"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to eat, how happy I should be. And I cried. And a great red-faced man came out of the house, and took me in, and gave me something to eat. His name was Mike Mullholland, and he was good to me, and I liked him, and took his name. And he lived with a repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid ten dollars a month for. He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in a slaughter-house in Staunton street. The dogs were known in the neighborhood as Mullholland's dogs, and with them I used to sleep on the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... a snap of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that repulsive mess of unmasked, half-drunken, wholly infuriated brutes. There is shrewd, sly wisdom snugly tucked away under the fable of the cat changed into a queen and how she sprang ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... along the quay, limping, with his hat on the back of his head, his beard unkempt, and dragging an old carpet-bag. He was almost repulsive; yet, in spite of his fifty years of age, he looked young, so clear and lustrous were his eyes, so much ingenuous audacity had been retained in his yellow, hollow face, so vividly did this old man express the eternal adolescence of the poet and artist. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... element in almost all powerful tragedies; it is hardly to be separated from any unexpected or violent death. We reject it as monstrous only when its cause is the product of a vile and unnatural motive, or of a motive criminally insufficient to explain the impulse. What is repulsive in Arden of Feversham, and in such recognized 'Tragedies of Blood' as have Tourneur, Marston and Webster for their authors, is the utter callousness of the murderers, and their base aims, or disgusting lack of any reasonable excuse for their crimes. When D'Amville pushes his ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the loving heart and imaginative spirit of a young man mistake the projected creature of his own moral yearning, seen in the reflecting surface of the first not repulsive or vulgar female who treats him affectionately, for the realization of his idea. Reversing the order of the Genesis, he believes the female the original, and the outward reality and impressment of the self-constructed 'image', of the ideal! He most sincerely supposes himself in love—even ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... virtue they inculcate is included in righteousness. But it is often rejected as impracticable because fanciful teachers who substitute subtle definitions for simple duties have twisted its plain words until righteousness is made something so unreasonable as to be repulsive to a right mind. As a matter of fact, it means no more than rightness; the hunger and thirst for righteousness is but the earnest, supreme desire and endeavour to be right and to do right at all times, the appetite for ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... what is in the air," he began. "If Lilia was determined to disgrace us, she might have found a less repulsive way. A boy of medium height with a pretty face, the son of a dentist at Monteriano. Have I put it correctly? May I surmise that he has not got one penny? May I also surmise that his social position is ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... were pronounced to be fifteen hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries saw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of the old Highland life. Whatever was repulsive was softened down: whatever was graceful and noble was brought prominently forward. Some of these works were executed with such admirable art that, like the historical plays of Shakspeare, they superseded history. The visions of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... arrival, Philippe called upon his uncle about ten o'clock in the morning, anxious to present himself in his dilapidated clothing. When the convalescent of the Hopital du Midi, the prisoner of the Luxembourg, entered the room, Flore Brazier felt a shiver pass over her at the repulsive sight. Gilet himself was conscious of that particular disturbance both of mind and body, by which Nature sometimes warns us of a latent enmity, or a coming danger. If there was something indescribably sinister in Philippe's countenance, due to his ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the conversa of my aunt rang the bell for the priest to come with the pyx.[2] He was a man of about fifty years of age, very corpulent, with a rubicund face, and a type of physiognomy as vulgar as it was repulsive. ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled, Brave Elliott pursues across the field The flying foe, his own young life to yield. But like the leaves in some autumnal gale The red men fall in Washita's wild vale. Each painted face and black befeathered head Still more repulsive seems with ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... think it—the conviction may have been within me that Vice, even at its daintiest, is but an ugly, sordid thing, repulsive in the sunlight; that though—as rags and dirt to art—it may afford picturesque material to Literature, it is an evil-smelling garment to the wearer; one that a good man, by reason of poverty of will, may come ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... had lovers. Every woman who isn't downright repulsive has, I think. Willie Maclean doesn't come here to see me, does ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... true that the Queen, being alone, showed amongst their English fineries and nicenesses a gross and repulsive strangeness. But if their ladies put on her manners she should no longer be alone, and it would appear to the King and to all men that her example was both commended and emulated. It was a matter of kingcraft, and so the Lord Privy Seal was ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... reprint of the Sartor. Five hundred copies only make the edition, at one dollar a copy. About one hundred and fifty copies are subscribed for. How it will be received I know not. I am not very sanguine, for I often hear and read somewhat concerning its repulsive style. Certainly, I tell them, it is very odd. Yet I read a chapter lately with great pleasure. I send you also, with Dr. Channing's regards and good wishes, a copy of his little work, lately published, on our ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... arose and made a hurried toilet. Sickness, physical weakness of any kind, was repulsive to the girl of perfect health and outdoor nature; but one thing she realized. While she stayed at the lighthouse she must share David's burden. Her sense of loyalty to David made this imperative. She must help him how and when she could; and she ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... reparo m. advice, warning, remark, objection. repente m. sudden movement; de —— suddenly. repentino, -a sudden. repetir repeat. reponer reply. reposar repose, rest. reposo m. rest, sleep. rprobo, -a reprobate, wicked one. repugnante adj. repulsive, loathsome. requerir examine, lay hold of. resbalar slip away, glide, pass over, touch. resistir resist, endure, withstand. resolucin f. resolution, determination. resolver resolve, determine. resonar resound, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... on," murmured Jimmy, sighed heavily, and was off. His clothing was torn and dust-covered, his face was purple and bloated, and his hair was dusty and disordered. He was a repulsive sight. As Dannie straightened Jimmy's limbs he thought he heard a step. He lifted his head and ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... heard of fashion-albums and autograph-fans and talking crows and rare orchids and reindeer meat; of bracelets for men and ankle rings for women; of "vanity-boxes" at ten and twenty thousand dollars each; of weird and repulsive pets, chameleons and lizards and king-snakes—there was one young woman who wore a cat-snake as a necklace. One would take to slumming and another to sniffing brandy through the nose; one had a table-cover made of woven roses, and another was wearing perfumed flannel at sixteen dollars ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... destinies of youth, would make the world far happier than it is. Had he written only Concerning the Sorrows of Childhood, the Country Parson would have well deserved the vast 'popularity' which his writings have so justly won. 'Covenanting austerity' and Puritanical ultra-propriety are repulsive to him and, he deals them many a brave blow. He sees life as it is with singular shrewdness, catches its lights and shadows with artistic talent, and like all tender and genial writers, keenly appreciates humor, and conveys it to us either delicately or energetically, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Krishna, who had won great battles in Rajputana, were raised to the rank of gods and demi-gods. By an equal exaggeration the hostile chiefs of rival invaders were transformed to demons, and the black, repulsive hill tribes, who were involved as allies in these conflicts, were represented as apes. As a part of this same Brahmanizing process, the doctrine of the Trimurti was developed, and also the doctrine of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... symmetry, just voluptuous enough. But, after all, her great power lay in her freedom from all affectation and conventionality,—in her spontaneity, her free, sparkling, and vivacious manners. She was the most daring and dazzling of women, without ever appearing immodest or repulsive. She walked with such proud, secure steps over the commonly accepted barriers of social intercourse, that even those who blamed her and pretended to be shocked were compelled to admire. She was the belle, the Juno, of the saloon, the supreme ornament of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... government and cherishing the bond of union with fraternal affection. Experience has already shewn that the difference of climate and of industry, proceeding from that cause, inseparable from such vast domains, and which under other systems might have a repulsive tendency, can not fail to produce with us under wise regulations the opposite effect. What one portion wants the other may supply; and this will be most sensibly felt by the parts most distant from each other, forming thereby a domestic market ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... wishes of his superiors, accompanied in its journey of several months through Bavaria and Suabia, to the neglect of the pulpit at Gratz. Moreover, his harsh and aggressive manner of preaching was as repulsive to the Catholics as to the Lutherans, but when, according to his instructions, he was on the point of starting for Vienna, the archduchess, whose confessions he sometimes heard in Father Blyssem's temporary absence, was so much aggrieved at the change, that she entreated her husband ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the repulsive, hateful thing. In the centre of the lower part of the massive gold frame was the legend: 'Presented to Sir Jehoshaphat Dain, Knight, as a mark of public esteem and gratitude,' etc. He wondered if William Smith would steal the frame. It was to be ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive, morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime, even political crime, this work will not have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... itself on her brain before the occurrence of the apparition, though she had not attended to it. Oddly enough, she now learnt for the first time that the house at which she was staying had the reputation of being haunted, and by the very same somewhat repulsive-looking mediaeval personage that had troubled her inter-somnolent moments. The case seems to me to be typical with respect to the genesis of ghosts, and of the reputation of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... one of their sports; to torture a runaway negro is another; to make free with a planter's corn field is the very best. The reader may imagine this picture of lean, craven faces-unshaven and made fiercely repulsive by their small, treacherous eyes, if he can. It can only be seen in these our happy slave states of our ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... had no love for his client. He had been using him simply as a tool; it was time now to cast him aside since he could be of no further benefit to him. Besides, the old man had come to be annoying and repulsive, and he had no money to pay for legal services. Then, there was still an opportunity to recover some of the personal prestige he had lost in his bitter advocacy of Craft's cause before the jury. In short, he had deliberately resolved to desert his ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... advantageous, but the great freedom I enjoyed, and which would have been quite impossible in London, was delightful to me; while the wonderful, picturesque beauty of Edinburgh, contrasted with the repulsive dinginess and ugliness of my native city, was a constant source of the liveliest ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... door opening into the garden. The elder ones had long ago deserted it, and so completely shut off was it from the rest of the house, that the governess and her pupils were as secluded as though in a separate dwelling. The schoolroom was no repulsive-looking abode; it was furnished almost well enough for a drawing-room; and only the easels, globes, and desks, the crayon studies on the walls, and a formidable time-table showed its ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sensations of heat, etc., the name repulsive motion has been adopted." Here we have a most important idea. It would be somewhat a bold figure of speech to say the earth and moon are kept apart by a repulsive motion; and yet, after all, what is centrifugal force but a repulsive motion, and may it not be that there is no such thing as repulsion, and that it is solely by inertia that what seems to be repulsion is produced? Two bodies fly together, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... been studying how to mortise the joints of our arguments into well-knit and shapely strength; the pure scholastic, however, possesses but half the weapons of the preacher. The best built skeleton is repulsive till it is clothed with flesh, colour and beauty. This is the rhetorician's task. He comes with his graceful art, and drapes the dry bones of hard reasoning, clarifies the arguments by illustrations, clothes them in language crisp and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into death, I pry into life. And why should I not complete my thought: the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history, youth's glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements, become a hateful and repulsive thing. Well, if I write for men of learning, for philosophers, who, one day, will try to some extent to unravel the tough problem of instinct, I write also, I write above all things for the young. I want to make them love the natural history which you make them hate; ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... had sailed with that monster of cruelty L'Ollonais, and his own subsequent exploits bore witness and did credit to the school in which he had been reared. I doubt if in his day there was a greater scoundrel among the Brethren of the Coast than this Levasseur. And yet, repulsive though he found him, Captain Blood could not deny that the fellow's proposals displayed boldness, imagination, and resource, and he was forced to admit that jointly they could undertake operations of a greater magnitude than was possible singly to either of them. The climax ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes almost repulsive, never otherwise than powerful, pageantry of that play, which has been perhaps more misjudged than any other of Shakespeare's,—all these spring from the Tale of Troy, not in the least as handed ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... up to the chin, and evidently suffering from severe influenza, looks the picture of shivering discomfort. Although in no better plight herself, Sally rejoices in the sufferings of her brother, and as she sips her tea, her repulsive features are distorted with a hideous grin of satisfaction. Quilp, seated on his barrel beneath the only remnants of a roof, occupies a comparatively dry corner, and looks the very picture of rollicking fun ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... repulsive to me. The events of that memorable night of storm and danger, and the experiences that followed, had apparently awakened her better nature, which, although having a narrow compass, was gentle and womanly. Her old flippancy was gone. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... and galloped leisurely over the sand not half a stone's throw distant. I could plainly see his red eyes and the bristles about his snout; he was an ugly scoundrel, with a bushy tail, large head, and a most repulsive countenance. Having neither rifle to shoot nor stone to pelt him with, I was looking eagerly after some missile for his benefit, when the report of a gun came from the camp, and the ball threw up the sand ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... qualities and exaggerated his bad ones. He did not fall into the luxury of his predecessors. He still wore the habit of a philosopher, and lived with simplicity, but he made public mistakes. His manners, always haughty, became repulsive. He despised popularity. He conferred no real liberty. He retained his dictatorial power. He preserved the fortifications of Ortygia. He did not meditate a permanent despotism, but meant to make himself ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... been followed, the coat would have been being made yesterday"; "if the house had then been being built, the mortar would have been being mixed."' We may reply that, while awkward instances of the old form are most abundant in our literature, there is no fear that the repulsive elaborations which have been worked out in ridicule of the new forms will prove to have been anticipations of future usage. There was a time when, as to their adverbs, people compared them, to a large extent, with -er ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... bitter wind. Her hands and feet were stiff with cold when the car at length loomed into sight again, and she thought of stopping somewhere on the way to the ferry for a cup of tea; but before the region of lunch-rooms was reached she had grown so sick and dizzy that the thought of food was repulsive. At length she found herself on the ferry-boat, in the soothing stuffiness of the crowded cabin; then came another interval of shivering on a street-corner, another long jolting journey in a "cross-town" car that ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... the sacred and the true, before the little Bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordid results that have followed and all that sad machinery of expected miracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a something breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account for except in ways more incredible than miracle—so is the rest of the world. Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... The repulsive ugliness of the early Christian paintings was not the consequence of any break in the tradition. There was no reason why the graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted, as well as the technical procedures and the pigments. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... defiantly threatening all the great industries of our Land; that all his own painstaking efforts, and those of the band of devoted Patriots who stood by him to free the Southern Slaves, had mainly resulted in hiding from sight the repulsive chains of enforced servitude, under the outward garb of Freedom; that the old Black codes had simply been replaced by enactments adapted to the new conditions; that the old system of African Slavery had merely been succeeded by the heartless and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... removal may have been desirable. But not even in Dahomey could it have been accomplished with more repulsive savagery. And the Russian Minister, whose house was opposite the Konak, calmly watched the events from his window. Having wreaked their fury on the bodies, the assassins rushed to kill also Draga's two brothers, one of whom it was rumoured was to be declared heir to the throne by ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... black trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a bluish grey. He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that he might ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the popular fancy. In India, as in all other countries, the priesthood have given the people that which they asked for, and the result is that many forms of churchly ceremonialism, and forms of worship, maintain which are abhorrent and repulsive to Western ideas. But we of the West are not entirely free from this fault, as one may see if he examines some of the religious conceptions and ceremonies common among ignorant people in remote parts of our land. Certain conceptions, of an anthropomorphic Deity held by some ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before—of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive—how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career in ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... all savages, and their religion was entirely unfit for publication. Socially they were coarse and repulsive. Slaves did the housework, and serfs each morning changed the straw bedding of the lord and drove the pigs out of the boudoir. The pig was the great social middle class between the serf and the nobility: for the serf slept with the pig by ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... know what power Alving had of winning people's hearts. Nobody seemed able to believe anything but good of him. He was one of those people whose life does not bite upon their reputation. But at last, Mr. Manders—for you must know the whole story—the most repulsive thing of ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... first of all in our bodies. The outer condition of the body is accepted as the symbol of the inner. If it is unlovely, or repulsive, through sheer neglect or indifference, we conclude that the mind corresponds with it. As a rule, the conclusion is a just one. High ideals and strong, clean, wholesome lives and work are incompatible with low standards of personal cleanliness. A young man who neglects his ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... I say!" once more the Prince exclaimed with the sort of indefinable aversion which one feels at the sight of a repulsive insect which he cannot summon up the courage to crush with his boot. So convulsively did the Prince shudder that Chichikov, clinging to his leg, received a kick on the nose. Yet still the prisoner ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... neighborhood; the society there may be repulsive to us, and we are about to become morbid: GOD will tell us to continue gracious and smiling, for He will recompense the little annoyances we may experience. If you would discern in whom GOD'S Spirit dwells, watch that person, and notice whether you ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... as an Indian chief. The features of his face are distinctly marked with character; and no one gazing at his profile would doubt for a moment that he beheld more than an ordinary man. His face is handsome, and his thin lip often basks a pleasant smile. There is nothing sinister or repulsive in his manners or appearance; and if there are no special indications of great grasp of intellectual power on his forehead and on his sharply defined nose and chin, neither is there any evidence of weakness, or that he could be easily moved from any settled purpose. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... intelligence has entered by invisible railroads; the peasant no longer believes as he used to do. At the Easter festival I saw great numbers of the people from the Campagna standing before St. Peters whilst the Pope distributed his blessing, just as though they had been Protestant strangers. This was repulsive to my feelings, I felt an impulse to kneel before the invisible saint. When I was here thirteen years ago, all knelt; now reason had conquered faith. Ten years later, when the railways will have brought cities still nearer to each other, Rome will be yet more ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Tufts, "in this charming home, under the best of New England influences and religious instruction, with nothing harsh or repulsive, the boys could not have found a more congenial home. Indeed, few mothers are able or even capable of doing so much for their own children as Miss French did for these two brothers, watching over them incessantly, yet not ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... monster there—Carver Doone, whose name for many a generation shall be used to frighten unruly babes to bed. And now, as he strode up to me and bowed,—to show some breeding,—I doubt if the moon, in all her rounds of earth and sky and the realms below, fell ever upon another face so cold, repulsive, ruthless. ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... seems to me, two women are presented to me, one a rustic matron, repulsive in health and virtue, without manners, without expression; in short, owing nothing except to simple nature;—the other, one of those beauties that dominate and oppress memory, uniting to her original and unfathomable charms all the eloquence of dress; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... unfortunate that his copious illustrations are arranged in so unskilful a manner as to give a dry and repulsive air to the whole work. The original documents, on which it is established, instead of being reserved for an appendix, and their import only conveyed in the text, stare at the reader in every page, arrayed in all the technicalities, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... for Legal Control.—All these repulsive details have a place in driving home a conception of the cost to society of the immoral and irresponsible syphilitic. Syphilis is an infectious disease, dangerous to the individual and to society. If it is rational to quarantine a mouth and throat full of ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... was a sheet of glancing foam, while the air was filled with the blended sounds of the wash of the element, and the roar of the winds. Still there was nothing chilling or repulsive in the temperature of the air, which was charged with the freshness of the sea, and was bracing and animating, bringing with it the flavour that a seaman loves. After fully fifteen minutes' severe tugging at the oars, the barge drew near enough to permit the black mass of the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes—produce now an immeasurable period during which the attractive forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion—alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. And thus there is suggested the conception of a past during which there have been successive Evolutions ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... degree in which the legless beggar was repulsive to her sense of perfection the secret-service agent was attractive. She had never seen a man so agreeable to her eyes. And yet, as a marine artist might see fame in painting a wreck upon a sea-shore, rather than a fine new ship under full sail, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... immediate and unreasoning hate for the thing, whatever it was, a hate so strong that he forgot to feel fear. It seemed to him to combine the repulsive qualities of a spider and a toad. The body, fat and repugnant, was covered by a loose skin, dull and leathery, and the fatness seemed to be pulled downward below the lower tentacles like an insect's body, until it was wider at the bottom than at ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... feet ascending the staircase, coming down the long upper hall. To the repentant mother's ears what music so sweet as that? She listens breathlessly. Was it thought of her that had impelled them thither? Would they approach her room? Since she had grown more and more repulsive day by day, since those fits of drunken passion had become a thing of fearful frequency, and those little ones had suffered from their violence, and learned to fear her, they had come but seldom—never alone; but they are approaching now, shyly, hesitatingly, as if afraid to come, but ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his satires, to a strange power of creating love and admiration by just 'touching the brink of all we hate;' and Burke, in some of his nobler passages, happily exemplifies the thing. He intensified the effect of his burning eloquence by the employment of figures so homely, nay, almost so repulsive in themselves, that a man of lower powers who ventured their use would find them efficient merely in lowering his subject and ruining his cause. We may refer, in illustration, to Burke's celebrated figure of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... are heavy and fat, though now and again a man of fine, muscular form and good height is found. The women have broad, shapeless figures and clumsy, deliberate movements. The older they get the more repulsive and filthy they become. While young some of the women have pleasing, intelligent and alert faces, while children of both sexes are attractive and interesting. But with them as with all aboriginal people who have absorbed the vices and none of the virtues of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... European spectators. Ida nearly fainted, and Mrs. Rice turned green. Noreen shuddered at Chunerbutty's fiendish and bestial expression, as he leaned forward in the howdah, his face working convulsively, his eyes straining to lose no detail of the repulsive sight. He was enjoying it, like the excited, enthralled mobs of Indians of all ages around, who pressed forward, gradually pushing back the line of retainers struggling to keep ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the work. 'What is harder than to write with aversion; what is more useless than to write something by which we unlearn good writing?' It must be acknowledged that he really flattered as sparingly as possible; the practice was so repulsive to him that in his preface he roundly owned that, to tell the truth, this whole class of composition was not to ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... and one day, meeting her alone in the entry, I fell upon my knees, and, kissing her hand, cried "O, Mariana, do let me love you, and try to love me a little!" But my idol snatched away her hand, and laughing wildly, ran into her room. After that day, her manner to me was not only cold, but repulsive, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris' departure she formed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... curiosity in ascertaining the first impression made on Madame Roland, by the man who, warmed at her hearth, and then conspiring with her, was one day to overthrow the power of his friends, immolate them en masse, and send her to the scaffold. No repulsive feeling seems, at this period, to have warned her that in conspiring to advance Robespierre's fortune, she conspired for her own death. If she have any vague fear, that fear is instantly cloaked by a pity which is akin to contempt. Robespierre appeared to her an honest man; she ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... "it is easy to say that. Now I will tell you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one moment. I can save France—ah, you may laugh, but I know ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... in a disconsolate undertone, and hastened smoothly along the decks, dodging obstacles in his course. He disappeared, ducking low under a sling of ten dirty gunny-bags full of some costly merchandise and exhaling a repulsive smell. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... religion to give these instinctive worshippers. The scholarly English Church would appear to have become conscious of this, and is leaving the work of propagandism to vulgar and ignorant sects. There seems to be nothing offered the young Hindus graduated in the universities of India except a repulsive "Salvationism" on the one hand, and a cold Agnosticism on the other. I had conversed with a company of students at Madras, and found them hardly able to understand the interest with which I followed the processions of "idols" ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... ought to go away," cried Alvina, who was terribly distressed, seeing Madame's glitter and pallor, and the black brows of the men. Never had Ciccio's brow looked so ominously black. And Alvina felt it was all her fault. Never had she experienced such a horrible feeling: as if something repulsive were creeping on her from behind. Every minute of these weeks was a horror to her: the sense of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging round, sliding behind them, trying to get hold of some clear proof of immorality on their part. And then—the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... mistaking the hideous ferocity of the countenance, and the "eyes bigger than a fourpenny loaf," as Ramusio has it. Though the actual eye of the crocodile does not bear this comparison, the prominent orbits do, especially in the case of the Ghariyal of the Ganges, and form one of the most repulsive features of the reptile's physiognomy. In fact, its presence on the surface of an Indian river is often recognisable only by three dark knobs rising above the surface, viz. the snout and the two orbits. And there is some ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Kents, at this time, two years. Alan and Babs didn't like him, nor did I. He must have been a clever, skillful chemist. No doubt he was. But he was, to us, repulsive. A hunchback, with a short, thick body; dangling arms that suggested a gorilla; barrel chest; a lump set askew on his left shoulder, and his massive head planted down with almost no neck. His face was rugged ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... one of the few Northern men, who go to the South and throw aside their honest mode of obtaining a living and resort to trading in human beings. A more repulsive-looking person could scarcely be found in any community of bad looking men. Tall, lean and lank, with high cheek-bones, face much pitted with the small-pox, gray eyes with red eyebrows, and sandy whiskers, he indeed stood alone without mate or fellow in looks. Jennings prided himself upon ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... I thought I had never beheld such a foot, as was occasionally seen peeping from beneath her dress, while she walked daintily, yet with the grace of a queen, at my side. I do not thus describe Anneke with a view of inducing the reader to fancy her stately and repulsive; on the contrary, winning ease and natural grace were just as striking in her manner, as were beauty, and sentiment, and feeling in her countenance. More than once, as we walked side by side, did I become painfully conscious how unworthy I was to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... about fifty centimetres long, which was bearded and had a large snout, was cut off with part of the neck and carried to one of the camps, with a piece of the liver, which is considered the best part. I had declined it, as the meat of the wild pig is very poor and to my taste repulsive; this old male being also unusually tough, the soldiers complained. The following morning I saw the head and jaws almost entirely untouched, too ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... however, in their appearance and manners, something repulsive which prevented familiarity. Each one of them caused to vibrate four gauze wings, two large and two small ones. In their rapid and measured motions, these wings produced sound, and the air, issuing from little breathing places situated, as in the common fly, on each side ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush, appeared to him after a moment's reflection, as strange, impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate, and which is so well ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... Capes. Captain Girard now rented a small store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his dealings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the rough clothing and general appearance of a sailor. Though but twenty-six years of age, he was called "old Girard." He ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... right," said Mr. Stryker. "There is a vast deal of prettiness, and very little repulsive ugliness among the women in this country. But it strikes me they are inclining a little too much to the idea, just now, that all the beauty in the world is collected in these United States, which, as we all know is rather a ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... There are three teachers in the school—Mademoiselle Blanche, Mademoiselle Sophie, and Mademoiselle Marie. The two first have no particular character. One is an old maid, and the other will be one. Mademoiselle Marie is talented and original, but of repulsive and arbitrary manners, which have made the whole school, except myself and Emily, her bitter enemies. No less than seven masters attend, to teach the different branches of education—French, Drawing, Music, Singing, Writing, Arithmetic, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... acknowledge, the real reasons for changing these things and reforming what is wrong without delay. One great authority told us the other day that the sole object of legislation on this subject should be to get together the best possible 658 members of Parliament. That to me would be a most repulsive idea if it were not that by its very vagueness it becomes inoperative. Who shall say what is best; or what characteristic constitutes excellence in a member of Parliament? If the gentleman means excellence in general wisdom, or in statecraft, or in skill ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... broken pipes and mugs. On enquiring, what should it be but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours—a tinker, a dyer, a blacksmith, a miner, a chimney-sweep, a bard, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to show in his own person how repulsive drunkenness is; and the beginning of the recent altercation was a discussion and dispute they had as to which of the seven callings loved best the pot and pipe; the bard had beaten all but the parson and, due regard being observed for the cloth, he was adjudged victor and worthy ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... entered, the fortune-teller raised her head, and, shading her eyes with one skinny hand, looked curiously at the new comers. Calton thought he had never seen such a repulsive-looking old crone; and, in truth, her ugliness was, in its very grotesqueness well worthy the pencil of a Dore. Her face was seamed and lined with innumerable wrinkles, clearly defined by the dirt which was in them; bushy grey eyebrows, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... on one of those bright, balmy days, early in October, when "the bridal of the earth and sky," in the language of the good old Herbert, is going on—when, the summer heats subdued, there is yet nothing either cold, or repulsive in the atmosphere; and the soft breathing from the southwest has just power enough to stir the flowers and disperse their scents; that our young traveller was joined in his progress towards Charlemont, by a person mounted like himself ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... to attain any political power women must affiliate themselves with men; because women will differ on public questions, must attend primary meetings and caucuses, will inevitably hold public office and strive for it; in short, women must enter the political arena. This result will be repulsive to a large portion of the sex, and would tend to make women unfeminine and combative, which would be a ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... is, in some respects, exceedingly unattractive. Indeed, it may truly be said to be in many respects repulsive. There are usually odours in such a camp which are repellent to the nose, dishes that are disgusting to the taste, sights that are disagreeable to the eyes, sounds that are abhorrent to the ear, and habits that are ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... "The Hon. P. J. Parrott, who so ably represented this county in the Legislature some fourteen years ago, could scarcely restrain himself when approached by a reporter as to his sentiments anent the repulsive deed. 'I should like to know how long Canaan is going to put up with this sort of business,' were his words. 'I am a law-abiding citizen, and I have served faithfully, and with my full endeavor and ability, to enact the laws and statutes of my State, but there ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... humbug aired than that about our "brilliant" Wall Street financiers. Their "brilliancy" is merely a repulsive egotism in one of its worst forms,—that of cupidity. They are like misers with longer, quicker, and more sinewy fingers than other misers, in the gathering together of dollars. Their shrewdness may be exceptional, but a quality which consists half in accurate ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... explicit dogma in an intellectual form with examples from life, the anatomist of human passions, instincts, and impulses in all their gamut, the commentator on his own age; he was weak as the artist, often unnecessarily and by choice, in the repulsive form,—in the awkward, the obscure, the ugly. He belongs with Jonson, with Dryden, with the heirs of the masculine intellect, the men of power not unvisited by grace, but in whom mind is predominant. Upon the work of such poets time hesitates, conscious of their mental greatness, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... co-religionists nearer than Mongolia or Thibet. But it is their physiognomy that most strikingly distinguishes them from the surrounding peoples, and stamps them as Mongols of the purest water. There is something almost infra-human in their ugliness. They show in an exaggerated degree all those repulsive traits which we see toned down and refined in the face of an average Chinaman; and it is difficult, when we meet them for the first time, to believe that a human soul lurks behind their expressionless, flattened faces and small, dull, obliquely set ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... distinguished by an appearance of marked attention to every one present; the other manifests an habitual air of abstraction and absence of mind. The one is not an upstart with all the self-important airs of the founder of his own fortune; nor the other a self-taught man, with the repulsive self-sufficiency which arises from an ignorance of what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse perhaps a little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little harmless pedantry in the other.—As there is a class of the first character which sinks into the mere gentleman, that is, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... avarice. He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove into the streets, followed in his path; the children stopped their games and hid until he passed. That repulsive character which haunts the evil-doers of society marked the aged banker as an object of dread and scorn ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... amusement to instruction, at which he laughs, and says that in this matter he perfectly agrees with us. He expresses his strong opinion as to Dickens's reading of the "Murder of Nancy" (Oliver Twist), which he characterizes as "repulsive and indecent." ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... in the air, this is one. We not only have no recollections of any past incarnations, but we have no ground for inferring that there were any. I have mentioned the theory merely in order to exhibit its opposite. And the opposite is this: that a man is not responsible for the attractive or repulsive qualities with which he is born; that these are not to be accounted as his, in the sense that he is accountable for them. The son of the dipsomaniac, for instance, is not responsible for the morbid craving ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... conversation unfailing attraction and improvement. Accustomed as he had been from earliest youth to the society of the most eminent persons in Europe, alike in station and in ability, Mr. Adams never lost the entire simplicity of his own habits and character. Under an exterior of, at times, almost repulsive coldness, dwelt a heart as warm, sympathies as quick, and affections as overflowing, as ever animated any bosom. His tastes, too, were all refined. Literature and art were familiar and dear to him, and hence it was that his society was at once so agreeable and so improving. At his hospitable board, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... idea was to get in with people who didn't want them and to take snubs as it they were honourable scars. Why people didn't want them more he didn't know—that was people's own affair; after all they weren't superficially repulsive, they were a hundred times cleverer than most of the dreary grandees, the "poor swells" they rushed about Europe to catch up with. "After all they are amusing—they are!" he used to pronounce with the wisdom of the ages. To which Pemberton ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... to the breeze from the Hall of Independence, at Philadelphia. Nor sordid avarice, nor vulgar ambition, could point his footsteps to the pathway leading to that banner. To the love of ease or pleasure nothing could be more repulsive. Something may be allowed to the beatings of the youthful breast, which make ambition virtue, and something to the spirit of military adventure, imbibed from his profession, and which he felt in common with many others. France, Germany, Poland, furnished to the armies of this Union, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the woman's tone that went to the heart of the lonely boy, even while he recoiled from the repulsive creature before him. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... and for ever. She liked or disliked people heartily; estimating them apparently from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or sex, or personal appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain to attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her—sometimes, people, who, in Mr. Blyth's opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took a violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure or uneasiness in the society of others with the most diverting ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... every turn, clamoring to sell the party all sorts of odd collections, from jungle flowers to the gilded wood lice, the name of which condemns them, though they are really beautiful insects, until death robs them of their glow, and makes them as repulsive as ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... be frustrated by one or other of them having a bad cold in the head, and so on. Let the pretty girl get a disfiguring pimple on her nose just before the ball at which she is going to shine. Show the numberless repulsive features of common decent life. Seriously, coldly; not a hint of facetiousness, or the thing ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... in all its ugliness, and saw as he looked how tears were streaking the bedaubed face. She was repulsive beyond words, yet as she tried to hold back her tears, George ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... streets through and across it had been commenced, and the rude embankments and ragged rock-excavations thus created added much to the natural irregularities of its surface. Large reaches of stagnant water made the aspect yet more repulsive; and so ubiquitous were the rocks that it is said, not a square rood could be found throughout which a crowbar could be thrust its length into the ground without encountering them. To complete the miseries of the scene, the wretched ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... world's better off by havin' one less scoundrel in it," and Ham scowled down on the face of Bill Ugger, ugly and repulsive even in death. "Now," and he turned quickly to Holt, "didn't you say that thar Mexican skunk, Pedro, had gone tew git th' rest ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... said this in her most repulsive tone. She was accustomed to shield herself in this rude manner from all approach or contact, and, indeed, she attained her object. She was feared and avoided. Her witty bon mots and stinging jests were repeated and merrily laughed over, but the world knew that she scattered her sarcasms ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... condensed, imaginative, supporting his truth by direct enunciation of lofty moral sentiment and by distinct visual representations, and in 405 the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood by moral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling or repulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical miniatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more 410 rich in images than Milton himself, but images of fancy, and presented to the common and passive ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... contorted figures which the artists of these days attempted to picture as graceful beings. Still, crude and strange, or even grotesque, as they may appear, they are not to be despised. Amid much that is repulsive to modern cultivated taste, we occasionally find naive delineations of simple beauty, natural expression, and touches of human pathos, which tell how honestly and how eagerly these old artists worked; how truly they wished to do more than they had power to accomplish; and though clogged to the ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... best known by two great plays, The Changeling[156] and Women Beware Women. In poetry and diction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare's plays; otherwise, in their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader. Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the Old One, his best comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express Middleton's own idea of the drama rather than that ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... heirs of a man's body take no interest therein. To state this doctrine is to arouse instinctive loathing; it is my fortunate task to maintain that such a nightmare of waste and death is as baseless as it is repulsive. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... feathers, to be king-vultures. Those we had killed were full-grown, and were about the size of an ordinary goose. As I saw them perched on the branches, tearing away at huge masses of flesh, I must say that, notwithstanding their regal titles, they had a very repulsive appearance. Chumbo told me how, in despair of getting any supper, he had rushed in and attacked the vulture with which I had found him struggling. Happily, he had come off without any ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... was searched, but nothing of a dangerous nature was found upon him, and the police, at once, recognised their captive as the Edward Jones, who had, two years previously, entered the palace in such a mysterious way. He is described as being very short for his age, seventeen, and of a most repulsive appearance; but he was, apparently, unconscious of this defect, as he affected an air of great consequence, and repeatedly requested the police to address him in a becoming manner; also behaving with the greatest nonchalance at ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... not gone on with the novel which he had been reading up till the last moment before prep-time, and had brought along with him accidentally, as it were. It was a book called A Spoiler of Men, by Richard Marsh, and there was a repulsive crime on nearly every page. It was Hot Stuff. Much ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... a dull yellow colour, being [166] shrivelled, and possessing a sweet faint smell, unlike the repulsive odour of the fresh leaves and bark. They have a somewhat bitter, gummy taste, and are sold in entire cymes, with the stalks. An open space now seen in Malvern Chase was formerly called Eldersfield, from the abundance of Elder trees which grew there. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... back to Rome, and obtains from his own family alms enough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by the servants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognised forthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive donnee (there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed, either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes a rather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... prostrate soul increases through the emotion of the souls that surround it; in the same degree, active piety, meaning by this the doing of good works, education and charity, especially the accomplishment of repulsive tasks, such as attending the sick, the infirm, the incurable, idiots, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the straggling street sleeping in a beauty it never knew by day. All that was unlovely, harsh, and repulsive in its jagged outlines was subdued and softened by that uncertain light. It smoothed the rough furrows and unsightly chasms of the mountain with an ineffable love and tenderness. It fell upon the face of the sleeping M'liss, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... weakness, and he was not so blinded by the mist of his potations but that he perceived the shrinking reluctance of her touch as she aided Lucius in lifting him into the bed. His inert, lumpish form was at the moment hideously repulsive to her, and physical contact with him a dreaded thing. What was left if he lost that self-control which had made him admirable? She had always been able to qualify his other shortcomings by saying, "Well, anyhow, he don't drink." She could boast ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... incidents departing from the known and foreseen. Something malevolent pertained to the personalities, something disquieting to the actions; suffering and oppression resulted from his inability to get away from them. They came and went, one scene melted into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a sickly disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with watching the spectacle of them weighing like ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... though it lacks the bright joyousness of the "Marriage of Figaro," and its human interest. Its melodies are more pronounced, and have entered more freely into general use, however, than those of the former. Repulsive as the story is, some of the melodies which illustrate it have been impressed into the service of the church. The first act is introduced with a humorous aria by Leporello ("Notte e giorno faticar"), in which he complains of his treatment by his master. After the murder of Don ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... Hecker is here condemning is the life of the world, wholly ordinary in its aims and motives. It is not to be understood as a condemnation of the common lot of men, or of that life in itself. It was only as he saw it over against his own vocation to something higher that it became repulsive, nay guilty to him. Nor was he even yet so settled in his view of the contrasted worth of the two careers between which he had to choose, as to be quite free from painful struggles. In the entry made on the day preceding this outburst, he ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... her time henceforth. And it was not the privations she shrank from but the contacts with the ugly facts of life; a side she had found extremely picturesque in novels, but knew from, occasional glimpses to be merely repulsive ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... become bad and the odor repulsive, and a scare is easily started. "There must be dead things in the water, or it wouldn't taste so horrible," is the common verdict. Some newspaper seizes upon the trouble and makes of it a sensation. The ubiquitous reporter writes of one of "the animals" that it "looks like a wagon wheel ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... the man. The veiled sneer behind the smile on the sapless face, the hooded hawk eyes, the almost servile deference, held a sinister threat that chilled the spine of his guest. The young man thought of him as of a repulsive spider spinning a web of trouble that radiated from this porch all over the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... table, and, in like manner, the banded or braided hair, the perfect cleanliness of fresh print or linen and the straight serviceable lines of skirt and waist often contribute to make a plain woman fully as attractive as her prettier sisters. Thus Mme. Poussette, about whom there was never anything repulsive or vulgar, presented new features to the world in her exquisitely neat hospital garb; more than this, she liked her work, and gradually her expression grew less vacant; she left off humming and whispering ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... just as little of importance that can be said of the internal politics of the Ch'i dynasty. The rulers of that dynasty were thoroughly repulsive figures, with no positive achievements of any sort to their credit. Confucianism had been restored in accordance with the Chinese character of the state. It was a bad time for Buddhists, and especially for the followers of the popularized ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... gave it the queer pinched look which tells of a starved belly. Eyes red-rimmed and staring, a long thin nose, and an unearthly pallor made it displeasing: the dropped jaw, showing the toothless gums, made it repulsive. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... actually nothing to look for but the most repulsive work under the most repulsive conditions? I said there must be surely some change, that wheeling mud forever was not the doom of any man and could ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... certain states in the moral temper of the people by and for whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Ruskin wrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common "professional opinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a private letter Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as "a large square decorated with the worst architecture I ever saw." The architects of his own time regarded ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... religion is good enough for me." He despised her religion, and that of the Friars Gray who punished boys to make them good. His mind turned inward—he became silent, secretive, self-centered, and his repulsive exterior served him well as a tough husk to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... a dead bough from a scrub oak he approached the snake cautiously while the rest sat in their saddles silently anxious, and Charley edged his restive pony a little closer to the repulsive reptile. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a dear little white donkey, who looks at me pensively and in such a way that we at once understand each other. A mutual sympathy unites us. A Cookess in spectacles surmounts him—the most hideous of them all, bony and severe. Over her travelling costume, already sufficiently repulsive, she wears a tennis jersey, which accentuates the angularity of her figure, and in her person she seems the very incarnation of the respectability of the British Isles. It would be more equitable, too—so long are those legs of hers, which, to be sure, have scant ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... was not able to support it. This prince had a son, named Leander, handsome, accomplished, amiable—in every respect the opposite of Prince Furibon. The two were frequently together, which only made the deformed prince more repulsive. ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... repulsive everything is. There is not a living soul around here. Since my mother died, my father drove everyone away. Some went off to study. Lipa, too, left ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Chosroaen, I have heard the talk of men and their histories and looked upon their conditions; but never saw or heard I a greater liar than the Chosroaen that is with us in the prison.' 'Nor,' quoth another, 'did I ever see fouler than his favour or more repulsive than his aspect.' 'What have ye seen of his lying?' asked the prince, and they answered, 'He pretends that he is a sage. Now the King came upon him, as he went a-hunting, and found with him a most beautiful lady and a horse of ebony, never saw I a handsomer. As for the lady, she ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... centipedes, as the English call them in Tahiti, are a species of ibacus, and are from six to twelve inches long, and two wide. They have legs or feelers all along their sides, like a pocket comb, a hideous head, and tail, and a generally repulsive appearance. If one did not know they were excellent eating, and most harmless in their habits, one would be tempted to run or take to a tree at sight of them. Their shell is a translucent yellow, with black markings. The female has a red stripe down her back, and red eggs beneath her. She is ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... loadstone, the island is made to rise and fall, and move from one place to another. For, with respect to that part of the earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive. Upon placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too: for in this magnet, the forces ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift |
