"Monstrously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in diameter), but when we "struck" the first big tree I almost fell off my horse with wonder. This tree was four hundred feet high and about thirty-three feet in diameter. I knew beforehand that they were monstrously big and high, but I did not know that they had such a beautiful color—a red cinnamon. The first branch was a hundred feet from the ground and six feet in diameter. In the Mariposa Grove there are ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the symbolic gateways of China ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... he realized, shuddering. Too monstrously hideous, this sight, to be endured. With a gasp, the man ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Soldiers' Rights represented a violent reaction. Under the old regime the army was a monstrously cruel machine; the soldiers were slaves. At the first opportunity they had revolted and, as invariably happens, the pendulum had swung too far. On May 28th the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates issued a declaration in which it was said: "From now on the soldier-citizen ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... (that you could have seen his regimentals!) was a perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously ugly, with a monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for the lower- jaw, to express his tyrannical and obdurate nature. He began his system of persecution, by calling his prisoner 'General Buonaparte;' to which the latter replied, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... have written cheerfully to you if she had been seated in a cauldron of boiling oil, it is my impression," broke in her ladyship. "She has been monstrously treated, people trying to murder her, and she afraid to accuse them for fear that you would disapprove. You know you have a nasty manner, James, when you think your dignity ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... meeting of the Association after the recall of the Marquis of Anglesea was known, Mr. O'Connell remarked;—"In my own knowledge of Irish history, and I believe I know Ireland's history well, I never heard any thing so monstrously absurd as the recall of this gallant and high minded-man. The Duke of Wellington said he would be worse than mad if he became premier. He is therefore a self-convicted madman! And yet, gracious Heaven! he continues the insane pilot, who directs our almost ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Deluge is a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of the story of the Creation. [12] Between these two lies the story of the creation of man and woman and their fall from primitive innocence, which is even more monstrously improbable than either of the other two, though, from the nature of the case, it is not so easily capable of direct refutation. It can be demonstrated that the earth took longer than six days in the making, and ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... whilst the rival is laughed at by the whole nation, for carrying on his intrigue with no better conduct, than to be discovered, and pay so dear for his pleasure." In this, however, we differ; our cuckolds are laughed at as fools, which is monstrously absurd, whilst the transgressor is denominated a fine fellow, no less monstrously unjust. How far the laws of England may be accessary to such glaring perversity of sentiment, it is difficult to say; but if one were disposed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... to fight while the seas were still monstrously swollen and their crests were breaking across the decks of these vessels of less than five hundred tons burden. Wildly they rolled and pitched, burying their bows in the roaring combers. The merchant ships which ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... short, and it is only possible within the limits of the brief span allotted to us upon earth to acquire a certain number of facts. It is monstrously absurd to sacrifice our best years in stuffing so many facts into the brain, in order to avoid being laughed at by a few thin-minded pedants as an ignoramus. Some consolation, at least, might surely be derived from the reflection that many of the greatest geniuses whom the world has produced ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... remarkable that the Spanish party, who were then all-powerful, should have allowed their own Madonna to be placed at such a disadvantage, in not having the last innings. I need hardly say that the shrine of Guadalupe is monstrously rich. The Chapter has been known to lend such a thing as a million or two of dollars at a time, though most of their property is invested on landed security. They are allowed to have lotteries, and make something handsome out of them; and they even sell medals and prints of their patroness, which ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... all busy with the delightful report that Mrs. Harford had again been seen driving with the major, whose reputation for gallantry, monstrously exaggerated by the reek of the saloons, made even a single hour of his company a dash of pitch to the best of women. Kelley speculated on just how long it would take Harford to learn of these hints against his wife. Some of his blunt followers ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... at which the other ladies, even my dear friend and chaperon, looked rather green. The weather was glorious, and off we went with a flourish of trumpets and whips, and I knew I should enjoy myself monstrously. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... very thing," cried Peggy. "Of course her mother would send for her on such a night. Only I like not to send her away before she hath finished her supper. 'Tis monstrously inhospitable." ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... face, and she wished to indemnify the man who disguised his feelings of repugnance by shewing him what gifts nature had given her. I am sure, ladies, that the most prudish—nay, the most virtuous, amongst you, if you were unfortunate enough to be so monstrously deformed in the face, would introduce some fashion which would conceal your ugliness, and display those beauties which custom hides from view. And doubtless Madame de la Saone would have been more chary of her person if she had been able to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... things; Mrs. Higgins was prosperous and self-satisfied vulgarity. Of a complexion much lighter than the girl's, she still possessed a coarse comeliness, which pointed back to the dairymaid type of damsel. Her features revealed at the same time a kindly nature and an irascible tendency. Monstrously overdressed, and weighted with costly gewgaws, she came forward panting and perspiring, and, before paying any heed to her hostess, closely surveyed ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... jack-pudding's jokes; Then took their tickets for the show, And got by chance the foremost row. To see their grave, observing face, Provoked a laugh throughout the place. 'Brother,' says Pug, and turned his head, 'The rabble's monstrously ill bred.' Now through the booth loud hisses ran; Nor ended till the show began. 30 The tumbler whirls the flap-flap round, With somersets he shakes the ground; The cord beneath the dancer springs; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Some shadow, even now, hovers over them. What is it? It is not the mere atmosphere of the room, so oppressive to us. It is something more definite than that, and even more sinister. It looms aloft, monstrously, like one of those grotesque actual shadows which a candle may cast athwart walls and ceiling. Whose shadow is it? we wonder, and, wondering, become sure that it is ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Janice, "but 't will be very different. I know he'll—well, he'll be abrupt and—and excited, and will—his sentences will not be well thought out before-hand. Now Penrhyn would have spoken at length and feelingly. 'T would have been monstrously enjoyable." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... pleasanter for the benefited party to reflect that the party conferring the benefit was happy in his family; but, if the case were otherwise, to suppose the benefit less real, or the party conferring it entitled to less gratitude, is something too monstrously absurd to be entertained by any ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Miss Polly, you are as squeamishly affected about taking a Cup of Strong-Waters as a Lady before Company. I vow, Polly, I shall take it monstrously ill if you refuse me. —Brandy and Men (though Women love them ever so well) are always taken by us with some ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... graciously allowed, but not without forebodings of trouble arising therefrom! What the British Government or their idiotic Governor wanted with Napoleon's stomach, or why they refused to allow his body to be embalmed, or his heart preserved and sent to his wife, Heaven only knows. They had monstrously violated all human feeling by ignoring appeals made to them from all parts of the world to be merciful to a much afflicted man. They were well informed by the best medical authorities on the island that the climate was deadly to a constitution ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... matter for nearly three years, deliberating in every possible way how to avoid suspicious management and faulty performance: consequently, the forgery is anything but plain and palpable; nay, it is wonderfully obscure and monstrously difficult: nevertheless, like all forged documents, it is bungled—ay, in spite of the pains taken to keep free from bad and blundering work, it is, occasionally (as will be seen in the present book, from this point until the close), ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... himself. He was not merely a naval surgeon, but a regular M.D., and with an English diploma. He could appreciate, as much as any man, the value of life; and hard indeed did he struggle to preserve the means of prolonging it. He was a short, round, and very corpulent person, with a monstrously large and pleasantly-looking face, with a very high colour—a colour not the flush of intemperance, but the glow of genuine health. This vast physiognomy was dug all over with holes; not merely pock-marks, but pock-pits. Indeed, his countenance ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... another foot. Then I perceived that it was worse even than I suspected, for I now distinguished a giant species of Nepenthes (Nepenthes Ferocissimus) most monstrously developed, clutching in its long arms and horrid ascidiums the remains of a human victim—apparently a woman—for a gleam of yellow satin showed beneath the black embrace. Good God! I thought of the 'fisherman's ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... must be headed off if possible. It would mean a monstrously costly delay; it might mean a forfeiture of his contract with Lightener. It might mean that he had gone into this new project and expended hundreds of thousands of dollars to equip for the manufacture of engines in vain.... The men must ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... if she got anything more than a very small salary—governesses in those days were shockingly remunerated—and I know,—poor soul, she had to work monstrously hard. Drumming Latin and Greek into heads as thick as ours ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the wounded Germans who had fallen into their vindictive hands! From the knife he pointed to the medical officers sitting placidly in the train, as much as to say. "And these are some of the culprits." [It is not surprising that thus monstrously misinformed, and ready to believe all evil against the hated English, the soldiers] strained like bloodhounds on the leash. "Out with them!" said their irate colonel, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the carriages in which these blood-thirsty British ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... men went processionally through the town," says the account, "it was observed that most of the wig-makers, who wanted other people to wear them, wore no wigs themselves; and this striking the London mob as something monstrously unfair and inconsistent, they seized the petitioners, and cut off all their ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... know when we enter a drawing-room whether it is a pretty room or no; but how few of us know how to make a drawing-room pretty! There has come up in London in these latter days a form of room so monstrously ugly that I will venture to say that no other people on earth but Londoners would put up with it. Londoners, as a rule, take their houses as they can get them, looking only to situation, size, and price. What Grecian, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... little boy he was, at any rate, a terribly fine fellow. He had to make her look up to him and admire him like the rest of the Banditti, otherwise he would never hold her fast. And everything served to that end. Before her he swaggered monstrously. He did things which turned him sick with fear. Once he had climbed to the top of a dizzy wall in the ruins, and had postured on the narrow edge, the bricks crumbling under him, the dust rising in clouds, so that he looked like a small devil dancing in mid-air. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... capable of acting thus. He was tyrannical, insolent, and corrupt enough, if need be he was inexorable, but he was not Tigellinus or Nero. Military life had left in him a certain feeling of justice, and religion, and a conscience to understand that such a deed would be monstrously mean. He would have been capable, perhaps, of committing such a deed during an access of anger and while in possession of his strength, but at that moment he was filled with tenderness, and was sick. The only question for Vinicius at that time ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... special reason that the sight of serious, habitual gamblers has always filled me with a depression bordering on disgust. Most of the men, by some subtle stress of their ruling passion, have grown so monstrously fat, and most of the women so harrowingly thin. The rest of the women seem to be marked out for apoplexy, and the rest of the men to be wasting away. One feels that anything thrown at them would be either embedded or shattered, and looks vainly among them for one person furnished ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... to disobey, the trembling flunkey led the way up one flight of stairs and pointed to a door, which I abruptly opened. There, in his library, sat Brother Porkley, a monstrously fat man with a pale, oily face that contained about as much expression as the surface ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Freddie Drummond found it monstrously difficult to get along among the working people. He was not used to their ways, and they certainly were not used to his. They were suspicious. He had no antecedents. He could talk of no previous jobs. His hands were ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... and walked with a stride which was as long as it was stately. He went in for dressing himself beautifully, strummed on the banjo, and had a playful little habit of arranging his tie in any mirror which he saw. His pride in himself was so monstrously open that no one with a grain of humour could be angry with him. He talked about every game under the sun as if they were all equally easy to him, but I should not think that any one was ever found who believed half ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Waterloo just received. Jobey, who has charge of all the cricket implements and is generally the custodian of the playing fields, monstrously drunk, on the ground of having won ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... throughout the district, and many of the younger men made special trips to Bali to examine it. Arni would beam with joy and strut around with a knowing, self-satisfied expression on his face, and would tell of the patience, the agility, and the marksmanship he had to put into killing this monstrously clever fox. It certainly wasn't hard to kill all you wanted of these devils, if you just had the powder and shot and were willing to give your time to it, he would say, as he turned the skin so that the sunlight shone full on the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... uncle, I am wrong'd here monstrously, he charges me with stealing of his cloak, and would I might never stir, if I did not find it in the ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... up monstrously, for each five-ton truck load added several thousand dollars to his bank account, but the time was getting short. Less than three weeks remained before the bond and lease expired, and still Wiley was playing to win. ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... million dollars. This plan is said to have been originated and principally carried through by Sir John Blunt, one of the Company's directors. Parliament adopted it after two months' discussion—the Bubble having, however, been swelling monstrously all ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and Metternich the Ambassador had gone up the line to Nish to meet the Kaiser, who was touring in those parts, so Moellendorff was the biggest German in the city. He was a thin, foxy-faced fellow, cleverish but monstrously vain, and he was not very popular either with the Germans or the Turks. He was polite to both of us, but I am bound to say that I got a bad fright when I entered the room, for the first man I saw ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... foolish, to be sure," said Lady Cecilia; "still she might do mischief, and there is something monstrously treacherous in that smile ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... what we call wit and humour in these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A] Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that we understand as humour, nor can I discover a word which exactly corresponds with our term humour in any language, ancient or modern. Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... piece of the rock, at the corner of one of these murky entrances, moved on a sudden, and proved to be a human figure, that beckoned to him. He approached, and saw his father. He could barely recognise him, he was so monstrously altered. ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... so was mine. This is monstrously strange, to say the least of it. However, you tell your story first, and then I ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... with one's story. We had intended to have commenced this book with something quite terrific, a murder or a marriage; and all our great ideas have ended in a lounge. After all, it is, perhaps, the most natural termination. In life, surely man is not always as monstrously busy as he appears to be in novels and romances. We are not always in action, not always making speeches or making money, or making war, or making love. Occasionally we talk, about the weather generally; sometimes about, ourselves; oftener about our friends; as often about our enemies, at least, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... girls ran downstairs together. Just for a moment Kathleen had felt frightened at Alice's words, but then she cast them from her mind. It was quite, quite impossible to suppose that anything so monstrously unfair as that a little girl should be expelled from the school could happen. Ruth, too, of all the girls—Ruth who was absolutely goodness itself. So Kathleen ate her breakfast with appetite, remarked on the brightness of the day to Mrs. Tennant and the boys, and then with ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... and fearefull sight to behold. Then began the students to waile and weepe for him, and sought for his body in many places. Lastly, they came into the yard, where they found his body lying on the horse-dung, most monstrously torne and fearefull to behold, for his head and all his joynts were dashed in peeces. The fore-named students and masters that were at his death, have obtained so much, that they buried him in the village where he was so grievously tormented. After ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... snobbishly playing the great lady in Mrs. Sarratt's small sitting-room! Whenever that was Cicely's mood she lisped; and as often as Marsworth, who was sitting far away from her, talking to Bridget Cookson, caught her voice, it seemed to him that she was lisping—affectedly—monstrously. She was describing for instance a certain ducal household in which she had just been spending the week-end, and Marsworth heard ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... order, he had been taken back to the underground cell—an anguish such as he had never before known in the course of a life diversified by many crimes, by three escapes, and two sentences at the Assizes. And is there not something monstrously fine in the dog-like attachment shown to the man he had made his friend by this wretch in whom were concentrated all the life, the powers, the spirit, and the passions of the hulks, who was, so ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... historians of Lancia have noted rebellion against institutions as an especial characteristic of the race. It is more natural to suppose that what irritated them most was the nose of Nola, which was just like the button of an electric bell, and the unpleasant voice of Lucan the Floren, and the monstrously bent legs of Pepe le Mota. Besides, these respectable agents of government authority were quite cognisant of the anarchical tendencies manifested sometimes by the people of Lancia. But they never thought that their appearing without proper precautions among the crowd of Altavilla, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... not a single detail have I distorted. With a quite devilish ingenuity they had fastened upon some true bits: I had suggested the change of hats with the cabby, I had wished to ride the giraffe, and the Tuttle person had secured my knife, but how monstrously untrue of me was the impression conveyed by these isolated facts. I could believe now quite all the tales I had ever heard of the queerness of Americans. Queerness, indeed! I went to bed resolving to let the morrow ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... him it could attract no love, to him it could bring no happiness. Probably it caused him to play the piano better; if this justifies Nature, she is welcome to the plea. For my part, I felt that it was monstrously bad taste in him to come and be miserable here and now in Forstadt. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... of Meneptah?" the murket continued with increasing vehemence. "Har-hat! And behold the miseries of Egypt! Shall we put any great sin past the knave who sinneth monstrously, or divine his methods who is a master of cunning? The land is entangled in difficulty! Give me but a raveling fiber to pull, and, by the gods, I know that we shall find Har-hat at the other end of it! ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Sandford before the new comer, paid for his beer, and betook himself again to his tub. He got pretty well off, and, the island shutting out his unconscious rival from his view, worked away at first under the pleasing delusion that he was holding his own. But he was soon undeceived, for in monstrously short time the pursuing skiff showed around the corner and bore down on him. He never relaxed his efforts, but could not help watching the enemy as he came up with him hand over hand, and envying the perfect ease with which he seemed to be pulling ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... globe of balloon fishes. Their nearest affinity is to the fishes known as anglers, with which they agree in the form of their gill-openings and fins, and in the possession of filaments on the head; but the monstrously disproportioned head of the anglers, which is depressed from above downwards, and the enormous opening of their mouth, readily distinguish them from the Toad Fishes, whose head is of moderate size, and, like their bodies, compressed laterally. They are either smooth or variously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... I will assuredly demand satisfaction of you for entering my rooms without my permission, I give you my word of honour that I could receive no such letter from the princess, your wife. The thing is monstrously iniquitous, and you have been grossly deceived into injuring the good name of a woman as innocent as an angel. Since the pin is the property of the princess, pray return it to her with my compliments, and say that I found it on the bridge of Sant' Angelo. I can remember the very date. It was ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... near, and Maya got a better view of him. He looked as though he were swinging in the air, his rotund little body hung so high on his monstrously long legs, which groped for a footing on all sides like a movable scaffolding of threads. He stepped along cautiously, feeling his way; the little brown sphere of his body rose and sank, rose and sank. His legs were so very long and thin ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... the number,—but, much to the vexation of the host, the Chateau-Margaux did not arrive until a late hour, and when the sumptuous supper supplied by "Old Charley" had been done very ample justice by the guests. It came at length, however,—a monstrously big box of it there was, too—and as the whole party were in excessively good humor, it was decided, nem. con., that it should be lifted upon the table and its ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England, a slave of wickedness, lending thereunto her helping hand, with whom, as in a sanctuary, the most pernicious of all men have found a refuge; this very woman having seized upon the kingdom, and monstrously usurping the place of the supreme Head of the Church in all England, and the chief authority and jurisdiction thereof, hath again brought back the same kingdom to miserable destruction, which was then newly reduced to the faith, and to good order. For having by strong hand inhibited the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the habit of taking them, created considerable coolness, not to say irritation, between the ghosts of the readers of "The Vicar of Wakefield," or "Werther," or the "Nouvelle Heloise" and ourselves. Besides, they would be monstrously shocked at our ways. They would think us marvellously ill-bred. While we! I dare scarcely harbour the thought, much less express it. Anyway, it is certain that they occasionally allowed Sheridan and Miss Burney (I am not even thinking of the remote people of Fielding), and even, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... noise and rustling among the masses! Is it joy, or is it grief? Who can read the meaning of a thing so monstrously multiform! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... advanced on his predecessors in many respects. He was a clumsy writer, and Johnson declared, with some justice, that he 'gabbled monstrously,' but his collation of the quartos and the First and Second Folios was conducted on more thorough and scholarly methods than those of any of his predecessors not excepting Theobald. His industry was untiring, and he is said to have transcribed the whole of Shakespeare ten ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of actual drunkenness, is a frightful evil in the national life; and what is commonly known as the "Liquor Interest" plays a sinister part as an organized obstructive force standing in the way of needed reforms. The number of public-houses and drinking- bars in English towns and villages is monstrously out of proportion to any reasonable needs of the population: and it must be more than ordinarily difficult for brewers and publicans, under existing conditions, to resist the temptation to exploit for the sake of gain ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... to a cheap and cheerful chamber upon the new Boulevard. It was on the fifth floor; the room was just adapted for so little a couple. Superficially observed, the furniture resolved itself into an enormous clock and a monstrously fine mirror; but after a while you might remark four small chairs and a great one, a bureau and a wardrobe, a sofa and a canopied bed; and just without the two gorgeously curtained windows lay a cunning balcony, where they could sit of evenings, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... near Mecklenburgh Square, I formed a most heart-rending but a most intimate acquaintance. In cash I once received from him (pounds)4. For that and for the original amount of the tailor's bill, which grew monstrously under repeated renewals, I paid ultimately something over (pounds)200. That is so common a story as to be hardly worth the telling; but the peculiarity of this man was that he became so attached to me as to visit me every day at my office. For a long period he found it to be worth his ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... lost faith. Half a dozen motor-cars were slumbering in a row near the door of the Guinea-Fowl, and they all stirred monstrously yet scarcely perceptibly at the sight of the woman's figure, solitary, fragile and pale in the darkness. They seemed for an instant to lust for her; and then, recognising that she was not their prey, to sink back into the torpor of their inexhaustible patience. The sight of them was prejudicial ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... umbo to the apex, and with the occludent margin reflexed. This seemed caused by the shell having been attacked by some boring animal, and from having supported Balani. In the same specimen the first cirrus on one side was monstrously thick and curled; the second cirrus had its posterior ramus in a rudimentary condition. In Mr. Cuming's Collection, there are small specimens with the zones of growth overlapping each other, with thick irregular margins, and ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... a person driving an aeroplane, able to move in all three dimensions. Pretty soon, of course, she'd have to come hack to earth, where certain monstrously terrifying ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the deserted street and then caught the eye of the solitary intooski, a thoughtful-looking man with a short, square beard, looking monstrously stout in his padded green coat, the livery of ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... see Bill seated at the editor's table of the editor's room of a monstrously successful monthly magazine of most monstrous fiction that Mr. Bitt's directors have started; Margaret, that sentimental young woman, by her husband's side is correcting the proofs of a poem signed "Margaret Wyvern." It is of the most ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... thought you might have a small penchant, as the French call it;—you apprehend me; but she don't intend to see company to-day. I am monstrously chagrin'd, sir, 'foregad, that I have it not in my power to introduce you to the divine mistress of my heart; but, as matters are circumstanc'd, I think it is not worth our while ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... I feel the full force of the indictment. The picture I have given is indeed monstrously over-simplified and rude. But like all abstractions, it will prove to have its use. If philosophers can treat the life of the universe abstractly, they must not complain of an abstract treatment of the life of philosophy itself. In point of fact the ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... polychromatic death at us! Wherever the deadly discharge touched, would appear horrible burns that ate away the tissues. But that isn't what paralyzed us. We had known these vermin to be short of twelve inches tall, but now they reared monstrously four feet into the air! Their black, hairy limbs lashed in an ecstasy of murder-lust, their beady eyes gleamed with fiendish purpose. And they ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... systematically to aggravate the unfortunate skipper (who was always very slow, poor man, except on board ship), addressing sundry remarks to the stove upon the slowness of seafaring men in general, and skippers in particular. In a few minutes the skipper appeared in a similar costume, with a monstrously long gun over his shoulder, and under his arm a pair of snow-shoes gaudily painted by himself; which snow-shoes he used to admire amazingly, and often gave it as his opinion that they were ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... so monstrously destructive to all we hold dear that for a time it is impossible to believe them. I remember now that as I read that amazing communication through—at the first reading it was a little difficult to understand because the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... put in Madame la Marquise—a fleshly lady monstrously coiffed. "If we allow such men as thus to live in France our ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... five-feet-eight in her shoes. There's an expression of great malice and humour in her physiognomy, and a kind of devil-may-care haughtiness in the poise of her head. She's a bit of a grande dame, into the bargain—something like an Anglo-Italian duchess, for example; she's monstrously rich; and she adds, you'll be surprised to learn, to her other fascinations that of being a widow. Faith, the men are so fond of widows, it's a marvel to me that we're ever married at all until we reach that condition;—and ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... this unfortunate moment that Miki decided to venture one more experiment with Neewa. With a friendly yip he swung out one of his paws. Now Miki's paw, for a pup, was monstrously big, and his foreleg was long and lanky, so that when the paw landed squarely on the end of Neewa's nose it was like the swing of a prize-fighter's glove. The unexpectedness of it was a further decisive feature in the situation; and, on top of this, Miki swung his other paw around like a club ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... be droll," Pope said, aloud, "if our exteriors were ever altogether parodies. But time keeps a diary in our faces, and writes a monstrously plain hand. Now, if you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A. P. E.," Pope quoted, genially. "I begin to think that Dennis was right. What conceivable woman would not ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... cheek from the rear of his skull. Its mate sprang forth till it came out on his cheek, [1]so that it was the size of a five-fist kettle, and he made a red berry thereof out in front of his head.[1] His mouth was distorted monstrously [2]and twisted up to his ears[2]. He drew the cheek from the jaw-bone so that the interior of his throat was to be seen. His lungs and his lights stood out so that they fluttered in his mouth and his gullet. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the men have always been taught that woman's nature was morally superior to theirs, but we'd have to give up this criminal fad which we have persisted in at such a fearful price of bird life before we could be regarded as other than monstrously cruel and bloody. However, he prophesied that the fashion can't continue much longer anyway, because there soon won't be any birds left, and then, he says, we'll have a world without its sweetest music. It will be hushed by the folly ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... sits sighing and ogling the whole day long, and, what is worse still, in order to soften her heart towards him, he sings her all and sundry love ditties that he has ever composed or intends to compose. At the same time he is so monstrously jealous that he will not even permit the poor young girl to have the usual female attendance, for fear of intrigues and amours, which the maid might be induced to engage in. Instead, a hideous little apparition with hollow eyes and pale flabby cheeks appears every morning and evening to perform ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... be given, by Mr. Dickens, in behalf of the Mechanics' Institution. It is characteristic of him that he, thereupon, wrote to the Chatham newspaper, "I know nothing of your 'best authority,' except that he is (as he always is) preposterously and monstrously wrong." Eventually this Reading was arranged for, nevertheless, and came off at the date already mentioned. A third Reading at Chatham, comprising within it "The Poor Traveller" (the opening of which had a peculiar local interest),"Boots" at the "Holly Tree Inn," and ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... sunk below the level of his cheeks; that his cheeks are prominent, his lips very thick, his nostrils wide, his face beardless, and his head almost hairless—for the small kinky wool-knots thinly scattered over his skull can scarcely be designated hair. You may notice, moreover, that his head is monstrously large, with ears in proportion, and that the eyes are set obliquely, and have a Chinese expression. You may notice about Swartboy all those characteristics that distinguish the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of decrepitude, ready to give away a crown he can no longer wear. Philip, the son, is thin and fragile to look upon, diminutive in stature; in face, resembling his father in "heavy, hanging lip, vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Irishman in the service of Queen Isabella II., who fought for his adopted Queen with courage and distinction, and eventually committed suicide as a protest against the monstrously unjust conspiracy to bring about his ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Diddlers flourish, marriageable daughters and interesting widows set their caps for the nice young men, the streets are noisy and full of confusion, the theatres and show-shops generally reap an elegant harvest, and the police reports of the second morning of the New Year swell monstrously! Of a New Year's adventure of an innocent young acquaintance of mine, I have a little ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Gave; the fine brown lace of rising woods had disappeared, and, in its stead, a broad hanging terrace of delicate green stood up against the sky; from being a jolly counterpane, the plain of Billere itself had become a cheerful quilt; as for the foot-hills, they were so monstrously tricked out with fine fresh ruffles and unexpected equipage of greenery, with a strange epaulet upon that shoulder and a brand-new periwig upon that brow, that if high hills but hopped outside the Psalter you would have sworn the snowy Pyrenees ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... it and so earnestly, that now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had not even noticed the cruelty of his words. (The significance of his reproaches and his peculiar attitude to her shame she had, of course, not noticed either, and that, too, was clear to him.) But he saw how monstrously the thought of her disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long tortured her. "What, what," he thought, "could hitherto have hindered her from putting an end to it?" Only then he realised what those poor little orphan children and that pitiful ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... mixture of curiosity and disgust. He did not understand what was happening in himself. His whole being was disintegrated. He spent days together in absolute torpor. Work was torture to him. At night he slept heavily and in snatches, dreaming monstrously, with gusts of desire; the soul of a beast was racing madly in him. Burning, bathed in sweat, he watched himself in horror; he tried to break free of the crazy and unclean thoughts that possessed him, and he wondered if ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... eternity. How still everything was—how close and still the air! Would it be a storm? Would a sudden bolt strike her? She stood and waited. She could not bring her hand to her pocket again, but she felt that it bulged monstrously. She stood with no thought of moving again. Where were the thunders of Jehovah? No sacred word of all her long prayers came to her tongue—not even "Hear, O Israel." She felt that she was in direct communication with ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... red banner moved closer and closer together. The faces of the soldiers were clearly seen across the entire width of the street, monstrously flattened, stretched out in a dirty yellowish band. In it were unevenly set variously colored eyes, and in front the sharp bayonets glittered crudely. Directed against the breasts of the people, although not yet touching them, they drove them apart, pushing one man after the ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... a regular graver to write this chapter of horrors. No goose quill could afford me any assistance. Now then. Let me see—(Reads, and during his reading BARNSTAPLE comes in at the door behind him, unperceived.) "At this most monstrously appalling sight, the hair of Piftlianteriscki raised slowly the velvet cap from off his head, as if it had been perched upon the rustling quills of some exasperated porcupine—(I think that's new)—his nostrils dilated to that extent that you might, with ease, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and now the General was on his feet, "I was told on good authority at the club last week by a newspaper man—a monstrously clever man—that Mr. Brimstone, when he is going down to the House of Commons to disestablish the Church, or the army, or something, will call in at a shop and order two hundred silk hats to be sent to his house. What ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... speaking of men who wish to win reputation before they are toothless. Of course if your work is strong, and you can afford to wait, the probability is that half a dozen people will at last begin to shout that you have been monstrously neglected, as you have. But that happens when you are hoary and sapless, and when nothing under the sun ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... taking the heap of wooden platters and the other the smoking bowl of stew, marched solemnly within. But before he went, Boris handed me his pistolet without a word, and the slow-match with it. Which, as I admit, made me feel monstrously unsafe. However, I took the engine across my arm and stood at attention as I had seen him do, with the match ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... after what you have related, William,—can you seriously meditate the destruction of a fond woman, who has generosity enough to lay down her life for you? This is more incredible than the rest—more monstrously wicked." ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... great criminal, all in one, and he was as pitiless as a panther, more deadly than a moccasin. What influence had perverted such intellect into a weapon of iniquity? What evil of the blood, what lesion of the brain, had distorted his instincts so monstrously? ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... clamped around the mast. The clear star of the lantern shot this way and that for a moment, then it disappeared and in its place there sprang out a bag of yellow light, like a fire-balloon at anchor in the heavens. I could see the shadows of his head and hands moving monstrously over the inner surface of the sail, and muffled exclamations without meaning came down to me. After a moment he drew out his head and called: "All right—they're here. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and other topics that they knew would interest us; we were more moved than I can tell you. In the midst of my sentimentality, though, a thought occurred to me which made me laugh so immoderately that I was obliged to cover my face with the bedclothes. 'Good Heavens!' I said to Kate, 'what a monstrously ridiculous and commonplace appearance my boots must have, outside the door!' I never was so impressed with a sense of the absurdity of boots, in all ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... think more coolly over our quondam schoolfellow's swaggering talk and manner, we were not quite so impressed by his merits as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used, in former times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously improbable that the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how often we caught him tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted his little errors in the score of veracity. He and I, though never great friends, had been close companions: I was Jack's form-fellow (we ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "How monstrously stupid I have been. And it was to Madame la Comtesse that I spoke for so long in the salon!" I gazed on her in silence. And with a low sweet laugh of good nature she extended her hand. I took it and carried it to ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... through back streets and unfrequented ways in a shiny prison-van. Who came at last to look upon the Owen Saxham of this hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel for the Crown reared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite a different person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocate described in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of an unheard-of combination of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a lost art in this second-hand age. She had made Barbara's grandfather practise it, so that at Catton (her country place) and even at Ravensham, the trees were worth looking at. Here, at Monkland, they were monstrously neglected. To have the finest Italian cypress in the country, for example, and not take more care of it, was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... these opinions, I have no doubt that Mr Mitford was influenced by the same love of singularity which led him to spell "island" without an "s," and to place two dots over the last letter of "idea." In truth, preceding historians have erred so monstrously on the other side that even the worst parts of Mr Mitford's book may be useful as a corrective. For a young gentleman who talks much about his country, tyrannicide, and Epaminondas, this work, diluted in a sufficient quantity of Rollin and Berthelemi, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the other cases. Offences in which sex is concerned are often needlessly magnified by penalties, ranging from various forms of social ostracism to long sentences of penal servitude, which would be seen to be monstrously disproportionate to the real feeling against them if the removal of both the penalties and the taboo on their discussion made it possible for us to ascertain their real prevalence and estimation. Fortunately there is one outlet for the truth. We are permitted to discuss in jest what we may ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... her countenance with a desperate look. Why was she, the bride of the monstrously rich American, why was she trying to sell the bag? Did it mean the end of her resources? Or, were there still huge orders to be got from her? His shrewdness, trained by thirty years of dealing with all kinds of luxurious human beings, went exploring in vain. He was alarmed ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... to the warmth of which I opposed a stern continence,—one of those loves possessed of overwhelming charm, an electricity of their own, which lead us to the skies through the ivory gates of slumber, or bear us thither on their powerful pinions. A love monstrously ungrateful, which laughs at the bodies of those it kills; love without memory, a cruel love, resembling the policy of the English nation; a love to which, alas, most men yield. You understand the problem? Man is composed ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... I do mind,' said Fanny, 'and so will you, Pet, when I enlighten you. Amy, has it never struck you that somebody is monstrously polite ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... his father by the fire. They were the strangest pair at such a time that ever fire-light shone upon. Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the blaze; Paul with an old, old face peering into the red perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage, the two so much alike and yet so monstrously contrasted. On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for a long time, little Paul ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... associ-[Missing text] that planet's divided rings. The red spot of Jupiter and the bands on that gas-giant world moved in orderly fashion about its circumference. Light-centuries away, giant Cepheid suns expanded monstrously and contracted again, rather more rapidly than their gravitational fields could account for. Double stars sedately swung about each other. Comets reached their farthest points and, mere aggregations of frigid jagged stones and metal, prepared for another ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... brought a kerosene lamp, which, however, lacked a glass. He stood it on one of the grey barrels and turned it monstrously high, just to show his largeness of heart, I suppose. I got up and turned it down because it was smoking, and he waved his hand once more deprecatingly, and turning the wick up and down several times, signified ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... of men—the race of women—men had voyaged in from some other world in space women had done the like from their world ... to this world, alien to both of them. And here a monstrous thing had brought them together like an interlocking fungus—their sex-union ... a function that monstrously held together two different species of animals that should not even be on ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... heard of himself as harshly blamed in London for not having countenanced her recent and rather imprudent move. In other words, whenever she gave a violent tug at their game of Pull, he was expected to second it. But the world of these English is too monstrously stupid in what it expects, for any of its extravagances ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he should kiss my hand. I'm sure I did not; and why did I give it to him? How thoughtless. I declare I have never met so monstrously impudent a person in the entire course of my life. Very strange. Here's General Harero, Don Romonez, and Felix Gavardo, have been paying me court this half year and more, and either of them would give half his fortune ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it, patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on top of it. The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it from without. The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it pictured ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... beat them off. No loss of goods or life, but much of time! The caravan went on, that with laden beasts must move at best much like a tortoise. That night the rest was shortened. Two hours after midnight and the strings of camels were moving again, the asses and mules so monstrously misshapen with bales of goods, the horses and horsemen and those afoot. At dawn, not these Bedouins, but another roving band, harassed them. Time was running like ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... abominable, and should have been strangled at birth merely because of his feet. Why he's not Chinese I can't conceive; why he dines out every night I can. He's a human cruet-stand without the oil. He's so monstrously intelligent that he knows what a beast he is, and doesn't mind. Not a bad set of people to talk with, unless Lady Holme was in a temper and you were next to her, or you were left stranded with Holme when the women ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Abalene had kept him; but that was across the large and busy town, and Whitey was hopelessly lost. He had but one eye, a feeble one, and his legs were not to be depended upon; but he managed to cover a great deal of ground, to have many painful little adventures, and to get monstrously hungry and thirsty before he happened to look in upon Penrod ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... bad influence on the child; his luxurious self-indulgent habits, the lies he had told, the insults he had offered her. By now the story had grown to a lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yet radically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dwelt upon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden any yearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... any wise reflect his monstrously heaving, oil-dripping surroundings. He was a small, deliberate man, with oceans of repressed energies. His skin had the waxy whiteness of a pond lily. An exquisitely trimmed black moustache adorned his mouth. The deep brown eyes of a visionary rested beneath the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... secured. It was a duplicate, and a ducat made it my own. It is one of the commonest books upon the continent—although there was a time when certain bibliomaniacal madcaps, with us, pushed the bidding for this volume up to the monstrously insane sum of L42:[37]—and all, because it was coated in a Grolier binding! Among the theological books, of especial curiosity, my guides directed my attention to the following: "Altera haec pars Testam^ti. veteris emendata est iuxta ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... lecture on "Woman," and all he had said about the monstrously unfair position of girls who are asked in marriage by men of the world. And thereupon an idea came into her mind. Presently she had dried her tears, and in half-an-hour's time she left ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... my soul from hers for ever.' I said, and then the tragedy would seem too monstrously unjust to be true, and I said: 'It cannot be—such things cannot be: it is a hideous dream. She is not dead! She is in Wales with friends at Carnarvon, and I shall awake and laugh at all this ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... into this by being suddenly confronted with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again. It was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice, and decided not to try ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pays, pays heavily, as we take it we are to understand, for an unbridled surrender to the life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately, as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we should scarce know where ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... to have been monstrously strange to Gaston Isbel. When the women entered the old man said, brokenly: "I'm shore glad.... An' I reckon I was wrong to oppose you ... an' wrong to say what ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey |
