"Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Revolution, Laharpe was once more at his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips. The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon as "the genius of evil,'' denounced him in the name of "liberty,'' and of "enlightenment.'' A monstrous intrigue was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. At the congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... manlike, unwilling to be satisfied with mere feeling, desirous of retrieving the irretrievable. "Fool," he muttered, "a weak fool I have been! I have fastened this monstrous chain ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of the English attitude towards the war was the disposition to treat it as a monstrous joke. It is a disposition traceable in a vast proportion of the British literature of the time. In spite of violence, cruelty, injustice, and the vast destruction and still vaster dangers of the struggles, that disposition held. The English mind refused ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... protruding above the water. From its active and unsteady motions, Jack knew it was making up its mind to attack us; so he urged us vehemently to paddle for our lives, while he himself set us the example. Suddenly he shouted, "Look out! there he comes!" and in a second we saw the monstrous fish dive close under us and turn half-over on his side. But we all made a great commotion with our paddles, which, no doubt, frightened it away for that time, as we saw it immediately after circling round us ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... belief, I deny it. That a man should be punished for having come to an honest conclusion, the honest production of his brain; that an honest conclusion should be deemed a crime and so declared, it is an infamous, monstrous assertion, and I would rather go to hell than to keep the company of a God who would damn his child for ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... sight of the boats, a spirit of sedition began to manifest itself in furious cries. They then began to regard one another with ferocious looks, and to thirst for one another's flesh. Some one had already whispered of having recourse to that monstrous extremity, and of commencing with the fattest and youngest. A proposition so atrocious filled the brave Captain Dupont and his worthy lieutenant M. L'Heureux with horror; and that courage which had so often supported them in the field of glory, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... humanity. They were of a dozen different nationalities, and as the girl looked at them it was not with revulsion or scorn but with a sudden quickening of heartbeat and a little laugh that had in it something both of wonder and of pride. This was the Horde, that crude, monstrous thing of primitive strength and passions that was overturning mountains in its fight to link the new Grand Trunk Pacific with the seaport on the Pacific. In that Horde, gathered in little groups, ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... is at war you have only to look at the map of Central Europe. You can hardly fail to be struck by the curious resemblance which the outline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire bears to a monstrous bird of prey hovering threateningly over Italy. The body of the bird is formed by Hungary; Bohemia is the right wing, Bosnia and Dalmatia constitute the left; the Tyrol represents the head, while ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... quite horrible with his monstrous head and little body, as he rubbed his hands slowly round, and round, and round again—with something fantastic even in his manner of performing this slight action—and, dropping his shaggy brows and cocking his chin in the air, glanced ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... began while these fine days held, they would have the luck of weather as we had never had it. Think of the drenching rains and winds of the Passchendaele attack! In the popular mind the notion of 'a German God' was taking actual concrete shape. A huge and monstrous form, sitting on a German hill, plotting with the Kaiser, and ordering the weather precisely as the Kaiser wished—it was thus that English superstition, aided by Imperial speeches and telegrams, began to ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... protective tariff. This was to afford bounties to favored classes and particular pursuits at the expense of all others. A proposition to tax the whole people for the purpose of enriching a few was too monstrous to be openly made. The scheme was therefore veiled under the plausible but delusive pretext of a measure to protect "home industry," and many of our people were for a time led to believe that a tax which in the main fell upon labor was for the benefit of the laborer who paid it. This ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... through his eye-glass as it crawled away from him, knowing that one touch of its fangs would mean death from which there could be no possible escape. That any reasoning being should be inspired with terror—sickening, deadly terror—by such pitifully harmless things, seemed to him monstrous; and he determined to try and cure her of ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... branches, she saw a light. But when she came to the edge of the clearing she made out that the illumination came from a fire, not a lantern. The interior of the cabin was awash with shadows, and across the open doorway of the hut the monstrous and obscure outline of a standing man wavered to and fro. There was no clamor of many voices. And her heart leaped with relief. Hervey and his men, then, had lost heart at the last moment. They had not dared to attack Red Jim Perris in spite ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... been the allies and dependants of Rome; they had drawn revenues from kings and free peoples, they had pillaged the public treasury. But they had not yet begun to put up for sale the security of the empire and of Rome itself. Now this last and monstrous stage had been reached. The authority of the senate, the power which the people had delegated to its magistrate, had been betrayed to the most dangerous of foes; not satisfied with treating the allies of Rome ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the lid with hands he could barely control. Fear was thick in his throat now. What could an alien do to a man who discovered it? Would it be Harding there—or some monstrous thing still changing? How long did it take a revived monster to go mad when it found no way ...
— Dead Ringer • Lester del Rey
... speculative matters wisdom considers higher principles than science does, and consequently is distinguished from it; and so must it be also in practical matters. Now it is evident that what is beside the order of a lower principle or cause, is sometimes reducible to the order of a higher principle; thus monstrous births of animals are beside the order of the active seminal force, and yet they come under the order of a higher principle, namely, of a heavenly body, or higher still, of Divine Providence. Hence by considering the active seminal force ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of the month of May, then," he continued, "my father is at Naples. It is whilst there, that he, a man of prudence and sense, a dignified diplomatist, a nobleman, prompted by an insensate passion, dares to confide to paper this most monstrous of ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... longing in my breast? Beyond the Dnieper will my die be cast, While boundless space divides me from the spot; Can I endure it? Oh, the impatient spirit Will lie upon the rack of expectation And measure out this monstrous length of space With groans and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... nothing; since for these we entertain the most profound respect. We have only assailed those by whom we have been assailed; and we have held each and every man responsible only for what he himself has said and done. We should, indeed, despise ourselves if we could be guilty of the monstrous injustice of denouncing a whole people on account of the sayings and doings of a portion of them. We had infinitely rather suffer such injustice—as we have so long ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... that was in Henry the Eighth to shape the very course of English history, to override the highest interests of the state, to trample under foot the wisest counsels, to crush with the blind ingratitude of fate the servants who opposed it. Even Wolsey, while he recoiled from the monstrous form which had revealed itself, could hardly have dreamed of the work which that royal courage and yet more royal appetite was to accomplish in the years to come. As yet however Henry was far from having reached ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... occurred in 1857, when Thomas Pooley, a poor Cornish well-sinker, was sentenced by the late Mr. Justice Coleridge to twenty months' imprisonment for chalking some "blasphemous" words on a gate-post. Fortunately this monstrous punishment excited public indignation. Mill, Buckle, and other eminent men, interested themselves in the case, and Pooley was released after undergoing a quarter of his sentence. From that time until ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Unheard-of stratagem, in any age. Which well its crafty authors did repay.... 'Enough, enough,' our critic folks will say; 'Your period excites alarm, Lest you should do your lungs some harm; And then your monstrous wooden horse, With squadrons in it at their ease, Is even harder to endorse Than Renard cheating Raven of his cheese. And, more than that, it fits you ill To wield the old heroic quill.' Well, then, a humbler tone, if such your will is:— Long sigh'd and ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... reduced to three.[1227] This iniquity was immediately denounced and exposed through pamphlets, journals, and debates. Men frankly admitted that no reason or economic principle justified the existence of such monstrous levies. Indeed, every honest influence, legal, social, and political, opposed it. The press condemned it, good men mourned over it, and wise men unmasked it. But with the help of twenty Republicans, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the waves beneath Sits the grim monarch of insatiate Death; The shark rapacious with descending blow Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below; The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move, Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above; 60 With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour. —Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display! From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... said, contemptuously, 'that is damned nonsense. It is monstrous and cruel. We parted better friends than we have been in years. I will tell you all that happened—not to clear myself, but to help you to find out the truth.' His story is as follows: Yesterday afternoon, owing to his constant attendance on his father, he did not look ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... that terrific jolt seemed to divorce body and mind. So far as further resistance was concerned, he was helpless. He swam about in an opaque mist. There, afar off, on the floor, was stretched another Martin Blake, a shadow of Martin Blake; and he saw monstrous things surrounding this adumbration of himself, headless bodies, and bodiless heads, and detached ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... was addicted to the black craft, which it must be understood became more and more prevalent during all the four periods, until it culminated in the inevitable catastrophe, which to a great extent purified the earth of the monstrous evil. It must also be borne in mind that down to the very end when Poseidonis disappeared, an Intitiate emperor or king—or at least one acknowledging the "good law"—held sway in some part of the island continent, acting under the guidance of the Occult Hierarchy in controlling where possible the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... but I am without reason afraid of them. I think of the demons as being like monstrous bats. But that is a silly ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... fortnight; time enough for naughty girls, and long enough for two letters, faith. Congreve and Delaval have at last prevailed on Sir Godfrey Kneller to entreat me to let him draw my picture for nothing; but I know not yet when I shall sit.(26)—It is such monstrous rainy weather, that there is no doing with it. Secretary St. John sent to me this morning, that my dining with him to-day was put off till to-morrow; so I peaceably sat with my neighbour Ford, dined with him, and came home at six, and am now in bed as usual; and now it is time to have another letter ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sort ob man, Massa Tom. Stranger t' me. I nebber seed him afo'. He suah was monstrous polite t' ole black Eradicate, an' he gib me a half-dollar, too, jest fo' a little ride. But I aint' gwine t' sell Boomerang, no indeedy, I ain't!" and Eradicate shook ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... "It is monstrous," he said, "after the education that you have had, and the place that I, if I survive him; or, if not, your brother, will take at the death of your uncle; that you should dream of throwing yourself away, in ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... He announced the most arbitrary notions in the blandest tones, and asserted that the doctrine of concurrent representation and taxation was a wild revolutionary idea, exploded by American independence. The revenues he called the Queen's, and thought it monstrous that any should dispute her right to her own. Though he compared the parent country to the hen and the colonies to chickens, he could see nothing to disturb the analogy in a demand for fresh contributions. He asserted that all constitutional ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... all the royalists and regicides, and illustrious headless.(178) Mrs. Frere ran about, looked at nothing, let him look at nothing, screamed about Indian paper, and hurried over all the rest. George grew peevish, called her back, told her it was monstrous. when he had come so far with her, to let him see nothing; "And you are a fool, you don't know what you missed in the other room."—"Why, what?"—"Why, my Lord Holland'S(179) picture."—"Well! what is my Lord Holland to me?"—"Why, do you know," said he, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... spirit I speak of what I think best adapted to the needs of man. I endeavor to throw aside the prejudices of education. I look upon the Protestant religion as unnatural; a monstrous belief which deforms man. So far as I can see, its influence has been blighting. It takes youth, joy, and animation from the world. It grants no indulgence for sin, nor for the mistakes of ignorance. It is cruel and harsh, and men become narrow ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine. People are talking about us. She was right to tell us. It only confirms my own feeling—the position is monstrous." ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the very last man to understand or sympathize with any phase of life through which he had not himself passed. He had never been troubled with religious doubts; skepticism seemed to him monstrous and unnatural. He met the confession, which his son had made in pain and diffidence, with a most deplorable want of tact. In answer to the perplexing questions which were put to him, he merely replied testily that Luke had been overworking himself, and that he had no business to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... at their achievement of their hopes I do exceedingly marvel. For evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature; that it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst schemes against the innocent, while God beholdeth, is verily monstrous. For this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, "If God exists, whence comes evil? Yet whence comes good, if He exists not?" However, it might well be that wretches who seek the blood of all honest men and of the whole senate should wish to destroy ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... sugar-cane. The lake, which abounds with excellent fish, is less favoured in this respect than the land, for it contains numerous crocodiles and alligators, of such immense size that in a few moments one of them can tear a horse to pieces, and swallow it in its monstrous stomach. The accidents they occasion are frequent and terrible, and I have seen many Indians become their victims, as I shall subsequently relate. I ought, doubtless, to have begun by speaking of the human beings who ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... echo."* Others were alarmed on a still sunshiny morning by the discharge of guns and muskets; bullets seemed to whistle past them, and the noise of drums resounded in the air, seeming to pass away to the westward; others fancied that they heard the galloping of horses over their heads; and certain monstrous births which took place about the time filled the superstitious in some towns with doleful forebodings. Many of these portentous sights and sounds may be ascribed to natural phenomena—to the northern lights which occur vividly in those latitudes, the meteors which explode in the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... not been, too, in the hearts of spectators some lurking excuse for them: it requires no great penetration to see what that excuse must have been. If the Stuart age, aristocracy, and court were as perfect as some fancy them, such fellows would have been monstrous in it and inexcusable, probably impossible. But if it was (as it may be proved to have been) an utterly deboshed, insincere, decrepit, and decaying age, then one cannot but look on Monsieur Thomas with something ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... time the house was nothing but a horrible and a magnificent funeral pile, a monstrous funeral pile which lit up the whole country, a funeral pile where men were burning, and where he was burning also, He, He, my prisoner, that new Being, the new ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... she uttered that monstrous word killed. But utter it she did in its naked terror. Now she knew a simpler feeling than that of the grand sympathy of the dreamer with the horrors of war as a whole. She knew the dumb, helpless suspense of the womenfolk remaining at home watching for the casualty lists that ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... it is not taken from the tales of other travelers, is a diverting tissue of fables about gryfouns that fly away with yokes of oxen, tribes of one-legged Ethiopians who shelter themselves from the sun by using their monstrous feet as ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... gamesters are the forlorn-hope; the great winner is the eagle; a stander-by, who encourages, by little ventures himself, the freshly-imported gallant, who is called the gull, is the wood-pecker; and a monstrous bird of prey, who is always hovering round the table, is the gull-groper, who, at a pinch, is the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... prisoner, and under the care of the ladies of Luxemburg, those excellent persons prayed her to clothe herself as honest girls were wont to do. Above all, the English ladies, who have always made a parade of chastity and modesty, must have considered her so disguising herself monstrous and insufferably indecent. The Duchess of Bedford sent her female attire; but by whom? By a man, a tailor. The fellow, with impudent familiarity, was about to pass it over her head, and, when she pushed him away, laid his unmannnerly hand upon her—his tailor's hand on that hand which had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Wanderer, there at Prosopis—so shalt thou smite them. Farewell. I will seek out the Hathor if in any way I can come at her, and tell her all. But of this I warn thee, the hour is big with Fate, and soon will spawn a monstrous birth. Strange visions of doom and death passed before mine eyes as I slept last ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... noon she would probably find Mrs. Wade among her books. She felt light of heart. Within this hour Glazzard would be gone from Polterham. Four days hence, Denzil would be a Member of Parliament. Had she no claim to happiness—she whose girlhood had suffered such monstrous wrong? Another reason there was for the impulse of joy that possessed her—a hope once already disappointed—a voice of nature bidding her regard this marriage as true and eternal, let the world ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... not only a desire for peace, but a will for peace, if peace is to be established forever. If out of a hundred men ninety-nine desire peace and trouble no further, the one man over will arm himself and set up oppression and war again. Peace must be organized and maintained. This present monstrous catastrophe is the outcome of forty-three years of skillful, industrious, systematic world armament. Only by a disarmament as systematic, as skillful, and as devoted may we hope to achieve ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... not hoot at them! I, throughout my life, guided by absolute deference to their weakness—paying them politeness, courtesy—whatever I touch I am happy in, except when I touch women! How is it? What is the mystery? Some monstrous explanation must exist. What can it be? I am favoured by fortune from my birth until I enter into relations with women. But will you be so good as to account for it in your defence of them? Oh! were the relations dishonourable, it would be quite another matter. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... And flung on the humps of a silver camel. In short it was the sweetest thing For a weary youth in a wood to light on: And finer far than what a king Built up, to prove his taste, at Brighton. The gilded gate was all unbarred; And, close beside it, for a guard, There lay two dwarfs with monstrous noses, Both fast asleep upon some roses. Sir Rudolph entered; rich and bright Was all that met his ravished sight; Soft tapestries from far countries brought, Rare cabinets with gems inwrought, White vases of the finest mould, And mirrors set in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hard, and he sought some mud to smear his head and shoulders, then came back and made the mark so big, so strong, and so high, and emphasized it with such claw-gashes in the bark, that it could be read only in one way—a challenge to the present claimant from some monstrous invader, who was ready, nay anxious, to fight to a finish for ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... rules the state of things, Reward goes backwards, Honor on his head, Who is not poore is monstrous; only Need Gives forme and worth to every humane seed. As cedars beaten with continuall stormes, 5 So great men flourish; and doe imitate Unskilfull statuaries, who suppose (In forming a Colossus) if they make him Stroddle enough, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... and cunning in Saxo's eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, monstrous in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... you are going to marry that horrible man Mulready. It is monstrous, isn't it? I think they ought to be prosecuted and punished for such a wicked thing, and father only a ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... stepped aside into the grove nearby, keeping all the while an eye on his gate, guarded by his two monstrous dogs. He selected an elm tree twenty feet high, tore it up by the roots, pulled off the branches, and peeled it for a whip. This he jerked up and down to make ready for his task of thrashing ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... miserable here alone. He longed for his employer to come back quickly. And the din in the eating-house got louder and louder. Growing shriller every second, it all melted into one note, and it seemed like the roaring of some monstrous boast, with hundreds of different throats, vaguely enraged, trying to struggle out of this damp hole and unable to find a way out ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... risk of meeting something worth running away from; just as John Steel, Christopher Holder, and a widow woman did. Their story may be read in the Harleian Miscellany. True and Wonderful is the title of the narrative, A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered, and yet living, to the great Annoyance and divers Slaughters both of Men and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson: In Sussex, two Miles from Horsam, in a Woode called St. Leonard's Forrest, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... recognize the persecutions of the Roman emperors which so harried the Church, the heresies by which it was desolated, and the schisms by which it was torn. Soon, the eagle reappeared, less menacing but not less dangerous; he shook his plumes above the sacred car, which speedily underwent a monstrous transformation. From divers parts of it arose seven heads armed with ten horns; a courtesan was seated in the midst; a giant stood at her side, exchanging with her impure caresses which he interrupted to scourge her cruelly. Then, cutting loose the metamorphosed ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... and it quelled the fear of death. In some legends of the Norse mythology there is a humorous element which shows freedom of spirit; while in others, such as the legend of the death of Balder, there is a pathos not uncongenial to Christianity. The Northmen were not priest-ridden. Their gods were not monstrous and overwhelming forces like the hundred-handed idols of the Hindu, but human forms, their own high qualities idealized, like the gods of the Greek, though with Scandinavian force in place of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... whose whole faculties should be bent upon the acquirement of a real knowledge of human physiology should worry themselves with getting up hearsay about the alternation of generations in the Salpae is really monstrous. I cannot characterise it in any other way. And having sacrificed my own pursuit, I am sure I may sacrifice other people's; and I make this remark with all the more willingness because I discovered, on reading the names of your Professors just now, that the Professor of Materia Medica is not ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... she, "I am sure you know what I mean; but you must know I have a prodigious monstrous great favour to beg of you: now pray don't refuse me; I assure you if you do, I shall be so mortified ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... art should never take place of, but be subservient to, nature; and a gentleman, if confined to a situation, had better conform his designs to that, than to do as at Chatsworth, level a mountain at a monstrous expense; which, had it been suffered to remain, in so wild and romantic a scene as Chatsworth affords, might have been made one of the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of increase, not merely among the native population separately, but throughout the population of the country, as a whole, including the foreigners. The climax of this movement was reached when, during the decade 1880-90, the foreign arrivals rose to the monstrous total of five and a quarter millions (twice what had ever before been known), while the population, even including this enormous re-enforcement, increased more slowly than in any other period of our history except, possibly, that of the great ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... their opponents to account for the inequality of conditions, for those commercial debaucheries in which monopoly and competition, in monstrous union, perpetually give birth to luxury and misery; they reproach economic theories, always modeled after the past, with leaving the future hopeless; in short, they point to the regime of property as a horrible hallucination, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... and her master's image during the latter part of her service in Fitzgeorge-street; but, little by little, the cloud had melted away, leaving the familiar image clear and unshadowed as of old. She had suffered her mind to be filled by a suspicion so monstrous, that for a time it held her as by some fatal spell; but with reflection came the assurance that this thing could not be. Day by day she saw the man whom she had suspected going about the common business of life, coldly ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... law or legal process. It is Captain Williams,—one of those British officers whom Mr. Hastings states to be the pests of the country. This is the man who comes here as evidence against these women, and produces this monstrous paper. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... successors. What might have become of his sons Giovanni Maria (died 1412) and Filippo Maria (died 1447), had they lived in a different country and under other traditions, cannot be said. But, as heirs of their house, they inherited that monstrous capital of cruelty and cowardice which had been accumulated from ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the world she had known. He imagined her in an Arab garden where orange blossoms fell like snow, eating her heart out for the far country and friends she would never see again, rebelling against a monstrous tyranny which imprisoned her in this place of perfumes and high white walls. Or perhaps the scented petals were falling now ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... one can calculate. All estimates that I have seem purely imaginary. The ordinary figure given for London is from 60,000 to 80,000. This maybe true if it is meant to include all habitually unchaste women. It is a monstrous exaggeration if it is meant to apply to those who make their living solely and habitually by prostitution. These figures, however, only confuse. We shall have to deal with hundreds every month, whatever ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... it, and therefore they would not have it. It was quite monstrous that anybody should attempt to do anything so completely out of the ordinary course of proceeding. It was not to be borne; and as in this country it happens, free and enlightened as we are, that no man can commit a greater social offence ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... vanity to truth. This distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?—where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?—and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up. Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,) something of a bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and their mamma. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... purely beautiful, but the Christian and modern spirit feels that there are many things in creation besides that which is, humanly speaking, beautiful; and that everything which is in nature is—or has the right to be—in art. It includes in its picture of life the ugly, the misshapen, the monstrous. Hence results a new type, the grotesque, and a new literary form, romantic comedy. He proceeds to illustrate this thesis with his usual wealth of imaginative detail and pictorial language. The Middle Ages, more than any other period, are rich in instances of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... staring at the lamp and his heart stood still. Recalling the monstrous confusion of the life we lead, he distinctly saw what that life could be if men were brought up to obey these rules, and rapture such as he had long not felt filled his soul, just as if after ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... scientific men, they climbed into the whale-boat alongside and went ashore to see. And they saw something that was alive but which could hardly be called a man. It was blind, unconscious. It squirmed along the ground like some monstrous worm. Most of its efforts were ineffectual, but it was persistent, and it writhed and twisted and went ahead perhaps a score ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... it is not a farce it is a tragedy. And such a tragedy! My God! Horrible—monstrous—cruel beyond conception, and enough to make one believe in ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... and daughter, who, it appears, gave the commissioners no little trouble by their perverse conduct, returned to Savannah and were engaged to labor at the filature, at three shillings per day, at which Mr. Habersham exclaims, "monstrous wages!" The reelers now advanced with much proficiency, and five of them, on the 10th of May, wound off eleven pounds of cocoons each. The proportion of raw silk to the cocoons, appeared, on a variety of trials, to be nearly ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... withered tree stood apart, an outcast from its fellows. The thought struck me as I went up to it, and tapped the decayed trunk with my fingers: "You and I, my friend—we have seen our past, and are out of the pale now." With this I sat down on one of the huge roots, that coiled like monstrous serpents at my feet, and leaning my head against the tree prepared to wait ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... them on donkeys or ponies—a father with a little son before or behind him, a man in a black cloak with panniers laden with branches of trees, which hid the saddle, and, in the semi-obscurity, made them look like some monstrous beast of strange form, another perched upon a great bundle of hay or grass, and so on, all passing rapidly from the malaria of the fields to the safety of ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... mummies of bulls and other animals been found in them? All record relating to Cheops is at least very questionable; thus history fades into fable, and is clouded with doubt. Bunsen claims for Egypt nearly seven thousand years of civilization and prosperity before the building of these monstrous monuments. We do not often pause to consider how little real history there is. Conjecture is not history. If contemporary record so often belies itself, what ought we to consider of that which comes through the shadowy distance of ages? It will be remembered that a mummy of ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... suddenly. That last comer was no other than Mr. Adolphus Longstaff. As it happened he was seated next to Dolly, with Lady Beeswax on the other side of him. Whereas his Holy of Holies was on the other side of Dolly! The arrangement made seemed to him to have been monstrous. He had endeavoured to get next to Isabel; but she had so manoeuvred that there should be a vacant chair between them. He had not much regarded this because a vacant chair may be pushed on one side. But before he had made all his calculations Dolly Longstaff was sitting ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... earliest inhabitants of Italy. Moreover, hesitation on this point is impossible for other reasons, as Roman historians allude to the practice. Pliny,[55] in saying how little removed was a human sacrifice from a meal, adds, that it ought not to surprise us to meet with this monstrous custom amongst barbarian races, as it prevailed in ancient times in Italy ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... not on such a subject? or what trouble is it to refute these monstrous inventions of the poets ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... estimate of men, and their reverence for women, cherishes an eager and aimless rivalry, weakens true feeling, wipes away the bloom of true modesty, and induces an ennui, a satiety, and a kind of dilettante misanthropy, which is only the more monstrous because it is undoubtedly real. You shall hear young men of intelligence and cultivation, to whom the unprecedented circumstances of this country offer opportunities of a great and beneficent career, complaining that they were born within this blighted circle; regretting ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... taste of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, Fenelon, and Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... again, for I was so deep in the water that I could not hold the gun sloping enough to pour the powder in. I therefore had to search for a shallow place, and after several shots under these trying circumstances, I was delighted to see the monstrous animal roll over into the water. I now towed him after me to the stream, but the Malays objected to having the animal put into the boat, and he was so heavy that I could not do it without their help. I looked about for a place to skin him, but not a bit of dry ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... frequent instances in sacred history: I mean, the just judgment of God against an offending people." The state of public morals, Fielding considers, to have drawn down upon society this signal visitation of Providence. "Indeed, such monstrous impieties and iniquities have I both seen and heard of, within these last three years, during my sojourning in what is called the world, particularly the last winter, while I tarried in the great city, that, while I verily believe we are the silliest people under Heaven in every other ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... At that monstrous charge my spirit almost went from me. That it should be this thing, above all others that should be brought against me! I glanced this way and that; and saw how even Chiffinch, who had fallen back a little as I advanced, was looking askance ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... they immediately appeared to his eyes, and never, for a moment, did he feel sure of the execution of his project. But even if every question had been settled, every doubt cleared away, every difficulty overcome, he would probably have renounced his design on the instant, as something absurd, monstrous, and impossible. But there were still a host of matters to arrange, of problems to solve. As to procuring the hatchet, this trifle did not trouble Raskolnikoff in the least, for nothing was easier. As a matter of fact Nastasia was scarcely ever at home, especially of an evening. She was constantly ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... waiting at the steps as the carriage rolled up the winding drive, with a monstrous bouquet of his choicest blossoms for Polly, and one exactly like it only a little smaller, for Phronsie; and Prince came rushing out getting in every one's way and nearly devouring Phronsie; and there was King Fisher running away on toddling feet from his ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... confounded by the unexpected circumstance, to turn at once, and when I did, it was to see both pairs of eyes shining, and both faces dimpling with real or affected gaiety. Indeed, if the matter had stopped there, I should have thought myself the victim of some monstrous delusion; but when, a half-hour later, I found this box missing from the cabinet where I had hastily thrust it at the peremptory summons of our hostess, I knew that I had not misunderstood the nature of the cry I had heard; that it ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... this occurred to me, just then. The one thing that loomed big in my mind's eye was the monstrous injustice of the accusation. Coming right on top of what I'd lately experienced at the hands of the men who had really done that dirty job—my head still tingled from the impact of Hicks' pistol—it stirred up all the ugliness I was capable of, and a lot that I had never suspected. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... an instant, through tears, amazed and incredulous. Surely some one was playing a monstrous joke upon her today. Soon she would come upon the strings and false bottoms and wigs and masks of the game. But the office boy's contemplation of her distress was real. Something must be done. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and which could reflect and neutralize for some little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing. Nor was the pirate unarmed—a vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his Lewiston, to spend its force in spitting, crackling pyrotechnics against the ether-wall of the squat and monstrous Standish. But Costigan's infernal machine did not rely only upon vibratory destruction. At almost the first flash of the pirate's weapon the officer touched a trigger; there was a double report, ear-shattering in that narrowly confined space; and the pirate's body literally flew into mist as a half-kilogram ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not without pain that you are forced ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... averted her eyes so as to evade his greeting. . . . The old man felt sad over such indifference, not on his own account, but on his son's. Poor Julio! . . . The unbending parent, in complete mental immorality, found himself lamenting this indifference as something monstrous. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... where birth and breed are more than any other thing, where a drop of impure blood effects an ineradicable stain; therefore the thought of this girl's ignoble parentage was so repugnant to him that the more he pondered it the more pitiful it seemed, the more monstrous. Lying awake and thinking of her in the stillness of his quarters, it had seemed a very unfortunate and a very terrible thing. During his morning duties the vision of her had been fresh before him again, and his constant contemplation of the matter ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Mr. Rymer, laying a hand on his forehead, and leaving a black mark there. 'There is no end to your kindness; but I feel it as a disgrace to us—to me—that you, a lady of property, should be working here like a servant. It is monstrous—monstrous!' ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the contrary, he rebelled against himself, and cried in fury: "It is monstrous, I have in fact spoiled for myself the only pleasure that remained to me—the flesh. Once I amused myself without blame, now I pay for my poor debauches with torments. I have added one more weariness to existence—would that I could ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... and as he did so, from outside came a strange sound, as of a long monstrous groan from a thousand throats. Again the dying man stirred; his hand sought his brother's arm and gripped it with a kind of feeble strength; then dropped ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... aunt?" demanded Lily. It was monstrous, but she had a very dramatic imagination, and there was a faint hint of enjoyment in ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... brain, but a pain came with the effort of memory. So my eyes went back to my grandfather in the window. His face was now become black as Scipio's, and he wore a red turban and a striped cotton gown that was too large for him. And he was sewing. This was monstrous! ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that extent constructive even expiatory. I've been sacrificing so to strange gods that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my fidelity—fundamentally unchanged after all—to our own. I feel as if my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars—of another faith altogether. There it is—it's done." And then he further explained. "It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite out of the way for Chad helps to ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... shores of France he discovered his mistake. He had only to give his real name, "the Marquis de St. Evremonde," which he was obliged to do if he would help Gabelle, and the title was the signal for rude threats and ill treatment. Once in, he could not go back, and he felt as if a monstrous net were closing around him (as indeed, it was) from which there was ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... own part," the Duke continued, "I have advised the police to turn their attention to the south of France. I have already said that I do not believe that the Duchess would encourage so monstrous an action, but the lad had the most wrong-headed opinions, and it is possible that he may have fled to her, aided and abetted by this German. I think, Dr. Huxtable, that we will now ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... there was a great legged worm, a monstrous green thing, very venomous in its bite; and presently as I moved I brushed it with my heel, and like the dart of light it swooped with its tiny head and struck me with its fangs in the lower thigh. With my knife I cut through its neck and it fell to writhing and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... such quivering flakes upon the golden flesh of Eve, half hidden among laurels, as she stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah, summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past peril ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... carpenter and the first mate had got their axes ready to cut them away, should such occur. At length a tremendous sea came roaring towards our weather bow. The ship struggled as if to avoid it, but she pitched headlong into the deep hollow just before her, and a monstrous sea, lifting its head half way up to the foretop, came right down on our deck, sweeping up to the main hatchway. Horner and several of the men shrieked out with terror, believing that their last moments ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... sweat, shivering, with a spasm of revolt. She fought against the meshes in which Nature had entrapped her. She wished to live, to live freely, and it seemed to her that Nature had tricked her. Then she was ashamed of such thoughts, and seemed monstrous in her own eyes, and asked herself if she were more wicked than, or made differently from, other women. And little by little she would grow calm again, browsing like a tree over the sap, and the dream of the living fruit ripening in her womb. What was it? What was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... sure to recover again almost as quickly as he had been taken ill. Nobody could refuse to try the effect of so reasonable a proposal, before sending for a surgeon. Accordingly, John was supported upstairs, with great difficulty; being a monstrous weight, and regularly tumbling down two steps every time they hoisted him up three; and, being laid on the bed, was left in charge of his wife, who, after a short interval, reappeared in the parlour, with the gratifying intelligence that ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... defense of my will. I felt the malevolent fury of Its striving. Like the antennae of some monstrous insect brushing about my body, I felt Its evil desires wavering about my mental self, examining, searching where It might seize. It had not yet found the weakness It sought. If ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and monstrous practices was indeed most difficult. The most pernicious of all was one which was likely to bring about tragic results. They believed firmly in a class of doctors among their people who professed that they could procure the illness of an individual at will, and that by certain ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... hardly imagine Erastus Root serious in the expression of such a monstrous doctrine. His life had been pure and noble. He was a sincere lover of his country; a statesman of high purpose, and of the most commanding talents. No one ever accused him of any share in this financial corruption. Yet a more Machiavellian opinion could ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the duke, Danby, Ormond, and all the ministry; persons who were certainly the most obnoxious to the popular leaders. Besides, the whole texture of the plot contains such low absurdity, that it is impossible to have been the invention of any man of sense or education. It is true the more monstrous and horrible the conspiracy, the better was it fitted to terrify, and thence to convince, the populace: but this effect, we may safely say, no one could beforehand have expected; and a fool was in this case more likely to succeed than a wise man. Had Shaftesbury ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... last things which a student of Joe Miller would have thought it possible to invent. Yet this the Americans have achieved. Whatever may be the value attached to it, many a laugh has been created by that monstrous exaggeration, so worded as to give a momentary and bewildering sense of possibility to something most egregiously absurd, which as decidedly belongs to America as the bull does to Ireland. "A man is so tall that he has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... through the dust, and were well on on the Commercy road, there was a short halt, and during this halt there passed us the largest Tun or Barrel that ever went on wheels. You talk of the Great Tun of Heidelburg, or of those monstrous Vats that stand in cool sheds in the Napa Valley, or of the vast barrels in the Catacombs of Rheims; but all these are built in situ and meant to remain steady, and there is no limit to the size of a Barrel that has not to travel. The point about this enormous ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... silence reigned. For long stretches the shores and very vast and solitary waters produced the impression of an unknown stream, upon which this poor little sail was the first in all the world to venture itself. The further they advanced, the more this monstrous river dismayed him. He imagined that his mother was at its source, and that their navigation must last for years. Twice a day he ate a little bread and salted meat with the boatmen, who, perceiving that he was sad, never addressed a ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... ready to meet anything, they bounded into the place, when, as if worked by a spring, the horrible figure in the tub started upright like a monstrous jack-in-the-box. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... will be a law enacted that prevent men from drinking liquor, especially those in whom there is a dominant appetite for it. The idea of licensing men to sell liquor and punishing men for drinking it is monstrous. To be sure, they are not punished for drinking it in moderation, but no man can be moderate who has such an appetite as I have. Why license men to sell liquor, and then punish others for drinking it? What sort of sense ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... cursed his curiosity, for—he saw it now—it was the desire to approach the mystery revealed by Koupriane and to penetrate once more, through all the besetting dangers, an astounding and perhaps monstrous enigma, that had brought him to the threshold of the datcha des Iles, which had placed him in the trembling hands of Matrena Petrovna in promising her his help. He had shown pity, certainly, pity for the delirious distress of that heroic woman. But there had been more curiosity than pity in his ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... me, is bandy-legged; is no better than a girl at sea, and never well ashore. I am always in raw health—the strong mind in the potent body. Had I been at Louisburg, I should have held it, as I held Ticonderoga last July, and drove the English back with monstrous slaughter." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... himself headlong downwards. Beneath him lay the body of the mighty fabric, its vast roof, its crocketed pinnacles, its buttresses and battlements scarcely discernible through the gloom, but looking like some monstrous engine devised ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was severely hurt by a harpooned and desperate whale turning upon the small boat, and, by his monstrous jaws, smashing it to pieces, one of which, striking him in his right side, crippled him for life. When sufficiently recovered, he married, according to previous engagement, and his daughter, born in due time, and closely resembling ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... this book; he is irritated by the marching in of the household brigade to family prayers, and he declares that we 'know no more of that race which inhabits the basement floor, than of the men and brethren of Timbuctoo, to whom some among us send missionaries'—a monstrous imputation. He constantly resumes the moralising attitude; and his pungent persiflage is poured out, as if from an apocalyptic vial, upon worldliness and fashionable insolence. Sir Barnes Newcome's divorce from the unhappy Lady Clara furnishes a text ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... this chaos of incandescent nature, sent in a flame of deep blue sky and sea. It lay there calmly, like some phantasmagoric flower, some monstrous rose that swoons away, with upturned face, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... found to be utterly useless. In vain were the yards braced round. Without the use of the rudder the ship could not be got sufficiently off to give her head-way. Slowly she continued to drive towards the monstrous berg, which threatened, should she strike it, to ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... that!" Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack. "Belike it's some one of his acquaintance 've married her for her looks, and he've just met her.... Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!" the relinquished spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea of a second man being so monstrous in wickedness. "Just coupled, too!" Mrs. Berry groaned on the suspicious side of the debate. "And such a sweet young thing for his wife! But no, I'll never believe it. Not if he tell me so himself! And men don't do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... went by (which I shall describe in the next chapter), I "learned a few." I heard tales of the police, and police-courts, and lawyers, that were unbelievable and monstrous. Men, prisoners, told me of personal experiences with the police of great cities that were awful. And more awful were the hearsay tales they told me concerning men who had died at the hands of the police and who ...
— The Road • Jack London
... the tailor, terrified, though Aramis had pronounced these words in his sweetest and most honeyed voice. The request appeared, on reflection, so exaggerated, so ridiculous, so monstrous to M. Percerin that, first he laughed to himself, then aloud, and finished with a shout. D'Artagnan followed his example, not because he found the matter so "very funny," but in order not to allow ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... glossy, and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian Laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution! At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... bold enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace traveled rapidly, and everywhere it brought out the better nature of the Spanish people, who accordingly denounced this harsh treatment by ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... had always found him good-natured and correct, but considered his intellect somewhat below the average grade. A few months subsequently he died in jail of consumption. Regarded from the ordinary moral stand-points, this was a strange, an unaccountable, a monstrous act, and we are unable to take the first step towards a solution of the mystery. Looking, however, at the material conditions of his affections, his propensities, his impulses,—his cerebral dynamics,—we get a clew, at least, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... time, I cannot tell how the affair ended, but I feel sure of the liking with which Mrs. Stowe inspired me. There was something very simple, very motherly in her, and something divinely sincere. She was quite the person to take 'au grand serieux' the monstrous imaginations of Lady Byron's jealousy and to feel it on her conscience to make public report of them when she conceived that the time had come to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... elliptical basin, and catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... first place, the two races are not amalgamated. Intermarriages between them are so rare, that few of the readers of this article can remember ever to have known one. Such marriages are regarded as monstrous and disgraceful, though the law should, as in some of the States, recognize them. One sentiment in respect to them pervades the whole community, and that a sentiment of aversion. Those half-breeds which spring from licentiousness, or even from the very few ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... miracle of her escape should make a mystery about her origin. Jonah may or may not have been three days inside a fish, but that does not make him a merman. And in all the other cases of European nations who escaped the monstrous captivity, we do admit the purity and continuity of the European type. We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, but not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out of Africa overruled for centuries the religion and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton |
