrecy, her hints which mustn't be questioned, began to seem silly and even rather repulsive. He had never ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... called tactful, and, seeing her advantage, followed it up quickly by a few bright words. These men were of an utterly different type from any she had ever met before, but they had in their eyes a kind of homage which Pop Wallis had not shown and they were not repulsive to her. Besides, the Boy was in the background, and her nerve had returned. The Boy knew how a lady should be treated. She was quite ready to "play ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... some chops, broiled over the hot coals; also collops, spitted, with bits of fat bacon between. But neither of us cared much for goat's meat, and Agathemer's attempt at a broth made of the tougher meat was not a success. It had a repulsive smell and a more repulsive taste, though it seemed nourishing. He made only one pot of broth. After that we fed the coarser parts, little by little, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... prayer-meeting of shouting converts, yet no friend of his race could help rejoicing to see the latter substituted for the former. In proportion, therefore, as the Lapps have become enlightened (like all other savage tribes), they have become less interesting. Retaining nearly all that is repulsive in their habits of life, they have lost the only peculiarities which could persuade one to endure the inconveniences ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... wounded. The blow struck was a most effective one, and, fortunately, fell on one of the most villainous of the hostile bands that, without any provocation whatever, had perpetrated the massacres on the Saline and Solomon, committing atrocities too repulsive for recital, and whose hands were still red from their bloody work on the recent raid. Black Kettle, the chief, was an old man, and did not himself go with the raiders to the Saline and Solomon, and on this account his fate was regretted by some. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... report of the French Court to cause her to shrink instinctively, as from a repulsive insect, at the name of the mistress of Louis XV. She trembled at the thought of Angelique's infatuation, or perversity, in suffering herself to be attracted by the glitter of the vices of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the snarling men as at some repulsive beasts, horrified that they should thus desecrate the quiet of his Pascherette's death-bed. He was not the Milo of old now. His memory had flown back through the years to the time when he was a youth of position and great promise in his own land; when, instead ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... battered flagons, and broken pipes and mugs. On enquiring, what should it be but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours—a tinker, a dyer, a blacksmith, a miner, a chimney-sweep, a bard, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to show in his own person how repulsive drunkenness is; and the beginning of the recent altercation was a discussion and dispute they had as to which of the seven callings loved best the pot and pipe; the bard had beaten all but the parson and, due regard being observed for ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... mixture, and gives its members the name of Stareobratzi. The head of the Baskir family, Aphanassi, soon fell in love with young Daria, and asked her in marriage from her father; but though wealthy, Aphanassi had a rough and repulsive look, and Daria could not bear him; she had, therefore, given him an absolute refusal. Her father doated on her, and had not pressed the matter farther, though he was desirous of forming an alliance so advantageous to his trade; and the Baskir had returned to his ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the letter up from the rug. He picked it up with the tips of his fingers, as if it were something repulsive to him, and threw it down on ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... volunteered for the purpose at the risk of life, the Medical Authorities in desperation were enabled to try every possible method of infection with the alleged Influenza Germs, our boys submitting to inoculation and even to the repulsive ordeal of introduction into the nose and throat of diseased mucous from and close contact with coughing and spitting bed patients in the severest forms of the disease. The experiments were made simultaneously at ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... seem fantastic; his sentiment belongs to ancient history; to a generation bred upon Ouida's romances and the plays of Mr. W. S. Gilbert his morality appears not merely questionable but coarse and improper and repulsive. While he lived he was adored: he moved and spoke and dwelt in an eternal mist of 'good, thick, strong, stupefying incense smoke'; he was the idol of female England, a master of virtue, a king of art, the wisest and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Age-of-Consent bill, which, in common with nearly all the States, Colorado passed in favor of raising the age. That bill was introduced by a woman member, and was strongly advocated by the others, and it called forth an unwise discussion and a repulsive scene in the House. A great many women have been elected to county offices, in that State, especially those connected with the schools, and those of Clerk and Treasurer. In answer to a question, my correspondent adds: "I do not know of any great improvements of any ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... spoken that converted all her frank, proud maidenhood to a memory. In its place there was now something false and sullied. While Dubova was dressing herself, Sina glanced furtively at her from time to time. Her friend seemed to her bright and pure, and she herself as repulsive as a crushed reptile. So powerful was this impression, that even the very part of the room where Dubova stood appeared full of sunshine, while her own corner was steeped in gloom. Sina remembered how she had always thought herself purer ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... feint for feint, until, in the storm, they fight it epically out, and Gilliat remains the victor;—a victor, however, who has still to encounter the octopus. I need say nothing of the gruesome, repulsive excellence of that famous scene; it will be enough to remind the reader that Gilliat is in pursuit of a crab when he is himself assaulted by the devil fish, and that this, in its way, is the last touch to the inner significance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could feel the thrill of it when she saw it through his eyes with all the unpleasantly realistic features carefully wiped out, but it was different now that he had come back to her with the dust and stain of the conflict fresh upon him. The evidences of his strife were only repulsive, and she shrank from them. She watched him with a growing impatience until he rose and laid his empty ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... unsuspecting, loving George? She felt a little faint, for the windows were closed and the room stuffy with the odour of the new furniture and the atmosphere of the workshop; everything here seemed to her commonplace and repulsive. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the mind: Jesus condescending to make use of the wretched arts of human commerce; adopting the repulsive tricks which we employ to float a manufacture or ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... contraband trade in opium, deprives the government of duties, annually, to the amount of four or five millions of dollars. Their commercial system with foreigners, shows a great deal of deep cunning, but it is repulsive to wisdom and good policy, and by no means calculated to afford them the advantages they ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... War I made three fairly long stays at Berlin, putting up at good hotels, where officers—sometimes generals—often lunched and dined. And their appetites frequently amazed me, whilst their manners at table were repulsive. In those days most German officers were bearded, and I noticed that between the courses at luncheon and at dinner it was a common practice of theirs to produce pocket-glasses and pocket-combs, and comb their beards—as well as the hair on their heads—over the table. As for their manner of ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... that there was, in fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted correspondence between James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two psyches, an immediacy of understanding which ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... "it is easy to say that. Now I will tell you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise from the ranks. If ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... by means of the lowest and most repulsive methods, to undermine the Boer policy in order to gain the mastery of the mining legislation and administration. They had persuaded themselves and the rest of the world that the Boers were as a body corrupt and tainted, so they armed themselves, with the power of ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... emotions, as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his fever. Our common mental food has become distasteful, and what would have been intellectual luxuries at other times are now absolutely repulsive. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old, yet of an age that had not outlived the devil of youth. Probably the invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the elements of pleasing, it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft, fluent, polished, but savage license was not far off, hard held by a slender leash; an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The utterance, though ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... in the actual year of Sir Charles Grandison, M. Rouquet's report is not flattering:—"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius, and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming manners." It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson; certainly they describe ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... mediaeval Europe, the ancestors of the English, the French, the Spaniards, and the Germans. On the northwest were the Sarmatians and Scythians—Sclavonic tribes, able to conquer, but not to reconstruct; savages repulsive and hideous even to the Goths themselves. On the east lay the Parthian empire, separated from Roman territories by the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Armenian mountains. The Caucasian range between the Euxine and the Caspian seas presented an insuperable barrier, as did the deserts of Arabia ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... sympathy, although it gave him moments of hope, did not reach the point of helping him to decide what to do about the will. So, veering between the sobering reflection that litigation was probably useless, and the esthetically repulsive idea of using his mother's confession of regret to fight her, he reached no decision. Meantime, "investment" slipped easily into speculation,—speculation which, by that strange tempering of the wind that sometimes comes before the lamb is shorn, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the singular fascination of his look and tone, caught something of the life of his spirit, and were gradually lifted above themselves. Gentle, affable, ready to communicate, dignified, thorough, patient, and learned, never harsh, never repulsive, he was earnest to meet every want of the student. His whole course was marked ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym, we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a great swollen head and an ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a Verres, a Clodius, or a Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in the repulsive subject of Roman slavery, to observe the sympathy and tenderness which Cicero shows to the sick man from whom he has been reluctantly compelled to part. The letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of "Letters to Friends." They ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... feathery ferns, which half-veiled the marble statue, representing some mythological divinity, that still stood in this lonely retreat. It must have been intended for Flora or Pomona, but now there were tufts of repulsive, venomous-looking mushrooms in the pretty, graceful, little basket on her arm, instead of the sculptured fruit or flowers that should have filled it. Although her nose was broken, and her fair body disfigured by many dark stains, and overgrown in part with clinging mosses, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... diverse from those he has seen before. It is the gecko or croaking lizard (Thecodactylus loevis), a nocturnal animal in its chief activity, but always to be seen in these places or in hollow trees even by day. Its appearance is repulsive, I allow, but its reputation for venom is ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... in. There were one thousand of them. Their faces were a curious study. Most of them were bad faces. Beast and devil were printed on them. Thick necks, heavy back-heads, and low, square foreheads, were the prevalent types. The least repulsive were those who looked as if they were all animal, creatures of instinct and appetite, good-natured and stupid; the most repulsive were those whose eyes had a gleam of mingled sensuality and ferocity. But some of these faces that met ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... however, to note the curious fact that there are no buttons in Wenus, and that their mechanical system is remarkable, incredible as it may seem, for having developed the eye to the rarest point of perfection while dispensing entirely with the hook. The bare idea of this is no doubt terribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think we should remember how indescribably repulsive our sartorial habits must seem to ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... ferocity. He was an old man when he was called to lead the country, but he brought with him all his fighting spirit. No one detests the Church and detests Socialism more than he; both of these moral forces are equally repulsive to his individualistic spirit. I do not think there is any man among the politicians I have known who is more individualistic than Clemenceau, who remains to-day the man of the old democracy. In time of war no one was better fitted than he to lead a fighting Ministry, fighting at ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... for you don't do that. You may think me very silent, my love; but I do not talk always when I am inclined, for the fear I might let my feeling out that way, instead of doing something he wants of me with it. And how repulsive and full of offense those generally are who talk most! Our strength ought to go into conduct, not into talk—least of all, into talk about what they call the doctrines of the gospel. The man who does what God tells him, sits at his Father's feet, and looks up in ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... 26th, at 4:00 o'clock a.m., I stepped on board the steamship "Avoca" to take passage for Alexandria. Brindisi, like Havre, is one of the finest places in the world to leave! Almost everything about it is repulsive. I saw many children there that have possibly never seen a washing day in their lives! I sailed for Egypt with great reluctance, for I had already my misgivings about the property of tourists from civilized nations ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... life or society at all seriously. She had all the vitality which gives American women their singular charm and none of the appalling earnestness of high endeavour which sometimes leads even very charming women into repulsive kinds of foolishness. The thought of a marriage between Miss Daisy and King Konrad Karl—with Madame Ypsilante in the near background—affected Gorman with a ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... or joined revolutionary uprisings. I have heard both ex-President Jimenez and ex-President Morales sorrowfully complain that their fall was due to the treachery of trusted subordinates. A particularly repulsive case of perfidiousness was that of General Luis Felipe Vidal, a prominent politician, who participated in the murder of President Caceres, though he had only a few hours before visited the President, played billiards with him and fondled ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... innyard. There was no help for it. The summer passed, Rich opened the Lincoln's Inn Fields playhouse and sent for Lavinia. He gave her quite an important part and Lavinia was elated, albeit the play was one of Wycherley's most repulsive productions, "The Country Wife." But all through the winter season this part was her only opportunity for distinction. John Rich, like most actor managers, had but an eye for himself as the central figure and in his own special province—dancing and posturing. His ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... irresistible is the derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... "Senseless, pitiful, and repulsive is this our existence, in which the immoderate, slavish toil of the one-half incessantly enables the other to satiate itself with bread ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... the Hall enjoyed no enviable notoriety. That Mark Hurdlestone was an object of curiosity, fear, and hatred, to his humble dependents, created no feeling of surprise in those who were acquainted with him, and had studied the repulsive features of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... we have illustrated is a fair example, but despite his poverty-stricken appearance, his torn, loose sleeves and useless boots, he is not at all repulsive. His face tells of want and toil; he has slung a shabby old basket over his shoulders, in which he carries his load, and, with a bunch in his hand, he saunters along the street, proclaiming his trade, "Grun-sel, grun-sel, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... that, as to many matters of fact, we cannot safely depend upon his testimony. His tone is dictatorial and dogmatic; and, though we cannot doubt his piety, we must feel that his spirit is somewhat repulsive and ungenial. Whilst he was sadly deficient in sagacity, he was very much the creature of impulse; and thus it was that he was so superstitious, so bigoted, and so choleric. But he was, beyond question, possessed of erudition and ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... task much more silently than was his wont, and stealing, from time to time, a glance at his noticeable patient with the wild gray eyes, as people peep curiously at what is terrible and repulsive. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... again antagonized by what seemed to him frivolity in the religions pomp that he saw. But here was a religion not only without the attractions of sensuous surrounding, but a religion that maintained its vitality despite a repelling plainness, not to say a repulsive ugliness, in its external forms. For could he doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction so literally, but ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... point of "The Call to Life" is Marie's father, the old Moser—one of the most repulsive figures ever seen on the stage. It may have been made what it is in order that the girl's crime might not hopelessly prejudice the spectator at the start and thus render all the rest of the play futile. ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... The repulsive power to which the development of the comet's tail is due, is one of extraordinary energy. The comet of 1680 shot out its tail through something like 100 million miles in a couple of days. Most probably, much of the matter that is thus thrown off from the cometic nucleus is never ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... that he boasts of having been much more sparing than his rivals in the use of obscene jests, to gain the laughter of the mob, and of having, in this respect, carried his art to perfection. Not to be unjust towards him, we must judge of all that appears so repulsive to us, not by modern ideas, but by the opinions of his own age and nation. On certain subjects the morals of the ancients were very different from ours, and of a much freer character. This arose from the very nature of their religion, which was a real ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... have not had the least success in getting a proper position for Charles. A more thankless, repulsive business than asking for a situation under Government I cannot conceive. I would myself starve rather than ask such a favor if I were alone concerned. The modes of obtaining even a hearing are such as to drive a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the child. What remained on her was composed, partly of skins of animals, partly of coarse cotton cloth. In many places this miserable dress was marked with blood, and her long, flaxen hair bore upon its dishevelled locks the same ominous and repulsive stain. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... even play the easy and perennially attractive part of desdichado so as to keep our compassion. Lucy is a simpleton so utter and complete that it is difficult even to be sorry for her, especially as Ravenswood would have made a detestable husband. The mother is meant to be and is a repulsive virago, and the father a time-serving and almost vulgar intriguer. Moreover—and all this is not in the least surprising, since he was in agonies during most of the composition, and nearly died before its close[20]—the author has, contrary to his wont, provided very ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... step was fire. She might learn to eat raw flesh as had her lord and master; but she shrank from that. The thought even was repulsive. She had, however, a plan for fire. She had given the matter thought, but had been too busy to put it into execution so long as fire could be of no immediate use to her. Now it was different—she had something to cook and her mouth watered for ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... garden. The elder ones had long ago deserted it, and so completely shut off was it from the rest of the house, that the governess and her pupils were as secluded as though in a separate dwelling. The schoolroom was no repulsive-looking abode; it was furnished almost well enough for a drawing-room; and only the easels, globes, and desks, the crayon studies on the walls, and a formidable time-table ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poverty-stricken crowd. And yet they say it is He." Simeon got out of his litter and drew his scimitar. Then he pressed forward amid the disagreeable smell of old clothes and of the perspiring crowd. Oh, how repulsive is the odour of the poor! The multitude shyly gave way to the brilliant figure, for never had its like been seen in the Master's neighbourhood. Jesus stood calmly under the fig tree and saw the stranger coming. He stood still three paces off Him, beat his head, placed his hand on his brow, like ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... for suicidal purposes with nitrate of silver are in most cases prevented from the fact that this salt has such a disagreeable metallic taste as to be repulsive; cases therefore of poisoning are only liable to occur by accident or by the willful administration of the poison ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... and Hesse in 1833. It was first obtained in the form of needles, which were much more soluble than atropine. In the pure state it forms a viscous mass with a repulsive odor. These researches were repeated by Thibout, Kletinski, Ludwig, Lading, Bucheim, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... herself. She is not of those who "to be won, must be wooed." Her aims are obtrusive; instead of waiting for the approach of another, she makes constant advances toward him. This fault is still more repulsive to most gentlemen than the other. They esteem it an indication of great vanity on the part of a young woman, and expressive of no very high sense of their own powers of discernment, or of their delicacy of feeling. Such persons must expect little ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... soup too salt, dirty, with hard bits of skin instead of meat; and the perch was cooked with the scales on it. They make their cabbage soup from salt meat; they roast it too. They have just served me some salt meat roasted: it's most repulsive; I chewed at it and gave it up. They drink brick tea. It is a decoction of sage and beetles—that's what it is like in taste ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... imagination, which he never controlled, which constantly evaded his will and went off, unfettered, audacious, adventurous, and stealthy, into the infinite world of ideas, bringing back now and then some which were shameless and repulsive, and which it buried in him, in the depths of his soul, in its most fathomless recesses, like something stolen. His heart, most certainly, his own heart had secrets from him; and had not that wounded heart discerned in this atrocious doubt a means of depriving his brother of the inheritance of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... and across it had been commenced, and the rude embankments and ragged rock-excavations thus created added much to the natural irregularities of its surface. Large reaches of stagnant water made the aspect yet more repulsive; and so ubiquitous were the rocks that it is said, not a square rood could be found throughout which a crowbar could be thrust its length into the ground without encountering them. To complete the miseries of the scene, the wretched squatters had, in the process ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... patriotic phrases that forced themselves on one's lips as though dictated by an outside power. For months he had carried about the defiant resolve not to utter the prescribed "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," whatever the refusal might cost. Nothing was so repulsive to him as singing the praises of the sacrifice of one's life. It was a juggler's trick to cry out that some one was dying while inside the booth murder was ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... situation was entirely unchanged. But, somehow, in the freshness of the morning, under the cheerful rays of an unclouded sun, the task that had been set for Pen did not seem to him to be quite so difficult and repulsive as it had seemed the night before. He even deigned to whistle as he went down the path to the street. But he noticed, as he passed along through the business section of the town, that people whom he knew looked at him ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... sentiment and expression than most prose and more than many a charming poem. There is little of ugliness in the story, and what there is, is so softened in the way in which it is presented that the impression is neither repulsive nor lasting. Kingsley's work is highly artistic and this story is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Sephestia's son, is stolen by pirates, and adopted by the king of Thessaly, in whose court he grows up. The fame of Sephestia's beauty reaches her father and her son, who, ignorant of the relationship in consequence of Sephestia's change of name, both set out to woo the celebrated shepherdess. The repulsive scene of the same woman being the object at once of the passion of her father and her son is ended by Damocles carrying off Sephestia to his own court, where he proposes to execute Maximus as his successful rival, and Sephestia for her obstinate refusal of his addresses. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... that the plan proposed by them was attended with little danger, but when a scheme was in that shape it lost all attraction for him. To escape the Iroquois by dodging or running was attended, in his estimation, with a certain ignominy that made it repulsive to him. He was naturally elated in reflecting how neatly he had just outwitted them, and that fact was not calculated to lessen his confidence in ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... presence of my uncle, and sought my own chamber. The lonely garret did not appear so repulsive as usual. No one would disturb its gloomy solitude, or intrude upon my grief. There I had free liberty to weep—to vent aloud, if I pleased, the indignant feelings of my heart. My mind was overwhelmed ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... heart with its insufferable horror. Uneasiness seized all present, and with a feeling of heavy weariness they awaited Lazarus' words, but he was silent, sternly and coldly, and his eyes were lowered. And as if for the first time, they noticed the frightful blueness of his face and his repulsive obesity. On the table, as though forgotten by Lazarus, rested his bluish-purple wrist, and to this all eyes turned, as if it were from it that the awaited answer was to come. The musicians were still playing, but now the silence reached them too, and even as water extinguishes scattered ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the New Testament, was at the bottom of our unbelief. I have long felt that the reception of that book on the part of any human being is not the least of its proofs that it is divine, for I am persuaded there never was a book naturally more repulsive either to the human head or heart. All the prejudices of man are necessarily arrayed against it. I felt these prejudice, I am now distinctly conscious; nor was I insensible to the palpable advantages of infidelity;—its accommodating morality; its Large ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... so discouraging and repulsive an appearance from the coast as New Holland. Many fine tracts of land are found on the very borders of the sea, and the interior is almost invariably possessed of a soil admirably adapted to all the purposes of civilized man. This island is upon the whole ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... ideas of beauty appear to us very crude, and even repulsive. The adornment of person with bright though rudely colored garments, the free use of paint on the person, and the promiscuous use of jewelry, as {38} practised by the primitive peoples, present a ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Odeon was the leading lyric theatre, and the great star of that company was Nicholas Tacchinardi, a tenor in whom nature had combined the most opposing characteristics. The figure of a dwarf, a head sunk beneath the shoulders, hunchbacked, and repulsive, he was hardly a man fitted by nature for a stage hero. Yet his exquisite voice and irreproachable taste as a musician gave him a long reign in the very front rank of his profession. He was so morbidly conscious of his own stage defects that he would ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... skilfully-planned calumny; for those who devised it well knew how Bonaparte detested the merest suspicion of such immorality, how strict he was in his own principles, and how repulsive it therefore would be to him to find himself made the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... and perpetuate international curiosity and the smaller vermin of different latitudes). As an element wherewith to put out a fire, or brew tea, or make a slide in winter it is useful, but in a tin basin it has a repulsive and meagre aspect.—Now as to ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the city is always darkened during the daytime by columns of smoke that rise from the funeral pyres. No other city, not even London, has so many beggars, religious and otherwise; nowhere can so many pitiful spectacles of deformity and distress be seen; nowhere is such gross and repulsive obscenity and sensuality practiced—and all in the name of religion; nowhere are such sordid deceptions imposed upon superstitious believers, and nowhere such gloomy, absurd and preposterous methods used for consoling sinners and escaping the results of sin. Although Benares in these respects ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Davy Hull will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before—of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive—how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career in ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... as well as myself, freely forgive the great wrongs thus perpetrated against us; but we feel ourselves equally bound in duty to ourselves, to our country, and to our common Christianity, to employ all lawful means to prevent such exclusive, repulsive, and proscriptive sentiments from acquiring anything more than equal protection in ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... own relations, and their faces, at which he had looked impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and hateful. ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... earth, hampered as it is by waste, by loss, by repulsive and dangerous tasks, by fruitless toil, by class hostilities, by warring communities, by the monopoly of gains, and by the thousand penalties incurred by disorderly opposition ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... and tie him down—if the lasso didn't burn," it was said of "Buffalo Jones," one of the last of the famous plainsmen who trod the trails of the old West. Killing was repulsive to him and the passion of his life was ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer |
