"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot furnish a parallel so atrocious in design and execution, as the one before us, and it may be questioned, even if the history of ancient times, when men fought hand to hand, and disgraced their nature by inventing engines of torture, can ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... wry-faced, puny villain," gasped old Lobbs, paralysed by the atrocious confession; "what do you mean by that? Say this to my face! ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Lady Angela continued. "For my part I can see no difference in any of these French girls who come over here with their demure manner and atrocious songs." ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... examined by a magistrate," said Richard; "but, even then, woe betide her! When I think that Alizon Device is liable to the same atrocious treatment, in consequence of her relationship to Mother Demdike, I can scarce contain ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... their executive to surrender fugitives of any description; they are, accordingly, constantly refused, and hence England has been the asylum of the Paolis, the La Mottes, the Calonnes, in short, of the most atrocious offenders as well as the most innocent victims, who have been ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... her husband, and as she looked up to him as if for protection, the moon-beams shining on her beautifully fair countenance showed it paler than usual with terror, while tears glittered in her fine dark eyes. "O caro mio!" would she murmur, shuddering at every atrocious ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... mother with a coarseness that would have been cruel enough if she had been responsible for them and a gainer by them, but against one of her tender years, innocent toward both, and injured by both, it was inconceivably atrocious. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... empire. For we are told: of the exile of Camillus, the disgrace of Ahala, the unpopularity of Nasica, the expulsion of Laenas,[295] the condemnation of Opimius, the flight of Metellus, the cruel destruction of Caius Marius, the massacre of our chieftains, and the many atrocious crimes which followed. My own history is by no means free from such calamities; and I imagine that when they recollect that by my counsel and perils they were preserved in life and liberty, they are ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... proceeds to inveigh in general terms against what he describes as the atrocious conduct of the unruly rabble—the devastation, pillage, and other enormities of which they were guilty. Having concluded this diatribe, he goes on with his narrative as follows: "Indeed the passion of mischief had taken such strong ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... and the Boer War led to still more intimate relationships between the belligerents. It may be thought that the impression in England of German "frightfulness," and in Germany of English "treachery," may prove ineffaceable. But the Germans have been considered atrocious and the English perfidious for a long time past, yet that has not prevented English and Germans fighting side by side at Waterloo and on many another field; nor has it stood in the way of German worship of the quintessential ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... imprisoned for offences - political and others - which they are proud to suffer for, would always attenuate the ignominy attached to 'imprisonment.' And were this the only penalty for all crimes, for first-class misdemeanants and for the most atrocious of criminals alike, the distinction would not be very finely drawn by the interested; at the most, the severest treatment as an alternative to capital punishment would always ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... he also dealt often, his brothers' connection with it giving him an interest therein. Prisons were another favourite subject, though, in his zeal for making them uncomfortable, he committed himself to one really atrocious suggestion—that of dark cells for long periods of time. It is odd that the same person should make such a truly diabolical proposal, and yet be in a perpetual state of humanitarian rage about man-traps ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of Pudgla, the 30th day mensis Augusti, anno Salutis 1630." [Footnote: Readers who are unacquainted with the atrocious administration of justice in those days, will be surprised at this rapid and arbitrary mode of proceeding. But I have seen authentic witch-trials wherein a mere notary condemned the accused to the torture ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Parker once said: "Every living man in America in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, who could read, read 'Common Sense,' by Thomas Paine. If he was a Tory, he read it, at least a little, just to find out for himself how atrocious it was; and if he was a Whig, he read it all to find the reasons why he was one. This book was the arsenal to which the Colonists went for their ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... kept constantly changing. That villain was more interested in the conversation than his guests were aware, and he had already formed his plans. Already his agents were out on the accomplishment of his atrocious designs. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... out in the open air, and for which you would have to provide, although you had not been consulted in the matter. Think, too, of the extent to which you would be interviewed by the reporters of the Sun, and the atrocious libels concerning yourselves and your families which that unclean sheet would publish. Think of all these things, my friends, and then step into the box-office on your way out and sign the total abstinence pledge. The ushers will now make a collection for the support of the temperance ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... no fair-minded person will dispute that there are qualities or predispositions, for which—hideous as they may be—we are no more responsible than we are for being born with an unprepossessing face. Men are born with certain attractive qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in consenting to them and adopting them ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... territory in question was "in the occupancy of our Army" some of the conquered Mexican inhabitants, who had at first submitted to our authority, broke out in open insurrection, murdering our soldiers and citizens and committing other atrocious crimes. Some of the principal offenders who were apprehended were tried and condemned by a tribunal invested with civil and criminal jurisdiction, which had been established in the conquered country by the military officer in command. That the offenders deserved the punishment inflicted upon them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... voyagers were at Huaheine, the atrocious conduct of one particular thief occasioned so much trouble, that the captain punished him more severely than he had ever done any culprit before. Besides having his head and beard shaved, he ordered both his ears to be cut off, and then dismissed him. It can scarcely ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... When the Protector wished to put his own brother to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law, which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters of blood, the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer received the support of Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... neither doubted his obedience nor his resolution, and spoke of the thing as so entirely within the range of ordinary proceedings, that the boy, stupid and ignorant, and accustomed, from the state of the country, to hear of bloodshed and murders little less atrocious committed by the soldiery, and neither punished nor severely condemned, felt ashamed of his own pusillanimity—for such his ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara would have liked to have seen him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... of the sort," replied the lady, with growing irritation. "You say that about every man who gives me a smile or a flower. Does it indicate such atrocious taste?" ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around this fool action—as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka,—in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. "It's all one," he stubbornly repeated to himself. "Once I have given my promise, I'll see the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has occurred ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... impertinent French action may prove a second French faux pas, to follow in the wake of the first and very egregious faux pas in Mexico. The best that we can say for the Decembriseur is, that he is getting old. England refuses to join in his at once wild and atrocious schemes, and makes a very Tomfool of the bloody Fox of the Tuileries. My, Russia—ah! I am very confident of that—will refuse to join in the dirty and treacherous conspiracy for the preservation of slavery. Well for mediation. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... society is made up of those desperate remedies which only its most desperate distempers require. They look with peculiar complacency on actions which even those who approve them consider as exceptions to laws of almost universal application—which bear so close an affinity to the most atrocious crimes that, even where it may be unjust to censure them, it is unsafe to praise them. It is not strange, therefore, that some flagitious instances of perfidy and cruelty should have been passed unchallenged in such company, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beach, and some were swimming and others wading off to their boats, when the two midshipmen and their followers got up with them. All were too eager to escape to attempt to offer any resistance. Jack had to recollect that they really were most atrocious robbers, or he could scarcely have brought himself to allow his men to fire on them. Not many shots, however, were fired, for the last cartridge in their pouches was expended. Happily, the Malays were in too great a ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... myself why the girl's judgment of him didn't make me like her better. It was because it didn't save her after all from a mute agreement with him to go halves. There were moments when I couldn't help looking hard into his atrocious young eyes, challenging him to confess his fantastic fraud and give it up. Not a little tacit conversation passed between us in this way, but he had always the best of it. If I said: "Oh, come now, with ME you needn't keep it ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... 1790 a youth destined to lend even greater interest than Paoli to that name—"Corsica has been a prey to the ambition of her neighbors, the victim of their politics and of her own wilfulness.... We have seen her take up arms, shake the atrocious power of Genoa, recover her independence, live happily for an instant; but then, pursued by an irresistible fatality, fall again into intolerable disgrace. For twenty-four centuries these are the scenes which recur again and again; the same ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... as to-day—bears in its archives the stories of oppression which marked the methods of the Spaniards, and may be taken as a concrete example. It was a system of slavery under which these mines were worked—an atrocious system of forced labour which took no heed of Indian life, save as it might most cheaply extract a given quantity of gold or silver ore from the pits and adits beneath the ground. Thousands of peones were impressed into this forced labour; armed soldiers were stationed at the entrances of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... east courtyard we found our equipages and I descried my tenants outside the gate, all horsed and each muffled in a close rain-cloak, topped off by a big umbrella hat, its wide brim dripping all round its edge, for the weather was atrocious; foggy mist blanketing all the world under a gray sky from which descended ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... them, and treating them in all respects, in the most shameless manner. Even civilized men, in war, will often retaliate, by punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. It is not strange that untutored Indians, having received atrocious wrongs from one band of white men, should wreak their vengeance on the next band ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... those burned on the champan, as related above. It seems that they have inherited such disasters, for their father—a Portuguese gentleman, and a gallant soldier—after serving his Majesty in Africa, had to flee to Ytalia, because of committing an atrocious crime, which was as follows. Another gentleman insulted a relative of this gentleman. The insulted man, either for lack of ability to do more, or because he was a good Christian, did not take vengeance ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... husband enters the room, and pretend to talk about the weather, or the baby. You little arch hypocrite, you know you do. Don't try to humbug me, miss; what will Richmond, what will society, what will Mrs. Grundy in general say to such atrocious behaviour?" ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... policy on this subject, which should be supplied. It is useless to dilate upon the wrongs of the Indians, and as useless to indulge in the heartless belief that because their wrongs are revenged in their own atrocious manner, therefore ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... oration, the jailer took out a blue and torn handkerchief, and dried his eyes. The Count shuddered at this story. He understood the atrocious plan adopted by Pietro to get rid of a dangerous witness, and forgetful of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... "Vril"? The experiment of silently willing a subject to act in a manner not suggested by speech or sign has been repeatedly tried and succeeded in London drawing-rooms; and it has lately been suggested that atrocious crimes have resulted from overpowering volition. In cases of paralysis the Faculty is agreed upon the fact that local symptoms disappear when the will-power returns to the brain. And here I will boldly and baldly state my theory that, in sundry cases, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... NOBILITY vs. DEMOCRACY was originally published in this periodical for July, 1862. Pronounced by critics to be among the best magazine articles ever appearing in print, it commanded a very marked attention as an exposition of the atrocious motives that underlaid the great Southern rebellion. The public mind was startled at the developed evidence of a great conspiracy to subvert the fundamental principles of free government in the South. The coalition between the conspirators of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... say, that if the sailors were properly educated, such an amphibious corps would never have been formed, and some of the most atrocious sinecures ever tolerated would consequently not ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... large portion of our population thought the French people were perfectly justified in revolting, and warmly espoused their cause. Later many changed their opinions, shocked, as every one was, at the death of the king and queen, and the atrocious massacres which took place in France. Yet some not only approved of the revolution abroad, but were so disgusted with our mal-administration at home, to which they attributed our failure in the war in Holland and elsewhere, that great dissatisfaction and alarm prevailed throughout ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... without proof.' Another hour's speaking, and he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful oration!' A third, and he confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably.' At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he vehemently protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... alarmed by the atrocious wickedness of the conspiracy which the music-master had planned. Mrs. Gallilee was only offended. That he should think her capable—in her social position—of favouring such a plot as he had suggested, was an insult which she was determined neither ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... trunk" he speaks of. But Voltaire had by this time taken a higher flight. July 6th, Voltaire was protesting before Notaries, about the unheard-of violence done him, the signal reparations due; and disdained, for the moment, to concern himself with moneys or opening of seals: "Seals, moneys? Ye atrocious Highwaymen!" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... or an author to work on. When I say an author I mean a poor writer of prose, for I have always been told that all poets are either mad, or bad, or both. Many of them must be bad, or they could not write such atrocious poems; but madness is different; perhaps they ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of all the Persian monarchs. He was mild in temperament, affable in demeanor, goodnatured, affectionate and well-meaning. But, possessing no strength of will, he allowed the commission of the most atrocious acts, the most horrible cruelties, by those about him, who were bolder and more resolute than himself. The wife and son, whom he fondly loved, were plotted against before his eyes; and he had neither the skill to prevent nor the courage to avenge their fate. Incapable of resisting ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... avoiding it, as they have hung it close to Guido's lovely Cleopatra. In the gallery there is a Judith and Holofernes which irresistibly strikes the attention—if any thing would add to the horror inspired by the sanguinary subject, and the atrocious fidelity and talent with which it is expressed, it is that the artist was a woman. I must confess that Judith is not one of my favourite heroines; but I can more easily conceive how a woman inspired by vengeance and patriotism could execute such a deed, than that she could coolly ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... had time to examine his Collection of Poetic Gems, Peter was overjoyed. The paper was poor, the cuts atrocious, the binding a poisonous green, but many of the Gems were of purest ray serene despite their wretched setting. Old-fashioned stuff, most of it, but woven on the loom of immortality. Peter, of course, had Simms's "War Poems of the South." He knew ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... merely a beginning. The next day I received another letter, written and sent under the same conditions; the day after, a third. I have twelve of them—do you hear? twelve—in my portfolio, and all composed with the same atrocious knowledge of the circle in which we move, as was the first. At the same time I was receiving letters from my poor wife, and all coincided, in the terrible series, in a frightful concordance. The anonymous letter told me: 'To-day they were together two hours ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... fortunate, if not a providential, combination of circumstances that compelled the enemies of the Star, primarily on my account, to interweave with their scheme of murderous persecution and private revenge an equally ruthless and atrocious treason against the throne and person of ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... the time. His crime was particularly atrocious. He outraged a poor servant girl, sixteen years of age, and then cut her throat. He was himself thirty-two years of age, with a wife and one child, so that he had not even the miserable excuse of an unmated animal. A plea of insanity was put forward on ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... his troop, had charge of the execution. This man himself like Gilbert Wilson had two daughters and a son. They, too, like the Wilson children, had become aroused at the deeds of blood, and remonstrated with their father against his atrocious cruelty, in persecuting the Covenanters. One after another they had sickened and died, each charging their death on him, as God's vengeance upon his deeds. This man, after all his bitter experience, was hard ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... the young man followed him without answer; for although it is true that Catiline was at this time a marked man and of no favorable reputation, yet squeamishness in the choice of associates was never a characteristic of the Romans; and persons, the known perpetrators of the most atrocious crimes, so long as they were unconvicted, mingled on terms of equality, unshunned by any, except the gravest and most rigid censors. Arvina, too, was very young; and very young men are often fascinated, as it were, by great reputations, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Spain? Assuredly such doctrines were subversive, [320] no matter how astutely they might be interpreted by their apologists. Besides, the worth of a creed as a social force might be judged from its fruits. This creed in Europe had been a ceaseless cause of disorders, wars, persecutions, atrocious cruelties. This creed, in Japan, had fomented great disturbances, had instigated political intrigues, had wrought almost immeasurable mischief. In the event of future political trouble, it would justify the disobedience of children to parents, of wives to husbands, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... upstairs, and there is not the least doubt that something serious passed between her and her mother, for both of them were in the most atrocious of humors that evening. Fortunately, the curate was not there; ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... news he had heard, ignorant alike what could be the motive for a calumny so atrocious, and uncertain what he were best do to put a stop to the scandal. To his farther confusion, he was presently convinced of the truth of Mrs. Jones's belief that they had been watched, for, as he went to the door of the apartment, he was ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... angry at this, and said: "I would that Odysseus might come this very moment to chastise these atrocious fellows. Woe to them if he should appear at the door with his helmet and shield and two tough spears, just as he looked when I first beheld him in my own home. Then these suitors would find a bitter marriage-feast and a speedy end. Vengeance, however, ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... said Dick; "we'll toe him along at the end of a lariat if he does, that's all." He grinned feebly as he got off this atrocious pun, but Bert and Tom refused ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... there is in blasphemy a certain discharge of power which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it was a poor wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. And who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees all things, it was ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... these people with initials, who write in the religious papers, to rail at him, these shepherds who live on five thousand a year and pretend to follow One who hadn't a home or a second coat, and whose friends were harlots and sinners, though he was no sinner himself—it's infamous, it's atrocious, it raises my gorge against their dead creeds and paralytic churches. Whatever his faults, he is built on a large plan, he has the Christ idea, and he is a man and a gentleman, and I'm ashamed that I took ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... compared with a slave on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave. Few are willing to incur the ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... gazelle, and so cannot indulge in comparisons; but if their eyes are more beautiful than those of a middle-aged kangaroo, they may indeed be all that huntsmen say of them. With respect to the old kangaroos, their eyes and face are simply atrocious ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... idea—impossible," said Sir Chichester, "is the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... departing from orders. But he was so eager to take a hand in proceedings that he felt it would be torture to stay behind. He was dressed in Von Arnheim's clothes. And his build was that of the German aviator. If he were observed, he would not be suspected. Even his atrocious Spanish would not betray him, as the German spoke the language ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... likely, certainly, colonel; but they fight from hatred as much as for booty, and no French soldier who falls into their hands is ever spared. Generally they are put to death with atrocious tortures. At first there was no such feeling here and, when my regiment was quartered at Vittoria, some three years ago, things were quiet enough. You see, the feeling gradually grew. No doubt some of our men plundered. Many of the regiments were composed ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... And my honored father killed at the battle of Bunker Hill! Atrocious libeller! to slander one's family at the start ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he said, "has had a hard life, Miss Ferris. It is all written in his face. When he was a little boy, he was the victim of a mistake so atrocious, so wicked, that the blood in his body turned to gall, and all his powers of loving turned to hatred. Instead of facing disaster like a man, he turned from it, and fled—down—down—down, and fell down—down—grappling with all that he could reach that was good or beautiful, and dragging ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... owner and veterinary—is experienced. The smith, whose clumsy contrivance has been the cause of all the woe, has abundant reasons to offer for the disease, and his unfailing resort of the "Bar Shoe." This atrocious fetter is supplemented with leather pads, sometimes daubed with tar, and the horse hobbles to his task. Not unfrequently the crust at the front of the hoof sinks in, adhering to the sole; circulation being ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... word; and having already made up her mind that unless Isabella was removed there could be no hope of relief for her son or of peace between him and Richard, she determined to commit one of the most atrocious acts that could enter the mind of a lady of ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to the rest of Christendom, to us of the Channel Islands you will always be transported felons.' There is therefore a good right of action, i.e., a good ground of war, against Jersey, on the part of Great Britain, since, besides the atrocious injury inflicted, this unprincipled little island has the audacity to regard our England, (all Europe looking on,) as existing only for the purposes of a sewer or cess-pool to receive her impurities. Some time back I remember ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... made an atrocious grimace. Then, "Yes, monsieur, the Mayor of Bottitort," he said frankly. "A year ago he put Philibert in the stocks for a riddle; that is his affair. And the woman of this house has more than once befriended ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... insect; then once more she presses the neck and the thorax, and once more applies the pressure of her abdomen to the honey-sac of the bee. The honey oozes forth and is instantly licked up. Thus the bee is gradually compelled to disgorge the contents of the crop. This atrocious meal lasts often half an hour and longer, until the last ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the suppliants about to expire from exhaustion, led them from the altar and put them to death. But some of the number were not so scrupulously slaughtered—massacred around the altars of the furies. The horror excited by a sacrilege so atrocious, may easily be conceived by those remembering the humane and reverent superstition of the Greeks:—the indifference of the people to the contest was changed at once into detestation of the victors. A conspiracy, hitherto impotent, rose at once into power by the circumstances ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... leads Her brother to the spot where fell their sire; Where lurid blood-marks, on the oft-wash'd floor, With pallid streaks, anticipate revenge. With fiery eloquence she pictured forth Each circumstance of that atrocious deed, Her own oppress'd and miserable life, The prosperous traitor's insolent demeanor, The perils threat'ning Agamemnon's race From her who had become their stepmother, Then in his hand the ancient dagger thrust, Which often in the house of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... me, if you have any honour, who dared to forge such an atrocious calumny! No! you need not tell me. I see well enough now. He should have told you that I exposed myself that night to insult, not by advocating, but by opposing violence, as I have always done—as I would now, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... you will find it in a ridiculously small minority. The fishes know it not, and they get along quite nicely. The ants and the bees, who far outnumber man, sting their fathers to death as a matter of course, and are given to the atrocious mutilation of nine-tenths of the offspring committed to their charge, yet where shall we find communities more universally respected? Take the cuckoo again—is there any bird ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... of a belief as a social force, Doctor, must be ascertained from its fruits. The Roman Church has been an age-long instigator of wars, disorders, and atrocious persecutions throughout the world. Its assumption that its creed is the only religious truth is an insult to the world's expanding intelligence. Its arrogant claim to speak with the authority of God is one of the anomalies ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... showed fight, but being outnumbered were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to their death. The inhuman monster whose atrocious act has been described was among the number of the involuntary suicides. Another incident of even greater moment has ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Canada are so rare, even for murder, that many atrocious criminals are found within these walls—men and women—who could not possibly have escaped the gallows ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... property which they might possess as legitimate prize of war. There was, in fact, during the middle eighties, open and undisguised warfare between red and white throughout the region whose eastern border was the Bad Lands. It was, moreover, a peculiarly atrocious warfare. Many white men shot whatever Indians they came upon like coyotes, on sight; others captured them, when they could, and, stripping off their clothes, whipped them till they bled. The Indians retaliated horribly, delivering their white captives to their squaws, who ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... mention him now speak of him as Colonel Fondeviella. When he went to Guanabacoa his rank was only that of Major. It would seem that his atrocious conduct has not prevented ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... becomes 'aggravated' either from the atrocious character of the act, as where a man is wounded or beaten with clubs by another; or from the place where it is committed, for instance, in the theatre or forum, or in full sight of the praetor; or from the rank of the person outraged,—if ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... into exaggerations. The brutality of his master and the harshness of his life led him to nothing very criminal, but only to wrong acts which are despicable by their meanness, rather than in any sense atrocious. He told lies as readily as the truth. He pilfered things to eat. He cunningly found a means of opening his master's private cabinet, and of using his master's best instruments by stealth. He wasted his time in idle ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... question of duty, either to themselves or to each other, is always paramount. At last it becomes necessary to confess their affection to the Marquis, who is naturally furious. "For the first time in his life this nobleman forgot his manners: he overwhelmed him with atrocious insults, worthy of a cab-driver. Perhaps the novelty of these oaths was a distraction." What hurts him most is that Mathilde will be plain Mme. Sorel and not a duchess. But at this juncture the father receives a letter from Mme. de Renal, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... reciting his answers in the manner of a schoolmaster. "But it's bound to happen. Bolshevism is a logical evolution of democracy—another step downward in the descent of the individual. Until the arrival of Lenine and Trotzky on the field, there's no question but what American Democracy was the most atrocious insult leveled at the intelligence of the race by its inferiors. Bolshevism goes us one better, however. And just as soon as our lowest types, meaning the majority of our politicians, thinkers, and writers, get to realizing that bolshevism isn't a Red Terror with a bomb in one hand and ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... penitential influence, only served to harden them in their iniquities; and while they frequently became perfectly callous to the infliction of punishment, they were debased to the incarnation of fiends, merely wanting in the opportunity to perpetrate the most atrocious ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the reasons (from which the report has been originated and spread through Europa, that the orders of Philipinas have seized all the authority without other reason than because they wish it so), I am compelled to vindicate them from so atrocious a calumny by making known some of the reasons why they have made (as they still do) so strong a resistance to this subjection. I shall first discuss all the orders in common, and then our reformed branch in particular. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... the sad news. I cannot express the contempt and anger I felt on learning that my letter had been kept back; and how deeply I felt for all my poor unhappy family. There was doubtless no malice in this delay, but I looked upon it as a refinement of the most atrocious barbarity; an eager, infernal desire to see the iron enter, as it were, the very soul of my beloved and innocent relatives. I felt, indeed, as if I could have delighted to shed a sea of blood, could I only punish this flagrant ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... castle lighted up by the glare of the torches that flared amid bumpers of rare wines and gipsy jugglers, and blushed hotly under the unceasing breath of magical bellows. The inhabitants invoked the devil, joked with death, murdered children, enjoyed frightful and atrocious pleasures; blood flowed, instruments played, everything echoed with voluptuousness, ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... at me. "Why not?" she repeated. "Why, the audacity of the wretch! He brings me out into the country in winter to play in his atrocious play, strands me, and then tells me to walk twenty miles a day and smile over it!" She came over to me and shook my arm. "Not only that," she said, "but he has cut out my cigarettes and put Arabella on dog biscuit—Arabella, who can hardly eat a ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Republic of the Seven Provinces the atrocious executions of witches and wizards ceased more than a century before they did in all other countries. This was not owing to the merit of the Reformed pastors. They shared the popular belief which demanded persecution. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... inquiries since coming to this house, and find that it is really the best, or perhaps I ought to say the least bad, in the place. The table is poor, the beds lumpy and musty, and nearly every window has a broken pane or two, while the drainage is atrocious. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... certainly atrocious acts; yet when a British subject reads such passages as the following, in the histories of East India government, he must feel that if they were ten times as infamous and numerous as they are in ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... I had shot you, Smilk, when I had the chance," said Mr. Yollop sadly. "This is abominable, atrocious. Getting a man out of bed at ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the construction of a certain clause in the Constitution by the Supreme Court, Congress has the power to pass a law for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Well, Sir, does this constitutional obligation authorize Congress to pass any law whatsoever on the subject, however atrocious and wicked? Had you voted for a law to prevent smuggling, in which you had authorized every tide-waiter to shoot any person suspected of having contraband goods in his possession, would it have been a good ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... Cunningham were together, either in New York or in Philadelphia, the most atrocious cruelties were inflicted upon the American prisoners in their power, and yet some have endeavoured to excuse General Howe, on what grounds it is difficult to determine. It has been said that Cunningham acted ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... no question of the perpetual villany which then assumed the insulted name of politics; none, of the utter sacrifice of public interests to the office-hunting avarice of all the successive parties; none, of the atrocious corruptibility of them all; none, of that general decay of religion, morals, and national honour, which was the result of a time when principle was laughed at, and when the loudest laugher passed for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... their brilliant fortnight on the south coast, and were standing together in the atrocious bow-window of their little sitting room looking out on the street. A thick gray rain was falling, and a dust-cart ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... the importance of his answer, on which hung not merely his own last faint chance of safety, but that also of his generous deliverer. Struggling to subdue the disgust which he felt at holding converse with this atrocious monster, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... survival of the fittest? Yes, he would go! This body and brain of his needed their punishment—and they should have it! He would go. And his body would fight for it, or die. The thought gave him an atrocious satisfaction. He was filled with a sudden contempt for himself. If Father Roland had known, he would have uttered a ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... it transpired that he had been resolutely in favor of refusing all quarter to Northern soldiers: a severity, not to say barbarism, which, be it right or wrong in itself, would undoubtedly have appeared to many atrocious enough, had it been the doctrine of any Northern general, and beside which the sternest measures of Butler look lax and conciliatory. In like manner, the terrible treatment of Northern prisoners, and the most savage act of war in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... led to terrible reprisals on the part of the insurgents, who in the subsequent war treated with atrocious cruelty many of their captives. The Moriscos were soon in arms again, Aben-Humeya at their head, and the war blazed throughout the length and breadth of the mountains. Even from Barbary came a considerable body of Moors, who entered the service of the Morisco chief. Fierce ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... complained also to the House of Commons. Has he pursued the complaint? No, he has not; and yet this prisoner, and these gentlemen, his learned counsel, have dared to reiterate their complaints of us at your Lordships' bar, while we have always been, and still are, ready to prove both the atrocious nature of the facts, and that they are referable to the prisoner at your bar. To this, as I have said before, the prisoner has objected; this we are not permitted to do by your Lordships: and therefore, without presuming to blame your determination, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... always in every mouth; all these properties could not fail to recommend such tragical miniatures to the world of fashion. There is an unsparing pomp of noble sentiments, but withal most strangely associated with atrocious baseness. Not unfrequently does an injured fair one dispatch a despised lover to stab the faithless one from behind. In almost every piece there is a crafty knave who plays the traitor, for whom, however, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... events, and began by alluding to the feeling of curiosity which she had excited in Francine, on the day when Emily had made them known to one another. From this she advanced to the narrative of what had taken place at Netherwoods—to the atrocious attempt to frighten her by means of the image of wax—to the discovery made by Francine in the garden at night—and to the circumstances under which that discovery had been communicated ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other—more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelings, of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... atrocious system," broke in Zimmern, "but if we had not abolished the family, curtailed knowledge and bred soldiers and workers from special non-intellectual strains this sunless world of ours could ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Spaniard quite so seriously as he estimates himself, or, indeed, as his stern and uncompromising nature deserves. The truth is, Spanish policy has ever been insidiously and persistently inimical to the American people, and has culminated in deeds more atrocious than those which have rendered infamous the baleful memory ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... unmistakably an Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas Borrow stood for ever fortified by his wayward nature and atrocious English against the temptation of writing as he ought, Kinglake commenced author with a respect for "composition," ingrained perhaps by his Public School and University training. Borrow arrays his page by instinct, Kinglake by study. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... police in Montreal have shown that hells of the most atrocious character, and one in imitation of Crockford's, as far as its inferior means would go, have ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... conspicuous in later life. "On one occasion," says Miss Stisted, "when seized with inflammation of the bladder, a fact he tried to keep to himself, he continued to joke and laugh as much as usual, and went on with his reading and writing as if little were the matter. At last the agony became too atrocious, and he remarked in a fit of absence 'If I don't get better before night, I shall be an angel.' Questions followed, consternation reigned around, and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... For this also there is a Junta, or society of ladies of the first families, who devote themselves to teaching the female malefactors. It is painful and almost startling to see the first ladies in Mexico familiarly conversing with and embracing women who have been guilty of the most atrocious crimes; especially of murdering their husbands; which is the chief crime of the female prisoners. There are no bad faces amongst them; and probably not one who has committed a premeditated crime. A moment of jealousy during intoxication, violent passions ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the boots and shoes which had been given him. They ought to have a share, they maintained. This atrocious injustice had induced the old grandmother to go immediately with little Jonas to the two good gentlemen, and relate how little the poor lad had received of flint which they had assigned ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... countenance the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his special command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... glove with amputated fingers, and gave me a stately, "I hope you are well, sir," that rather made me feel sick. She looked full at me in her steady and commanding way, as much as to say, "Well, you have committed no atrocious crime yet, I suppose; but I am ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... to be out of bed so early was the Master of the Rolls, so they went and carried him off. When they got to the court there was no St. John Long, but they thought they might as well stay and hear whatever was going on. It chanced that a man was tried for an atrocious case of forgery and breach of trust. He was found guilty and sentence passed; but he was twenty-three and good-looking. Lady Burghersh could not bear he should be hanged, and she went to all the late Ministers and the Judges to beg him ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... do," replied her father. "But what an atrocious shame, if it is so! One of the most popular of the minor princes of Europe spirited away, and perhaps either murdered or thrown into some prison or fortress, where he will drag out his days and nights in solitude ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... myself into an arm-chair, fatigued at my efforts to discover dinner, "when I remember our expectation, and the pleasant anticipations of to-day, I feel very bitter, Letitia. Just to think that from it all nothing has resulted but that beastly mummy, that atrocious ossified thing." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... wholesale massacre of Crabbe and his associates without trial in Sonora, as well as the seizure and murder of four sick Americans who had taken shelter in the house of an American upon the soil of the United States, was communicated to Congress at its last session. Murders of a still more atrocious character have been committed in the very heart of Mexico, under the authority of Miramon's Government, during the present year. Some of these were only worthy of a barbarous age, and if they had ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... the desert of Sinai near the mountain. It is in accordance with all the laws of divine providence recounted so far and with those to follow that Jehovah did not restrain the Israelites from that atrocious worship. This evil was permitted them that they might not all perish. For the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt to represent the Lord's church; they could not represent it unless the Egyptian idolatry was first rooted out of their hearts. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... been surpassed. Yet this was the consequence, not the cause, of their bondage. It is related that some of them having asked their master for clothing, he exclaimed, "What! are there no travellers with clothes on?" "The atrocious hint," says Liddell, "was soon taken; the shepherd slaves of Lower Italy became banditti, and to travel through Apulia without an armed retinue was a perilous adventure. From assailing travellers, the marauders began to plunder the smaller country-houses; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... her. When she says so much, we cannot help suspecting. To make the best of anything, it is not necessary to declare that it is the best thing. Children must be taken care of, but it is altogether probable that there are too many of them. Some people think that opinion several times more atrocious than murder in the first degree; but I see no atrocity in it, and there is none. I think there is an immense quantity of nonsense about, regarding this thing. For my part, I don't credit half of it. I believe in Malthus,—a great deal more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... many other people, had an unsuspected strength of character which only a great occasion could call out. "It is perfectly atrocious," said she, at length, "and I am making a grave sacrifice of my happiness; but I suppose I must do it. Are you sure this ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of his becoming a magistrate to have made at once such a change in his conduct towards them? Some means of reformation ought at least to have been tried before sending seven families at once upon the wide world, and depriving them of a degree of countenance which withheld them at least from atrocious guilt. There was also a natural yearning of heart on parting with so many known and familiar faces; and to this feeling Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly accessible, from the limited qualities of his mind, which sought its principal amusements among the petty objects around him. As he was about ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was very common among the ancients. The stern and rigid virtues of the Romans allowed this among many other customs, that were more unnatural than amiable, and such as in civilized societies of the present day would have been considered among the most atrocious of moral crimes. A Roman father, if his infant was meant to be preserved, lifted it from the ground in his arms; if he neglected that ceremony, the child, it would seem, was considered as doomed to exposure in the highway. Thus, in the Andrian of Terence, where, though ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... against a public world that he believed was going to the devil. "I am not surprised," he wrote in 1776, "at the idea of the devil being always at our elbows. They who invented him no doubt could not conceive how men could be so atrocious to one another, without the intervention of a fiend. Don't you think, if he had never been heard of before, that he would have been invented on the late partition of Poland?" "Philosophy has a poor chance with me," he wrote a little later in ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... all the encouragement of his project Jack Tier could obtain, on that occasion, from either his brother steward, or from the cook. These blacks were well enough disposed to rescue an innocent and unoffending man from the atrocious death to which Spike had condemned his mate, but neither lost sight of his own security and interest. They promised Tier not to betray him, however; and he had the fullest confidence in their pledges. They who live together in common, usually understand ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... "atrocious bitterness" of the restorative, by the substitute he proposes: "or, for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... of the still more atrocious crime of offering up human sacrifices. When they wish to perform this horrible act, it is said, they secretly carry off the first person they meet. Having conducted the victim to some lonely spot, they dig a hole in which they bury him up to the neck. While he is still alive ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... legitimate successor of the Troubadours, and many of their oldest songs would serve to-day as airs de vaudeville. The French national music has mostly grown out of civil dissensions and party conflicts. What scenes do the "Carillon," the atrocious "Carmagnole" and the "Marseillaise" bring up! The "Carillon" had been Marie Antoinette's favorite tune: it pursued her from her palace to her prison, startled her on her way to her trial, and was probably the last sound she heard as she lay bound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... stated that I and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican government, and every day took good care to remind us that the gibbet was to be our ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... grinned broadly again. "Now who is guilty of the most atrocious slang? 'Shot the ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more shalt thou be loved and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has been born, and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its sorrows.—The Epigrams henceforth become, not sharp and bitter; but cruel, atrocious, unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a miserable Cardinal Grand-Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his Bastille, is escorted by hurrahing crowds: unloved he, and worthy of no love; but important since the Court and Queen are his enemies. (Fils ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... detail all the particulars of these martyrdoms, which we shall leave for a more extended relation, in which they may be viewed; and great consolation will be had from the fact that those Christians have endured such atrocious and unheard-of torments with such constancy, for the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... as gentlemen, the terrible scenes would have instantly ceased, and the system of Repartimientos would have been abandoned by men who were only waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership, "atrocious." Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells where an infamous overseer was still living in Spain,—or at least, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... our barricades; but they had already learned by experience that this meant certain death to some of them; and while, if report did not belie them, they were all ready enough to take the lives of others with every accompaniment of the most atrocious cruelty, there was apparently none among them willing to contribute to the success of his party by sacrificing his own. This innocuous fusillade of the house continued for nearly two hours, during ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... part of the story, was more atrocious ... it intimated that I had, during my sojourn at Laurel, been an undesirable that would have made Villon pale with envy ... an habitue of the Bottoms ... that I had been sleeping with negro women and rolling about ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in the light of the Sun of Righteousness, through the second part of the valley. There he encounters the persecution of the state church. Act after act of Parliament had been passed-full of atrocious penalties, imprisonments, transportation, and hanging-to deter poor pilgrims from the way to Zion. "The way was full of snares, traps, gins, nets, pitfalls, and deep holes." Had the darkness of mental anguish been added to these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to have directed at anybody, except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "Atrocious, sir! I give you my honour, as a real gentleman, sir. Why, would you believe it, Captain Truck, the steward is a downright nigger, and he wears ear-rings, and a red flannel shirt, without the least edication. As for the cook, sir, he ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... driven mad by all this singing and playing! One would think the steamboats were driven by the force of song, and that atrocious orchestras were a new kind of motive power. From morning till night there is no cessation from patriotic ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... common enough, as the idea of eating lemons will testify. Sometimes the pleasurable recollection of a delightful dinner will cause the mouth to water years afterward, or the "image" of particularly atrocious medicine will wrinkle the nose long after it made one day ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... that passes brings me twenty-four hours nearer the end." He drew still closer to Maurice. "Tell me, have you never stood before a doorway—the doorway of some strange house that you have perhaps never consciously gone past before—and waited, with the atrocious curiosity that death and its hideous paraphernalia waken in one, for a coffin to be carried out?—the coffin of an utter stranger, who is of interest to you now, for the first and the last time. And have you not thought to yourself, with a shudder, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the harp—an instrument of great price, let it be. But you, my dear friend, had ridden night and day to find the man whom our neighbours thought we had murdered. Our faithful friend Bimjee'—Baji Lal stretched out his hand to the barber—'defied fire and smoke to rescue a defenceless woman from an atrocious death. Neither of you had anything to gain by these deeds of bravery and self-sacrifice. You did them for pure love of us. What do we want with that selfish man's gifts? Chunda Das, give me the paper which binds him to his promise ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... crevices along the sloping platform, until he had attained to the top of the rock whence he had fallen. He cast his eyes below, but nothing was to be seen but the wild torrent: no sign, no trace of the Indian. Holden shuddered as he thought of Ohquamehud, cut off in his atrocious attempt, and breathed a prayer that his savage ignorance might palliate his crime; then exhausted and sore, and pondering the frightful danger he had escaped, slowly took his way towards ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the barons to let, certain men-at-arms for the security of the Abbey, and for scouring the forests. Savage capital punishments—impalement, mutilation, hanging alive in chains—were inflicted on the marauders, who duly acknowledged these attentions by yet more atrocious severities upon the wayfarers who had the ill luck ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but HE, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal what he knew—HE alone had been singled out as the victim of this atrocious initiation! ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a great increase in the traffic of this article on the western coast of Africa; and the native princes, finding that it is more profitable than slave-selling, have in many parts given up the last-named atrocious commerce, and have taken to gathering palm-oil. If a palm-tree can effect what has baffled the skill of the combined philanthropists and powers of Europe, then, indeed, we shall say, "All ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... sitting in her house with her children around her when a soldier came up, leveled his musket at the window, and shot her dead on the spot in the midst of her terrified family. On the intercession of a friend the dead body was permitted to be removed when the house was set on fire. This atrocious deed excited such general horror and detestation that the British thought proper to disavow it, and to impute the death of Mrs. Caldwell to a random shot from the retreating militia, though the militia did not fire a musket in the village. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... infamous treachery scarcely deserves comment; for, if the Negro had been the least inclined to be a traitor, he could not forget the atrocious treatment accorded the black man in the African colonies controlled by Germany. For the Negro well remembers the treachery of von Trotha, who invited the Herero chiefs to come in and make peace and promptly shot them in cold blood. And the words of his cruel and inhuman "Extermination Order" ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Baltimore, the cook. The idea took mightily, and I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a fellow of a literary turn; and an immense quill, plucked from a distended albatross' ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... exclamation of horror, for until now he had hardly believed it was possible that even Nana Sahib could perpetrate so atrocious a massacre. Not another word was spoken until they ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... only his bare word, only his flat denial—denial flat, unprofitable, and totally unsupported. The only person who could support it was the girl, and she was dead: she was much worse than dead: she had died in atrocious circumstances, his part in which had earned him the severe censure of the coroner's jury. His defence couldn't have been worse. He'd tied himself in damning knots ever since he'd first set eyes on the girl, and all he could ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... confounded, did not know what answer to return to these arguments of Antonona, more atrocious than her former pinches. Besides, it was repugnant to him to discuss the metaphysics ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... —Yet, atrocious as his crimes are, they form half the Magna Charta of the republic,* and the authority of the Convention ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... France, a country just recovered out of twenty-five years of the most cruel and desolating civil war that perhaps was ever known. The kingdom, under the veil of momentary quiet, full of the most atrocious political, operating upon the most furious fanatical factions. Some pretenders even to the crown; and those who did not pretend to the whole, aimed at the partition of the monarchy. There were almost as many competitors as provinces; and all abetted by the greatest, the most ambitious, and most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... other hand, silence a living Cigale?—that obstinate melomaniac, who, seized in the fingers, deplores his misfortune as loquaciously as ever he sang the joys of freedom in his tree? It is useless to violate his chapels, to break his mirrors; the atrocious mutilation would not quiet him. But introduce a needle by the lateral aperture which we have named the "window" and prick the cymbal at the bottom of the sound-box. A little touch and the perforated cymbal is silent. A similar operation on the other side of the insect and the insect is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... atrocious action was witnessed. Several of the wounded had just been placed in the suttlers' carts. These wretches, whose vehicles were overloaded with the plunder of Moscow, murmured at the new burden imposed upon them; but being compelled to admit it, they held their peace. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... men had landed before them, it is true; but for the most part only to benefit themselves, and not unfrequently to murder the natives or to entrap them into slavery. Christianity has won great victories in Polynesia, but no part of the globe has witnessed fouler crimes or more atrocious wickedness on the part of white men towards ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... has been atrocious; impossible to go to the Bois without exciting all sorts of suspicions. Even my mother, who often goes out, regardless of rain, remains at ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... of best black tea, good quality—yours is generally atrocious, Mrs. Oswald—that's the next thing on the list,' said poor trembling, shaky Miss Luttrell, the Squire's sister, a palsied old lady with a quavering, querulous, rasping voice. 'Two pounds of best black ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... CORINTH.—The atrocious crime of the destruction of Carthage was more than matched by the contemporaneous destruction of Corinth. Another rising in Macedonia resulted, in 146, in the conversion of that ancient kingdom into a Roman province. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Mr Hallam before sunrise, must have plenty of altitude in her composition. It is my belief she lives on Mount Shasta, in a moral sense, and I shouldn't be surprised to hear of her taking out a building permit at the North Pole, if she thought duty called her. But, Dick, how can you be such an atrocious sceptic as to doubt the possibility of one's living above the clouds ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... of being able to imagine an injury sufficiently atrocious to inflict on Maxwell for having brought this grief upon his girl. At the sound of his groan, as if she perfectly interpreted his meaning in it, she broke from a sob into a laugh. "Will you never," she said, dashing away the tears, "learn ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Colorado was naturally followed by international representations, and I am happy to say that the best efforts of the State in which the outrages occurred have been put forth to discover and punish the authors of this atrocious crime. The dependent families of some of the unfortunate victims invite by their deplorable condition gracious provision for ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... as soon as he had alighted at his palace, retired with the vizier alone, and commanded him to relate the particulars of the atrocious conduct of his wife; upon which he said, "My lord, the sultana in your absence despatched to me a slave, desiring me to visit her, but I would not, and I put the slave to death that the secret might be ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... "his manner was atrocious! I could not—I would not if I could—give you any idea of its animality; yes, that is the very word! it makes my blood creep to think ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the Old Testament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters has been quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deeds seemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them. Writers of orthodox repute now say that the Thus saith the Lord, with which Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must be understood subjectively, as an ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... moments,—which shock common sense as well as religious feeling. It is said, but by no one it may be presumed who has any sense of character, that all is fair in politics; as if success were the only thing to be regarded. But I need not stop to expose such an atrocious rule of action, which would justify whatever is base or criminal. It is urged, however, in vindication of methods of acquiring influence which offend a clear-sighted conscience, that if a party cannot prevail but by using the weapons with which it is attacked, ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... their moral education. What we call sinfulness is largely a matter of custom and convention. Men cannot properly be said to sin when their actions are checked by no conscientious scruples, and what one people would consider atrocious instances of wrong-doing, might be looked upon as innocent and even estimable by a people with a different moral standard. Religion has much to do with this. The human sacrifices and cannibal feasts of the Aztec Indians, for instance, were regarded by them as good deeds, obligations ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris |
