"Abhorrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never seemed so abhorrent to him as on this night, now that there was estrangement between them. She was already humiliated in his sight, and to raise his hand against her was like striking a fallen foe. She would think that he was no longer sorry—that he was glad to repay the wrong ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... down the ages is not for us, his contemporaries, to determine. He had the most modest opinion of his own work, and was humbled rather than elated when he heard it praised. No one ever loved praise less; to be pointed at as a man of distinction was abhorrent to his shrinking nature; he seldom, indeed, knew that he was being pointed at, for his eyes were ever on the ground. He set no great store by the remarkable popularity of his works. 'Nothing,' he has been heard to say to one of those gushing ladies who were ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... languid way, liked the Duke of Hereward better than any one else in the whole world except her mother, but she did not like him in the character of a husband. The idea of marriage even with him was abhorrent to her. In her first surprise and dismay at the announcement of the duke's proposal for her hand, and her father's acceptance of that proposal, she betrayed all the unconquerable antipathy she felt ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... happened to be the first object and reflection of the law made; for as liberty of all things is the most welcome to a people, so is there nothing more abhorrent from their nature than ingratitude. We, accusing the Roman people of this crime against some of their greatest benefactors, as Camillus, heap mistake upon mistake; for being not so competent judges of what belongs to liberty as they were, we take upon us ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... throwing in the additional allurement of a cinematograph theatre and the prospect of light refreshment. As Cyprian was not yet eighteen she hoped he might not have reached that stage in masculine development when parcel-carrying is looked on as a thing abhorrent. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... effects of love are also different in each case; for the one came by a glorious and praiseworthy death, while the other lived only too long with the reputation of a vile and shameless woman. Just as the death of a saint is precious in the sight of God, so is the death of a sinner abhorrent." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... readily since—between you and me—you will find these fellows about here such sharks that you will have to part with every fish in your basket before you will get an opportunity of reporting yourself. For my part, I detest such greediness; nothing is more abhorrent to a sensitive soul like mine; I consider that it ought to be baulked and discouraged in every way; and in order to aid in so good a work as far as possible I will just take this—and this—and these three—under my own care. And now—good-bye, comrade—nay, no thanks; you are heartily welcome; ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... that, at all events, was no figment of sudden insanity, and incredible, impossible rumors were flying from mouth to mouth with bewildering rapidity and incoherence. The name of Mademoiselle de Tourville was repeated in every variety of abhorrent emphasis; but it was not till I obtained an interview with Mrs. Rushton's solicitor that I could understand what really had occurred, or, to speak more properly, what was suspected. Mrs. Rushton had made a deposition, of which Mr. Twyte related to me the essential points. The deceased ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... it as you will," replied Peter, "I do not see any other way in which you can be so useful, both in private to your friends and to the public, and by which you can make your own condition happier." "Happier?" answered Raphael, "is that to be compassed in a way so abhorrent to my genius? Now I live as I will, to which I believe, few courtiers can pretend; and there are so many that court the favour of great men, that there will be no great loss if they are not troubled either with me or with others of my temper." Upon ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... many vulgarisms or inaccuracies which custom has sanctioned, both in prose and verse, such as, "thou wert;" "better than them all;" "he need not;" "he dare not." The universal "I had better;" "I had rather," is abhorrent to him.[7] ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... princely title of which the Tchereteff s, his ancestors, had been so proud, and which the daughter of wandering Tzigani refused with mingled hatred and disgust. Princess? She, the gypsy, a Russian princess? The title would have appeared to her like a new and still more abhorrent stigma. He implored her, but she was obdurate. It was a strange, tragic existence these two beings led, shut up in the immense castle, from the windows of which Tisza could perceive the gilded domes of ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... taught her children to go singing into the jaws of death in order that the Fatherland may extend her markets and thus enrich her citizens at the expense of the citizens of other states, who are her inferiors in the science of slaughter. A queer religion, and all the more abhorrent when dressed out with the phrases ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... their dead, unwilling that the hour of interment should come ... and then, when it came, and there could not be interment, suddenly finding their grief turned to consternation, and what had been the object of mourning love, become abhorrent, so that there was an unquenchable desire, a craving that it might be ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... expression which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious chevilles—marchait ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... at first laughs at my request, being greatly surprised by the importance which I attribute to the abhorrent creature, the Darboun; but at last he consents, not without a suspicion at the back of his mind that I am going to make myself a wonderful flannel-lined waist-coat with the soft, velvety skins of the Moles, something good for pains in the back. Very well. We settle the matter. The essential thing ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... riot, quarrelling, drinking, and imprecation were so dreadful we could not keep watch any more, but hurried as far we were able from the sight and sounds of life so abhorrent to our nature, so horrid to witness. With pale faces and tearful eyes, and ears yet filled with oaths and bitter words, we proceeded to gain courage and implore help from the throne of grace, feeling how we stood in ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... wonder and of deep-seated thankfulness, he, for the first time, held out his hands to it, accepting it as a comrade, pledging himself to use rather than to spurn it. He looked at it steadfastly and, so looking, found it no longer abhorrent but of mysterious virtue and efficacy, endued with power to open the gates of a way, closed to most men, into the heart of humanity, which, in a sense, is nothing less than the heart of Almighty God Himself. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... occasion only a passing remark from those present. The negro was his own, and he had a right, it was stated, to correct him, as and when he pleased; who could dispute it? For my own part, I entertained the most abhorrent feelings towards a man, who, without sense of shame, or decent regard for his station, thus unblushingly published his infamy amongst strangers, and this man a would-be patriot, too, and candidate ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... human life in its depth of suffering and height of achievement. He views mingled spectacle with profound reverence, sure that through it all is working some divine power. Goodness is dear to the gods, wickedness is abhorrent to them. But the good man is often unhappy,—from strange inheritance of curse, or from complication of events which no wisdom can baffle. Yet from the discipline of suffering emerges the noblest character, and over the grave itself ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... And you at least should not tell me so. I did not know then the virulence of the malady which had fallen on me. I did not know then that, because of you, other men would be abhorrent to me. I thought that I was as easy-hearted ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... frenzied part, Ah, why should I such scenes outlive Scenes so abhorrent to my heart! 'Tis ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... apprehension and sickening suggestion—days when his knees quaked and his hands shook when his superiors addressed him in the performance of his customary duties. No mental picture was too frightful or abhorrent for him to entertain as portraying a possible consequence of the loss of his journal. He cowered in agony before these visions. He dared not seek the little park again. He feared to show himself in the streets. He dreaded the short ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... measured the hearts of others by my own, and supposed that they equally revered the claims of generosity and friendship; for never did I expect a service, which in a change of situations, I would not have rendered unasked; never have I condemned a fault but those so abhorrent to my nature that, I would have died rather than have committed them. Condemned by the triumphant treachery of a man, in all things my inferior, to indigence and obscurity; all the liberal feelings I so dearly cherished palsied by my inability to expand the social charities beyond ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and another lady entered. Hawbury"—and Dacres's tones deepened into an awful solemnity—"Hawbury, it was the lady that I saw in the carriage yesterday. One look at her was enough. I was assured then that my impressions yesterday were not dreams, but the damnable and abhorrent truth!" ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... scientific mind purposeless fiction is abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined; the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works suitable for man, woman, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, "and there is no spectacle so abhorrent to every sense as a narrow-minded man who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is awfully good-looking,—I will say that for him: and if you don't explain me to Lady Baird, I will write to Mr. Beresford about the earl. There was no bickering ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... what is the size of a horse-cloth? Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there no possibility that it might hang over one shoulder; that the whip should be held under that very arm? Did you never see a carter so carry it, his hands in his pockets all the while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature, that a man should fire a pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?—that he should, after firing the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight before him, with the cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand? Peytel's story is possible, and very possible; it is almost probable. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have been a disgrace to Christian civilisation, culminating as they have in the destruction of a United States battle-ship with two ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... show that the outcry against the concentration of capital was furious. Men believed that it threatened society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than it had ever endured. They believed that the great corporations were preparing for them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever been imposed on the race, servitude not to men but to soulless machines incapable of any motive but insatiable greed. Looking back, we cannot wonder at their ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... series of essays in The Spectator (Nos. 58-61; May, 1711), Addison had earlier, of course, been at pains to distinguish between "true wit" and "false wit." Particularly abhorrent to him was the rebus. The first part of The Merry-Thought alone contains seven rebuses from "Drinking-Glasses, at a private Club of Gentlemen" (pp. 12-13), as well as several examples of other kinds of "wit" which ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... Cruelties which ensued thereupon, will be sufficiently convinced to what Rage poor Ignorants may be worked up by those who profess Holiness, and become Incendiaries, and under the Dispensation of Grace, promote Evils abhorrent to Nature. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... from sea or sky. This was the man who had unhesitatingly attacked Vellacott, had dared to pit his small strength, more of nerve than of muscle, against the young Englishman's hardened sinews. Violence in itself was most abhorrent to him; it had no part in his nature; and consequently, by the strange tenets of Ignatius Loyola's disciples, he was condemned to a course of it. Any objectionable duty, such as this removal of Vellacott, was immediately assigned to him in the futile endeavour of subjecting the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor, nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him, he started up as ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... from a learned indifference concerning slavery to eloquent and ardent argument against it, and thus to present the history of the process by which even science, the coldest element of our civilization, found itself at last unconsciously arrayed against a system long abhorrent to feeling. In the Doctor's talk with Westlake, we have a close and clear comparison of the origin and result of the civilizations of New England and the South, the high equality of the North and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... you. You discard me and my devotion, to follow a nature, in its way, it is true, greater even than my own, representing the principle of good, as I represent the principle of evil, but one to which yours is utterly abhorrent. Can you mix light with darkness, or filthy oil with water? As well hope to merge your life, black as it is with every wickedness, with that of the splendid creature you would defile. Do you suppose that a woman such as she will ever be really faithless ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... he within his rights. He loved her—in his way. She was his property. That is the view he holds of life—of human feelings and hearts—property. It's not his fault—so was he born. To me it is a view that has always been abhorrent—so was I born! Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the story. Your mother fled from his house that night; for twelve years she lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort, until in 1899 her husband—you see, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... violent agitations of the arm and fingers in the same direction. I turned away, and scarcely had I done so when the door was slammed to behind me with great force, and I heard two "aughs," one not quite so deep and abhorrent as the other, probably proceeding from the throat of the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... could not love such a love. Yet he strove against it all—fought for religion against right as he could; struggled to reduce his rebellious feelings, to love that which was unlovely, to choose that which was abhorrent, until nature almost gave way under the effort. Often would he sink moaning on the floor, or stretch himself like a corpse, save that it was face downwards, on the boards of the bedstead. Night after night he returned to the battle, but with no permanent success. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... precipitated as the natural result of such abhorrent teachings, the world at large knew little either of Treitschke or Bernhardi. Thoughtful men of other nations did know that the successful political immoralities of Frederick the Great had profoundly affected ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... and file glorified in being men of peace, to whom strife was abhorrent. They were recruited from a people who had been driven from a home of prosperity and who at the time were encamped in most temporary fashion, awaiting the word of their leaders to pass on to the promised western Land of Canaan. For a part of the way there went ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... do it with this one? Take such a virtue as truth. Conceive the crystalline sincerity of some truth-loving minds, realize that some have such a devotion to truth that the faintest shadow of insincerity—not a lie, but the merest shadow of insincerity in the depths of their hearts—is abhorrent to them. Consider the infinite gradations between that mind and the mind which takes a lie for truth, a mind that is rotten with corruption, that does not know how to think straight, let alone care to speak straight. You do not draw up ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... of Ghosts and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... bigoted and superstitious church, these oppressions were far preferable to the levelling and loathsome tyranny of socialism, in any of the forms in which it presented itself in England, France, or Germany. Whatever was abhorrent to the natural sense of justice, and the dear claims of kindred, was propagated by socialism; and which the socialists, whether called Owenites, St. Simonians, or red republicans, were ready by force to establish. Enlightened men were therefore in doubt, during the early part of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to appreciate Chesterton's sociology. "You see, I was brought up to think that it was quite right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not a brother; ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... "Remember, Razumov, that women, children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action. Don't rail! Leave off.... I don't know how it is, but there are moments when you are abhorrent ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... with glittering raindrops, his hands and nails stained as though he had dug them into the black earth, his boots heavy with mire and clay, his whole aspect that of one who had been engaged in some abhorrent deed, too repulsive to be named. I stared at my own reflection thus and shuddered; then I laughed softly with a sort of fierce enjoyment. Quickly I threw off all my soiled habiliments, and locked them out of sight, and arraying myself in dressing-gown and slippers, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... path, And chafe his brain, Evarra mowed alone, Rag-wrapped, among the cattle in the fields, Counting his fingers, jesting with the trees, And mocking at the mist, until his God Drove him to labour. Out of dung and horns Dropped in the mire he made a monstrous God, Abhorrent, shapeless, crowned with plantain tufts, And when the cattle lowed at twilight-time, He dreamed it was the clamour of lost crowds, And howled among the beasts: "Thus Gods are made, And whoso ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... to see the man to whom I had all my life looked with a reverence that prepared me for knowing the great father, weeping like a bitterly repentant and self-abhorrent child. It seemed sacrilege to be present. I felt as if my eyes, only for seeing him thus, deserved the ravens to ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... trader's ways in the Eastern Soudan and elsewhere. He, many years ago, even condescended to honour me with his correspondence and an invitation to join the true believers, i.e., the Mahdists. I have no doubt he meant well, but the land and the dervishes were alike abhorrent to me. Osman had quietly come to the wise conclusion that Mahdism was near its end. With his usual prescience he made his own arrangements without consulting the Khalifa. Early in the year he had all his women and children and such wealth as he could smuggle out ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... came to the old man's lips, but the abhorrent look of his daughter stayed his words, and they went into the night together, while the noise of the mob stormed back to them through the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the Hathaway family history than Mary Louise did, through the letter she had found and read, was often perplexed how to console her friend and still regard honesty and truth. Any deception, even when practiced through the best of motives, was abhorrent to her nature, so she avoided speaking of the present affliction and led Mary Louise to look to a future life for the motherly companionship she had ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... "modernity" of Paris, there is not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men are brilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent to Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the great classic painters. He is ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Here, the fantastic ends of the roots of shrubs from which they were made were cut into a grotesque triumvirate of legs and feet; here a black snake, spotted and coloured to represent the horrid reptile, made you fancy its ugly coils already twisting in abhorrent folds about your hands and arms. There was no end to the old man's imaginative freaks in this department, his wares bearing a proportionate price to the dignity of the location from ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... province to discuss in detail the peculiar and abhorrent domestic life of this people, no visible evidence of which meets the eye of the casual visitor; though in scanning the features of the large audience assembled in the Tabernacle on Sunday, the obvious want of intelligence in the faces of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... mistake as could be made. They seem to have the idea that just as soon as God kills all the people that a person loves, he will then begin to love the Lord. What drew my attention first to these questions was the doctrine of eternal punishment. This was so abhorrent to my mind that I began to hate the book in which it was taught. Then, in reading law, going back to find the origin of laws, I found one had to go but a little way before the legislator and priest united. This led me to a study of a good many of the religions of the world. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... so boldly took his part! Gratitude! and who can tell whether it was not a stronger feeling—love itself?" He gave himself up for a moment to his bitter reflections. "A satyr!" he thought, with that abhorrent hate with which young men regard those more advanced in life, who still think of love. "A man who has never found opposition or resistance in any one, who lavishes his gold and jewels in every direction, and who retains his staff of painters in order to take the portraits ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... something in the very air of the house seemed to warn them of a tremendous attack impending, that the doctor, much against his will, was entering the arena in the character of a practical magician—a character new to him, and obviously abhorrent. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... villainous-looking countenances in my time, but none more abhorrent of aspect than was that of Pablo Garcia, as, distorted with rage, he started on seeing Lilla resting half supported by me. The handsome regularity of his features seemed then to have the effect of making the distortion more striking. There was an angry frown, too, upon ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... singular frankness. To use the decorous phrase of the text-book, "They multiply by fission." Your amoeba or vorticella, as the case may be, splits in two. Then there are two amoebae or vorticellae. In this way the necessity of the family, that middle-class institution so abhorrent to the artistic mind, is avoided. In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, which should appeal to the scholastic ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... drains Acherontian, running before the thresholds, and so filling the homes behind with effluvia, that, while one hand clasps the grimy paw of the voter, the other instinctively guards from typhus and cholera your abhorrent nose. Not in those days had mankind ever heard of a sanitary reform! and, to judge of the slow progress which that reform seems to make, sewer and drain would have been much the same if they had. Scot-and-lot ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... provision of the kind, he would move to amend by making it an offence punishable with death for a white man to cohabit with a Negro woman." At another time he observed on the same subject, that "there was no danger of intermarriage, as the greatest minds had pronounced it abhorrent to nature. The provision would not cover the case, as the laws must subsequently define who is a Negro; and he referred to the law of North Carolina, declaring persons Negroes who have only one-sixteenth of Negro blood. White ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... officials for violation of the fugitive slave law, and both times fined heavily. He believed there could be no virtue in a slave-owner; such a man was accursed of God, and should be accursed of men. His daughter had to a degree imbibed his sentiments, and the idea of slavery was abhorrent to her; but her heart was so gentle, she could hate no one. Calhoun's helplessness appealed to her sympathies, and she forgot he was one of Morgan's raiders. Although young, only eighteen, she had admirers by the score, but her father so far had forbidden her receiving company, considering ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... the decease of every emperor who had neither lived nor died like a tyrant, the senate by a solemn decree should place him in the number of the gods: and the ceremonies of his apotheosis were blended with those of his funeral. [231] This legal, and, as it should seem, injudicious profanation, so abhorrent to our stricter principles, was received with a very faint murmur, [24] by the easy nature of Polytheism; but it was received as an institution, not of religion, but of policy. We should disgrace the virtues of the Antonines by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... name of his nostrum. They all know what a book is—and alas the name is not even unknown and mysterious—would that it were! It calls up in many minds associations which, if we are to be successful we must combat, overthrow, and replace by others. To many—sad it is to say it—a book is an abhorrent thing; to more still, it is a thing of absolute indifference. To some a book is merely a collection of things, having no ascertainable relationships, that one is required to memorize; to others it is a collection of statements, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... destroy, annihilate, give back to the forest what human courage and self-denial had wrested from it, was to them in their souls abhorrent. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... immortal; but she wears her immortality youthfully. When you get among the streets of Quebec, the mediaeval, precipitous, narrow, winding, and perplexed streets, you begin to realise her charm. She almost incurs the charge of quaintness (abhorrent quality!); but even quaintness becomes attractive in this country. You are in a foreign land, for the people have an alien tongue, short stature, the quick, decided, cinematographic quality of movement, and ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... that he gave, and as he turned he got from me another crack upon the other shin. I had no time to be alarmed at my deed, or I think that I should have been very much so; I am a man above all of peace, and physical encounters are peculiarly abhorrent to me; but, so far from assailing me, the thick, young savage, with the single muttered remark, "He hit me fuss," got himself out of the house ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... stir up against him the bitterest hostility. The Meccans hear from him that the religion to which all Arabia flocks together, and without which they would do little trade, is not only a vanity but a thing abhorrent to Allah, and undoubtedly drawing down damnation on all who partake in it; and that their forefathers are unquestionably in hell. Such preaching could not be tolerated; Mahomet's friends are appealed to to stop his mouth, but in vain, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... often marked the frontier line of New England and New York with fire and blood. It is one of the most unhappy of the results of that savage warfare that in the minds of the communities that suffered from it the Jesuit missionary came to be looked upon as accessory to these abhorrent crimes. Deeply is it to be lamented that men with such eminent claims on our admiration and reverence should not be triumphantly clear of all suspicion of such complicity. We gladly concede the claim[28:2] that the proof of the complicity is not complete; we could welcome some clear evidence ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... smoked like an Indian summer ere I entered the Neversink, so abhorrent was this sumptuary law that I altogether abandoned the luxury rather than enslave it to a time and a place. Herein did I not right, Ancient and Honourable Old Guard of Smokers all round ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... most obstinate unity, the unity of action, each piece is furnished with a tangible beginning, middle, and ending. The wide stretches of time which the old Spanish and English and all modern dramas cover, and their frequent transitions from place to place, were impossible and abhorrent ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the publication of his book "Oceana," ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... she cried. "Leave my apartments at once. Not even Peter of Blentz would countenance such abhorrent treatment of ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... like of which I have never heard in any other country to which my uncommercial travels have extended. Years ago, when I had a near interest in certain children who were sent with their nurses, for air and exercise, into the Regent's Park, I found this evil to be so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called public attention to it, and also to its contemplative reception by the Police. Looking afterwards into the newest Police Act, and finding that the offence was punishable under it, I resolved, when striking ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Revolution, when that horrid hell burnt with its most lurid flame. In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned—to protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence. The scenes of lawless violence which have been acted in some portions of our country, rare and restricted as they have been, have done more to tarnish its reputation than a thousand libels. They have ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Scotch have the exclusive privilege of supplying the miserable creatures whom the fortune of war has thrown into the hands of the English, with this national dish, so delicious to Scotchmen, and so abhorrent ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... been these past two days," she replied with haughty scorn. "The same that it shall always be. I will be neither wife nor mistress to a coward; a hideous, abhorrent pig of a man. I would die, it seems, if I felt the touch of your hand upon me. You do not dare to touch me, you craven. I, the daughter of an earl, the niece of a king, wed to the warty toad, ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has wounded him. Indeed, even when less strongly moved, the sullen eye of this official expressed a malevolence of purpose which made men shudder to meet his glance; and the thrill of the young Scot was the deeper and more abhorrent, that he seemed to himself still to feel on his shoulders the grasp of the two death doing functionaries ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... truthful nature scorned subterfuge. The crisis he had dreaded had come on him at last; but Percy should not see that he was afraid. He might be weak and vacillating, but he was a gentleman, and a lie was abhorrent to him. Percy's innuendo might work deadly mischief, but all the same he would not shelter himself ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... smile under her abuse, and remain utterly ignorant that anything more than his action in seizing her that night lay at the bottom of her dislike. He did not dream that he possessed characteristics abhorrent to her; and he felt a keen reluctance ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... can be, is the very circumstance that gives me a right to speak and offer my testimony against ideas which I think wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case. The views of modern philosophers, attacking the sanctity of Christian marriage, are to me perfectly abhorrent. Deprive marriage of its mystical, sacramental, penitential character, and it ceases to be the bulwark of a well-ordered society. I must again call upon St. John Chrysostom to speak for me. He says: 'Marriage is one ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... reason why he should not marry that woman. He is certainly justified, since affection is what romantic love must evolve into after marriage. But do not mistake me, Dane. I do not intend this sweepingly. It will not do for the whole human herd; for at once enters that abhorrent thing you rightly fear, the marriage for convenience. Alas, it too often masquerades under the guise of romantic love. Certainly, every man is not capable of taking this short cut and at the same time of avoiding a violation of true sexual selection. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... conduct of my husband's mother when Eustace presented me to her. What was the secret of her despising him, and pitying me? Where was the explanation of her incomprehensible apathy when my name was twice pronounced in her hearing? Why had she left us, as if the bare idea of remaining in our company was abhorrent to her? The foremost interest of my life was now the interest of penetrating these mysteries. Walk? I was in such a fever of expectation that I felt as if I could have walked to the world's end, if I could only ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... arranged! His sufferings sanctify him, but mine make me abhorrent and laughable! We must face the immutable. We've destroyed a soul, so ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the essential principle of which is that every man shall have an equal chance of getting to the top, it is a matter of course that that top stratum will be constantly changing. The idea of anything in the nature of an hereditary privileged class is abhorrent to the mind of every good American. If he had to have an official Aristocracy, he would insist on a brand new one with each generation; or more likely that it should be re-elected every four years. We are not now discussing the advantages or disadvantages of the hereditary principle; ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... extract, which gives Langley's death, is a better example of the book's general style—cool, circumstantial, abhorrent of glitter or exaggeration, leaving a clear impression of things actually witnessed and done, a brief glimpse of one of the incidents that remain stamped on the brain of those who saw it, but are otherwise forgotten in war-time, after a day or two's regret ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... a suburban villa on the Rebais road. The Division was marching past in the very best of spirits. We, who were very tired, endeavoured to make ourselves comfortable—we were then blanketless—on the abhorrent surface of a narrow ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... preparations, two ravens wheeled screaming round the fatal tree, and at length one of them settled on the cross-beam, and could with difficulty be dislodged by the shouts of the men, when it flew away, croaking hoarsely. Up this gentle hill, ordinarily so soft and beautiful, but now abhorrent as a Golgotha, in the eyes of the beholders, groups of rustics and monks had climbed over ground rendered slippery with moisture, and had gathered round the paling encircling the terrible apparatus, looking the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and desponding feelings deprived my nights of rest—my days, of hope. When the morning came and I took my stand at the accursed desk, I wished the day gone; and when night released me from the abhorrent task, and I sought my humble garret, I sat for hours at the open window, brooding over ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Derry had gone to bed, the Doctor sat there pondering on Hilda's treachery. He was in some ways a simple man—swayed by the impulse of the moment. The thought of deliberate plotting was abhorrent. In his light way he had taken her lightly. He had laughed at her. He had teased Jean, he had teased Emily, calling their intuition jealousy. Yet they had known better than he. And why should not women know women better than men know them? Just as men know men in a way that women could never know. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... a couple of burly gendarmes tore him away and, grasping his arms, hurried him—pale, dishevelled, and in that strange, half-conscious condition into which a man sinks when he sees before him only the dark, terrible figure of death, the phantom which is so abhorrent to all our natures—from the building. But on the threshold the party came face to face with Murazov, and in Chichikov's heart the circumstance revived a ray of hope. Wresting himself with almost supernatural strength ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... not come up to the whole of what their nature leads them to in either of these capacities or respects: and they often violate their nature in both; i.e., as they neglect the duties they owe to their fellow-creatures, to which their nature leads them, and are injurious, to which their nature is abhorrent, so there is a manifest negligence in men of their real happiness or interest in the present world, when that interest is inconsistent with a present gratification; for the sake of which they negligently, nay, even knowingly, are the authors and instruments of their own misery and ruin. Thus ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... infernal powers moved for me, That all the hosts of hell me welcome give, And claim me comrade in their revelry? Abhorrent things, I am not yours, I live, I know I live because I think on death! I live, dead things, to revel among tombs, A ghoul, henceforth I feast on buried joys, My soul the burial-place, where lie, beneath A fearful night of cries and hellish spumes, My lovely youth with jovial ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... you, my boy," said Paganel: "One day a missionary was reproving a cannibal for the horrible custom, so abhorrent to God's laws, of eating human flesh! 'And beside,' said he, 'it must be so nasty!' 'Oh, father,' said the savage, looking greedily at the missionary, 'say that God forbids it! That is a reason for what you tell us. But don't ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... never watched football practice, so he had no conception of the efforts to which men could be goaded by "coaching". It was abhorrent—yet also it was fascinating, the spell of it got hold of him. He saw what these men were doing; they were learning to act in masses, to act with paralyzing and terrific force. Whatever it was they did, they did with the smash of a ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... his eyes and in spite of her the tears came as she read the desperate longing in his glance. He was asking for justification after those long months of silence, but his deed was abhorrent to her still. She had shuddered when he had touched that heavy pistol whose shot had snuffed out a man's life; and she shuddered when she thought of it, when she saw his great hand and the keen eyes that had looked death at McBain. And yet, now he asked it, it no longer seemed criminal, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... cannot be preserved unless in the most exceptional cases, where they are accentuated by the difference of colour, and such a moral and social gulf as that which exists between the whites and negroes in North America. In primitive society there is no such mental cleavage to render the idea of fusion abhorrent to the superior race; the bar is religious, and while it places the inferior race in a despised and abject position, there is no prohibition of illicit unions nor any such moral feeling or principle as would tend to restrict them. The ideas of the responsibilities and duties of parentage ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... nothing abhorrent to Aguinaldo and the men about him in beginning a war by the murder of the commanding general on the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... hard, hawk-like face. There could be no mistake. She was looking into the face that made the portrait of the Iron Count so abhorrent to her: the leathery head of a cadaver with eyes that lived. A portrait of Voltaire, the likeness of a satyr, a suggestion of Satan—all rushed up from memory's storehouse to hold her attention rapt in contemplation ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... what we are coming to. I know your worry right now, and of a minute ago. You are so intrinsically honest, so intrinsically true, that the thought of sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I have not misread you. It is a long time since you have permitted me any love- touch." He shrugged his shoulders "And an equally long time since ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... sentimental. The sedentary multipara, curled up in her boudoir on a rainy afternoon, finds nothing to her taste in his grim tales. The Conrad philosophy is harsh, unyielding, repellent. The Conrad heroes are nearly all boors and ruffians. Their very love-making has something sinister and abhorrent in it; one cannot imagine them in the moving pictures, played by tailored beauties with long eye-lashes. More, I venture that the censors would object to them, even disguised as floor-walkers. Surely that would ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... "Sectional division" was abhorrent to him, but on the question of slavery his sympathies were rather with the South, for I find among his ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his crown, and it passes to me by the voice of the people; but if he will relinquish his claim to Monna Valentina in my favour, then I shall journey straight to Aquila, and I shall trouble Babbiano no more. If he refuses, and insists upon this wedding, abhorrent to Monna Valentina, why, then, my men shall hold him captive behind those walls until it be too late for him to reach his duchy in time to save the crown. In the meantime I will ride to Babbiano in his stead, and—reluctant though I be to play the duke—I shall accept the ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... dealt with so as to induce them voluntarily to become friends or else they must be held by absolute military power or devastated so as to prevent them from ever again doing harm as enemies, which last-named policy is abhorrent to humanity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... the enjoyment of the moment. Do not be alarmed: Lucien will never go so far as a crime, he has not the strength of character; but he would take the fruits of a crime, he would share the benefit but not the risk—a thing that seems abhorrent to the whole world, even to scoundrels. Oh, he would despise himself, he would repent; but bring him once more to the test, and he would fail again; for he is weak of will, he cannot resist the allurements of pleasure, nor forego the least of his ambitions. He is indolent, like all who ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... do not fly far afield and who attempt nothing that they cannot carry through. They are not in the least given to fighting for the sake of fighting; on the contrary, the thought of bloodshed is abhorrent to them. All they wish is to be allowed to pursue their peaceful, partriarchal industries, as their fathers did before them, under laws of their own devising. But things have come to such a pass ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... world should be crushed in the bosom of a young girl? and how could it be crushed so effectually as by marrying her to an old man, one whom she respected, but who was otherwise distasteful to her—one who, as a husband, would at first be abhorrent to her? As Madame Staubach thought of heaven then, a girl who loved and was allowed to indulge her love could hardly go to heaven. "Let it be so," she said to Peter Steinmarc after a few days of weak vacillation,—"let ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... expectant of her. She seemed all eager eyes to the girl, aware next of the strong resemblance to Dan in her features, and of the careful toilet the sick woman had made for her. To youth all forms of suffering are abhorrent, and Alice had to hide a repugnance at sight of this spectre of what had once been a pretty woman. Through the egotism with which so many years of flattering subjection in her little world had armed her, Mrs. Mavering probably did not feel the girl's shrinking, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dealings, he expected honesty from others, and, though generous in many ways, he had not Bland's tolerant nature; he looked for more than the latter and had less charity. There was a vein of hardness in the man who had loved Sylvia largely because he believed in her. Trickery and falseness were abhorrent to him, and now the woman he had worshiped stood revealed in her ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... one in his condition, he bade his guest go farther and fare worse, and in mitigation of the latter's Parthian taunt, "Kid-glove fussing, 'bo," called Heaven and earth and the whole cafe to witness that, abhorrent though self-trumpeting was to him, no man had ever handled more delicately a prickly proposition than he had handled the Certina legislative interests. Gazing about him for sympathy he espied the son of his chief passing between ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that he ought not to have done. In this matter, Mr Evans, I have altogether a divided sympathy. I dislike the man utterly. I don't care who knows it. No one knows it better than he himself. The idea of his coming here over that young lady's head was from the first abhorrent to me. When I saw him, and heard him, and found out what he was,—such a poor, cringing, cowardly wretch,—my feeling was of course exacerbated. It was terrible to me that the old squire, whom I had always ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... or by baptizing them en bloc? What else but deepest aversion and mistrust could a religion inspire which is professed and taught by a people who practise spoliation, murder, and other descriptions of wickedness abhorrent even to a savage mind? The aborigines would daily behold their own land and possessions enjoyed by usurpers and "would be teachers," who subjected them besides to slavery and abject misery. Could the religion of such teachers ever find favour ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... negro incapacity. To forefend their beloved land, now doubly sanctified by the blood of her devoted sons who had fallen in the struggle to maintain her liberties and preserve her property, it behooved every true Southron to stand firm against the abhorrent tide of radicalism, to maintain the supremacy and purity of his all-pervading, all-conquering race, and to resist by every available means the threatened domination of an inferior and degraded people, who were set to rule hereditary ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... would have wished to put, but the nobleman's abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the discreetly shadowed corners of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that, being myself a native of the Mediterranean, I can enter better than you can into the childish delight that our friend Caius Plinius expresses. It is a joy which is not to be found in the nature of the American to sleep in the tropic heats of a July sun. Winter is abhorrent to the nature of every Levanter. To bask upon the shore of the Mediterranean, with the calm lazy sea at your feet and the winds cut off from your back, is the only decent way of hibernating. But this is in your ear as we pass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... of humiliation; a proud man, he lives in daily fear of exposure and shame. At the age of forty-two, in the maturity of his manhood, he meets the woman who conquers his heart, his imagination, who compels his faith by making other women abhorrent to him, who allures and maddens with the certainty of her power to make good his ideal of her. He cannot marry her; that animal on the bed is capable of ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... hold slaves as property in the Territories had lately, to the infinite joy of the South, been declared by the Supreme Court to be guaranteed by the Constitution; and now Douglas had the audacity to repeat that notion of his, so abhorrent to all friends of slavery,—that this invaluable right could be made practically worthless by unfriendly local legislation, or even by the negative hostility of withholding friendly legislation! From the moment when this deadly suggestion fell from his ingenious ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... is neither cheerful nor salutary at her age. But her person and manners attract attention and excite curiosity. I am extremely desirous to keep her history secret, but I already find it difficult to answer questions without resorting to falsehood, which is a practice exceedingly abhorrent to me, and a very bad education for her. After this meeting with Mr. Fitzgerald, I cannot take her to any public place without a constant feeling of uneasiness. The fact is, I am so unused to intrigues and mysteries, and I find it so hard to realize that a young girl like her can be in ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... would have to go up every night, of the woman who would wait for him there. And the sweetness of Mattie's avowal, the wild wonder of knowing at last that all that had happened to him had happened to her too, made the other vision more abhorrent, the other life more intolerable ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... however, insinuates nothing of the kind: it merely charges her with encouragement, and him with wishing to profit by it,—a slight attempt at seduction, and no more. The phrase is, "a step beyond decorum." Any physical violence is so abhorrent to human nature, that it recoils in cold blood from the very idea. But, the seduction of a woman's mind as well as person is not, perhaps, the least heinous sin of the two in morality. Dr. Johnson commends a gentleman who having seduced a girl who said, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... The Laird answered. He longed to evade the issue—he realized that Daney was crowding him always, setting traps for him, driving him relentlessly toward a reconciliation that was abhorrent to him. "I have no objection. She cannot afford the expense of a Seattle hospital, I daresay, and I do not desire ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... her husband in an aggrieved tone, "it is incomprehensible that you should have such a total disregard for the delicacy of my constitution,—especially when you know that the very odor of the stable is abhorrent to my olfactory senses. Atalanta has quarters provided for her at the Vernon Livery, and one of the grooms has orders to bring the carriage to the door at two ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... soul; or that one, bound by the most sacred oaths to the contrary—one such as I, who have but one longing wish connected with earth, to wit, the rebuilding of our Christian Zion—would betray the secrets of the confessional? Both are alike abhorrent to my very soul." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of at once giving up the task of attending either of the sisters, when his eyes falling on the uncomplaining but melancholy features of his poor friend, he exclaimed, "No; for thy sake, gallant Butzou, I will brave every scene, however abhorrent ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... all, whereas all that is in my being had assured me of the plenitude of the universe. Yes, devotion, not to individuals but to the social ideal of brotherhood, sustains me still. Oh, what a magnificent example is to be found in Jesus and in the poor. That righteous aristocrat, showing by His abhorrent task the infinite obligation of altruistic duty, and teaching, above all, that no return of gratitude should be demanded. . . . To my experience of men and things I owe this tranquillity of expecting nothing from any one. Thus duty takes ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... him such of her confidences as were meet for masculine ears. Naturally she impressed upon him the fact that his sex was abhorrent to her in all its physical, moral, and spiritual manifestations. Septimus, on thinking the matter over, agreed with her. Memories came back to him of the men with whom he had been intimate. His father, the mechanical man who had cogs instead of corpuscles ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke |
