"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... early stage of creation out of such a chaos, had put forth books marked strongly as its own and yet as the products of a mature national mind. It would also have been surprising if since the Civil War the rush of still more appalling and more complex practical problems had not obstructed for a while the flow of imaginative or scientific production. But the growth of those relatively early years was great. Boston had been the home of a loveless Christianity; its insurrection in the War of Independence had ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... making my readers see the scene as I saw it, or of conveying any adequate idea of the intense, the appalling loneliness of the spot. It really seemed to me as if our voices and laughter, so far from breaking the deep eternal silence, only brought it out into stronger relief. On either hand rose up, shear from the waters edge, a great, barren, shingly mountain; before us loomed a dark pine ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... so vivid as he wished, the pale-glimmering headless skeleton in the intense darkness of the interior was appalling enough in all conscience. Fortunately the fumes of the sulphur fed on the bony substance. They endured a sufficient time to scare every Dyak who caught a glimpse of the monstrous object crouching in luminous horror within ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... been more neglected in this country in the last fifty years than anywhere else in Europe, and that is saying a good deal. Hence diet quacks and all those who trade on the ignorance and prejudices of the public are having a good time and often employ it in writing the most appalling rubbish in reference to the important ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... true of entire methods, it is even more true of elements of methods. As elements are not studied and recorded separately, they are not recognized when they appear again, and the resultant waste is appalling. This waste is inevitable with the lack of cooeperation under Traditional Management and the fact that each worker plans the greater part ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... appalling nature of my predicament made itself plain to me. The lion leaped ten feet and stood snarling horribly right in ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... forward and assists in reaping the full reward of victory by firing on the fleeing enemy. The present European War has greatly increased the prestige and importance of this arm of the service. The amount of artillery on the Western front and the amount of ammunition consumed daily is appalling. ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... of intimidation employed by the Scotch clergy, none was more efficacious than the doctrines they propounded respecting evil spirits and future punishments. On these subjects they constantly uttered the most appalling threats. The language which they used was calculated to madden men with fear, and to drive them to the depths of despair.... It was generally believed that the world was overrun by evil spirits, who not only went up and down the earth, but also lived in the air, and ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... such as might compensate the crimes he had committed, and that, after a reasonable quarantine in purgatory, he might in mercy he found duly qualified for the superior regions... The instructive but appalling scene of this tyrant's sufferings was at length closed ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... much of human nature in Joe {70} Howe to take all this without striking hard blows in return. He did strike, and he struck from the shoulder. He said what he thought about his opponents with a bluntness that was absolutely appalling to them. He went straight to the mark aimed at with Napoleonic directness. They were stunned. They had been accustomed to be treated so differently. Hitherto there had been so much courtliness of manner ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... A most appalling interruption. Snorting, moaning, sobbing, his breath coming in gasps, his hair standing up on end, his eyes starting, and his face ghastly, there burst in upon them Master Dan Duff. That he was in the very height of terror, there could be no mistaking. To add to the confusion, he flung ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... place, the number and character of the slaves form an appalling difficulty. It is not believed by many of the sincere friends of the slaves, that their immediate emancipation would be conducive to their own real welfare, or consistent with the safety of the whites. To let them loose, without any provision for the young, the feeble, and the aged, would ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... world's structures was doomed to totter to its fall! Such was the figure destined to close a scene which Time and Glory had united to hallow and adorn! Raised and supported by a superhuman daring, that invested the nauseous horrors of incessant bloodshed with a rude and appalling magnificence, the mistress of nations was now fated to sink by the most ignoble of defeats, under the most abject of tremblers. For this had the rough old kingdom shaken off its enemies by swarms from its vigorous arms! For this had the doubtful virtues of the Republic, and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... rendered possible to all by an admirable system of railways, which are under government control, and will gradually form a perfect network over the island. The engineering difficulties of these lines must have been great, and it is an appalling sight to witness a train in motion. So hilly is the little island that if the engine is approaching the chances are it looks as if it were about to plunge wildly down on its head and turn a somersault into the station, or else it seems to be gradually climbing up a steep gradient after the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... sisterhood. It was the enormity of the offence that struck them aghast, the boldness of the attempt, and its complete success. It was altogether a new idea to them that any one should wish to escape from those walls; an appalling one that any one should make such an attempt, and succeed. Soeur Lucie, held responsible for Madelon, was summoned before the Superior, questioned, cross-questioned, and, amid tears and sobs, could only repeat that she had left ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... appears at his worst. If any one from real life were suddenly thrust unprepared and unlearned in theatrical art upon a stage the incongruity of the situation would be appalling. Yet the witness is thrown into new and strange surroundings. It is a portion of the reality of life shown vividly against a conventionalized background. The judge and jury in a vague manner understand this. The lawyer producing the witness feels this ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers' consciences, movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't lie down, and were perpetually flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and safety-valve. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... of using that title, but I am afraid it is a little too ambitious. To write the history of a literature extending over at least eight centuries would entail an appalling amount of reading; and besides, only a few, say a couple of dozen writers out of some hundreds, are of the slightest literary interest, and very few indeed ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Seven cases of it occurred on the banks of the Thames just below London early in February, 1832, and though its virulence in England was alleged to be less than on the continent, further experience hardly justified that opinion. The appalling violence of its first onslaught on some vulnerable districts may be illustrated by the example of Manchester, where a whole family just arrived from an infected locality was swept away within twenty-four hours. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... people of the little burgh would have deemed even reasonable: he had shown certain aptitudes which made his presence more than desirable at Saint-Jacques, the great plantation of the order on the Capesterre, or Windward coast. It was in debt for 700,000 pounds of sugar,—an appalling condition in those days,—and seemed doomed to get more heavily in debt every successive season. Labat inspected everything, and set to work for the plantation, not merely as general director, but as engineer, architect, machinist, inventor. He did really wonderful things. You can see them for ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Kalakeyas with upraised weapons resembling gigantic mountains with towering peaks. And the encounter that took place between the gods and the Danavas lasted for a short while and was, O chief of the Bharatas, terrific in the extreme, appalling as it did the three worlds. And loud was the clash of swords and scimitars upraised and warded off by heroic hands in course of those fierce encounters. And heads (severed from trunks) began to roll from the firmament ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... tone. Dickens and Thackeray claimed very properly the right to deal with shameful passions and suggest their shameful culminations; Scott sometimes dealt with ideas positively horrible—as in that grand Glenallan tragedy which is as appalling as the OEdipus or The Cenci. None of these great men would have tolerated for a moment being talked to (as the muddle-headed amateur censors talk to artists to-day) about "wholesome" topics and ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... snatched it and soared upwards. The blue rope seemed to tremble. As I came near the platform at decreasing speed, it seemed to stretch like elastic. It broke! The platform jumped up suddenly over my head, but I caught at the silk ladder. I was saved! There was a fearful silence, and then the appalling shock of hysterical applause from seven thousand throats. I slid down the ladder, ran across the stage into my dressing-room for a cloak, out again into the street. In two days I was ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... uniform of the officer, after all, had not proved to be so potent in lulling the suspicions of prospective victims as he had expected it might be. But Alcatraz! a rock-bound prison! a convict's garb! hard labor on soft diet! that was indeed appalling. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... were spoken—the bare, hard, naked, shameless words—the revulsion came. As a lightning flash shows up the blackness of the night the appalling truth of what she had done was forced upon her. The blood rushed to her head till cheeks and shoulders and neck seemed to burn. Covering her face with her hands she sank back on the seat crying silently ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as the Standard says, last Tuesday? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to prevent ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... ends the story of Sabina Conti and Marino Malipieri, whose marriage took place quietly during the autumn, as the Princess had confidently said that it should. It is a tale without a "purpose" and without any particular "moral," in the present appalling acceptation, of those simple words. If it has interested or pleased those who have read it, the writer is glad; if it has not, he can find some consolation in having made two young people unutterably blissful in his own imagination, whereas ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... sat looking at his visitor like one turned to stone. The prospect called up by that simple question was appalling. His cigarette burned idly away between his fingers. The shadow of ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... atheist innovator even in that atheist age, stood up for an instant like a spectre of the Crusades. Had that Crusade been universal and whole-hearted, the great new precedent of mere force and fraud would have been broken; and the whole appalling judgment which is fallen upon Christendom would have passed us by. But the other Crusaders were only half in earnest for Europe; Frederick was quite in earnest for Prussia; and he sought for allies, by whose aid this weak revival of good might be stamped out, and ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... that wedding held on long enough and strongly enough to soften and blunt the disillusionments of the first few days of the honeymoon. In the prospect that period had seemed, even to Mildred's rather unsophisticated imagination, appalling beyond her power to endure. In the fact—thanks in large part to that intoxication—it was certainly not unendurable. A human being, even an innocent young girl, can usually bear up under any experience to which a human being can be subjected. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... to it, was thrown into such consternation on the eruption of the plague that the citizens destroyed themselves, as if in frenzy. When the plague ceased, men thought they were still wandering among the dead, so appalling was the livid aspect of the survivors, in consequence of the anxiety they had undergone, and the unavoidable infection of the air. Many other cities probably presented a similar appearance; and small country towns and villages, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... about him when I bumped into him yesterday was that he didn't look very cheery. Looked to me rather as though he'd lost something and was wondering where it was. Ha! But—dashed funny—I mentioned something about that appalling speech that chap made in that blasphemy case yesterday.... Eh? yes, absolutely frightful, wasn't it?—well, I'm dashed if old Sabre didn't puzzle up his nut in exactly the same old way and say, 'Yes, but I see what he means.' ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... days I have been working on a ponderous article that allows no play for the fancy. My imagination requires a judicious rein; I am afraid to let it loose, for it carries me sometimes into appalling places beyond the stars and beneath the world. No one realizes the danger more than I do. But what a foolish thing to write here—for there is no one to know, no one to realize! My mind of late has held unusual thoughts, thoughts I have never had before, about medicines and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... the circus full, The circus full from rim to floor: The lookers on, beyond control, The lookers on now begin to murmur and roar! Some are calling, And others bawling And howling too, with might and main! For they await a sight appalling! 'Tis the day of the brave of Spain! Come on! make ready! ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... is a truth which must not be disguised. Here lies the great peril of the Government. It is not the rebel armies that can ever overthrow the Union. It is the alarming increase of the public debt and expenditures, and the still more appalling depreciation of the national currency, that most imperil ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man first brought in had, till this moment, enabled him, though not unmoved, to look with calmness on the appalling scene. But now when he saw that but one more ceremony intervened between him and the grave, his resolution suddenly failed him. He burst into tears, and a wild shriek of "O my mother—my poor mother," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... forehead and perplexed eyebrows, often devoted the rest of the afternoon to a gentle elucidation of the mysteries before him, setting copies for his heavy hand, or even guiding it with his own, like a child's, across the paper. At times the appalling uselessness of Uncle Ben's endeavors reminded him of Rupert's taunting charge. Was he really doing this from a genuine thirst for knowledge? It was inconsistent with all that Indian Spring knew of his antecedents and his present ambitions; he was a simple miner without scientific or technical ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... revolutions, and as yet had not learned the first principles of good government. In civil affairs, her code was the most barbarous, her feudal customs the most revolting, her whole history the most appalling of all Christendom. In social habits, she had scarcely been able to retain a few precious fragments of good old Catholic times; and the fearful scenes through which the nation had passed, which, according to J. J. Rousseau, for once expressing the truth, render the reading of that period ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... is brilliantly lyrical, and the lyric associations of the verse are carried over into the mood of the poem. And the other fact to be remembered is that the poignant self-analysis and self-betrayal of the dramatic monologue, its "egoism" and its ultimate and appalling sincerities, are a part of the very nature of the lyric impulse. These revealers of their souls may use the speaking, rather than the singing voice, but their tones have the deep, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... by KITTY'S husband fancying he had a sunstroke. The third and last day was, however, not the success we could have wished. During the night the weather turned hot, and the food turned—well, not good,—and next morning the obligatory sacrifice to Father Thames was appalling. Then when the necessary viands did not arrive from London, I in my capacity of "professional guest," and of being always ready for any emergency, volunteered to forage in Henley town. Oh! that expedition. I fought at the fishmonger's, battled ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... said Bob, to whom hunger did not appear so appalling. "But I'd get in an' knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the havoc wrought by the elements, the devastating flash, the furious wind; appalling is the destruction of the roaring flames, the all-devouring flood; but what elements can measure their forces with the fury of man, once he has torn asunder the bonds of reason and rushes madly and irresistibly onwards toward the accomplishment ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... render the earth bountiful of grain; may the presiding Brahmans secure the favour of the gods by acceptable sacrifices; may the association of the pious confer delight until the end of time, and may the appalling blasphemies of the profane be silenced ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... was denied to them, for the mortality latterly became so great that there was neither time nor hands to carry off the bodies, which were then thrown into the neighbouring ravines, or hastily committed to the earth on the spots on which they had expired." Let us now inquire how this appalling mortality was arrested;—the report goes on to inform us:—"It was clear that such a frightful state of things could not last long, and that unless some immediate check were given to the disorder, it must soon depopulate the camp. It was therefore ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... make impossible, in this most intimate and personal of all human concerns, the various ways of acting which the infinite varieties of temperament and desire may dictate—this would be such an invasion of personal liberty, such a suppression of individuality, as would strike us all as appalling, had we not grown so habituated to the mechanical, the statistical, measurement of human values—to the Flatland view ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... to the hero!" his country is calling, And "hail to his comrades!" the faithful and brave, They fear'd not for falling, they knew no appalling, But fought like their fathers, the lords of the wave. And long may the ocean, In calm and commotion, Rejoicing convey them where fame may be won, And when foes would wound us May Napier be round us, To conquer or die by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... possible to describe the horror of the appalling scene that met my shrinking eyes, as for the first time since I had been a prisoner I was able ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... came down with the most appalling crash on to something hard and nearly jarred the senses out of us. Next the saloon was whirling round and round and yet being carried forward, and we felt air blowing upon us. Then our senses left us. As I clasped Tommy to my side, whimpering and licking ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... alone—anxiously, yet with a sort of terror. I was burning to understand, and yet I shrunk from doing so. If to conjecture even vaguely what experiences could have brought him to this, what dark things suffered or done, had been melancholy when he was a nameless old musician, now it was appalling, and I dreaded the explanation that ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Prosser began to be troubled with strange and horrible dreams, some of which as set out in detail, in Aunt Rebecca's long letter, are really very appalling nightmares. But one night, as Mr. Prosser closed his bed-chamber-door, he was struck somewhat by the utter silence of the room, there being no sound of breathing, which seemed unaccountable to him, as he knew his wife was in bed, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... placed upon that bed, Mimi looked at him with intense anxiety and alarm, for his pale, emaciated face and weak, attenuated frame seemed to belong to one who was at the last verge of life. An awful fear of the worst came over her—the fear of bereavement in this distant land, the presentiment of an appalling desolation, which crushed her young heart and reduced her to despair. Her father, her only relative, her only protector, was slipping away from her; and in the future there seemed nothing before her but the very ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... of Thunder Mountain, like the peace that comes to a sufferer between paroxysms of pain, was of a kind unknown to lower levels. In all the range of natural phenomena, in all the gamut of sensation, there is nothing else at once so beautiful, inspiring, and appalling as utter silence; and nothing else so rare. To the sea, the desert, and the peak it is given in few and perfect hours; but neither to the desert nor to the sea is it given in such transcendency as to the peak. And on no peak could silence ever have seemed ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... and deadly nature of the Frenchmen's peril was brought home to them anew; and now they seemed to realise, for the first time, the possibility that they might be called upon to witness at close quarters the appalling spectacle not only of a foundering ship but also of the drowning of all her people. Instantly quite a little hubbub arose among the excited passengers, General O'Brien and some half a dozen other men among them pressing about poor Dacre ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the ruling power. We see this strikingly illustrated in the idiotic, who are for the most part disgustingly sensual. Among a population grossly ignorant and uneducated, sensualism prevails in its most appalling forms. The man is a sensualist, simply because he knows no higher pleasures. He is degraded, because he has no motives to be otherwise. He is barely above a brute. The amount of crime, of the coarsest and most ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... like the German Empire. In England, with our system of party government, a complete measure of State control in educational matters would create a political pandemonium that would be little short of appalling. ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... scarcely perceptible nod to Sandy, who, ever ready with tobacco juice, spat with great directness on the top of the anvil. Macdonald placed the hot iron on the spot, and quickly smote it a stalwart blow with the heavy hammer. The result was appalling. An instantaneous spreading fan of apparently molten iron lit up the place as if it were a flash of lightning. There was a crash like the bursting of a cannon. The shop was filled for a moment with a shower of brilliant sparks, that ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... would be frail and bent, and wear a cap and mittens, and have rheumatic joints, and attacks of bronchitis if by chance she was so imprudent as to go out without putting on goloshes, a woollen "crossover," and a big silk muffler beneath her mantle. To one- and-twenty it seemed an appalling prospect, and one to be shunted into the background ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... be allowed, is a picture of tyranny and misgovernment sufficiently appalling to justify the resistance of any people, but more especially that of a people which had long been accustomed to even a licentious freedom, which was proud of its national honour and ancient renown; which entertained such a veneration for its laws and usages as to preserve for two centuries the liberum ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... the person before him were those of Hernando Courtney, but the voice was the voice of Julius, though it sounded strange and distant, and bore an accent as of death. Lefevre was involved in a wild turmoil and horror of surmise, too appalling to be exactly stated to himself; for he shrank with all his energy from the conclusion to which he was being forced. He turned, however, upon the request for admission, and led the way into the dining-room, letting his visitor ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... the redoubts a roll of drums. I saw the muzzles lowered. I shut my eyes; I heard a most appalling crash of sound, to which succeeded groans and cries. Then I looked up, amazed to find myself still living. The redoubt was once more wrapped in smoke. I was surrounded by the dead and wounded. The captain was extended at my feet; a ball had carried off his head, and I ...
— How The Redoubt Was Taken - 1896 • Prosper Merimee
... I loved her, and I won her virgin heart; But fortune whispered, we a while must part. 50 The minster tolled the middle hour of night, When, waked to agony and wild affright, I heard those words, words of appalling dread— "The Holy Inquisition!"—from the bed I started; snatched my dagger, and my cloak— Who dare accuse me!—none, in answer, spoke. The demons seized, in silence, on their prey, And tore me from my dreams of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... grotesqueness which shows how far they were from any conviction of their reality. Signorelli is the only painter of the Renaissance I can recall who has succeeded in giving a savage sternness, a formidable brutishness to his fiends, which is very far from grotesque, but is really appalling. These ferocious creatures are of all colours, slate-blue, crude purple, heavy green, livid mauve—sometimes of all these poisonous-looking colours fading one into the other. Strong and malevolent, they triumph in their work ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... between Venezuela and the Colombian valleys, the narrow and rugged passages, the wild beasts,—sink into nothingness as compared with the almost unconquerable obstacles which he was to face on his way to the South. In no other part of the continent do the Andes present such an appalling combination of ravines, torrents, precipitous paths and gigantic peaks. Furthermore, nowhere on the continent was the population so hostile to freedom as were the pastusos (inhabitants of the Pastos). Men, women and children ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding him with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity! The act released his physical energies without unfettering his will; his mind was still spellbound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... his efforts, if his untractable malice were allowed to act with all its diabolical force, and were absolutely under no restrictions, the idea of his being and of his malignity would be unutterably appalling: but the giant foe is held in the mighty grasp of Omnipotence. His power is only permitted to operate to a certain extent, and under the regulations of certain laws ordained by the eternal mind. He who says to the raging ocean, "Here shall thy proud waves be stayed," assigns ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... after the battle, a teamster, who had cut loose his horse and fled at the first onset, had ridden madly into the camp crying that the whole army was destroyed and he alone survived. At his heels came other teamsters, for with an appalling cowardice, which makes me blush for my countrymen, they had one and all cut loose their teams at the first fire, and selecting the best horse, had fled precipitately from the field. Toward noon, Colonel Washington had arrived, bringing the first accurate news of the disaster, and at once setting ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... of whales. Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... one views life—in the relief of his presence, all danger of that fled. Unluckily for him, also, the appearance of his bride-elect in such an unexpected place was so appalling to him that his nerve failed him entirely. Instead of clasping her in his arms as he should have done, he had the decency to recoil, and cover his face instinctively from ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... debts! The night before leaving London, and for the first time in her life there, she had sat down with paper and pencil and made up a statement—rough, of course—of all she owed, and added it up.... Appalling! Thousands and thousands of pounds! Why, great Heavens! if she used her recent windfall to pay her debts, she would have nothing left worth mentioning. And Bullard was going to give her a hundred thousand—if—if ... Oh, but he must not fail! It was her final chance, her ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... this war, and the prospect of all the moral and economic ruin with which South Africa is now threatened, make it necessary for both belligerents to ask themselves dispassionately, and as in the sight of the Triune God, for what they are fighting, and whether the aim of each justifies all this appalling misery and devastation. ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this civilization... simply appalling in its vastness. The countless millions of your people, the wealth you have piled up... it seems like a huge bubble that may burst any minute. And the one device by which it is all ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... country. He acted with great discretion, holding things steadily until some degree of preparation was made; and I have no doubt at all that the war would have been averted had not the Maine been destroyed in Havana harbor. The country forced us into it after that appalling catastrophe. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... glories are rapidly passing away in smoke and flame, such as have never been witnessed since the burning of Moscow, and amid a roar of cannon, a screaming of mitrailleuses, a bursting of projectiles, and a horrid rattle of musketry from different quarters which are appalling. A more lovely day it would be impossible to imagine, a sky of unusual brightness, blue as the clearest ever seen, a sun of surpassing brilliancy even for Paris, scarcely a breath of wind to ruffle the Seine. Such of the great buildings as the spreading conflagration has not reached stand ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... separated from its spiritual source in the higher Ego. Some students even seem to think that such an occurrence is quite a common one, and that we may meet scores of such "soulless men," as they have been called, in the street every day of our lives, but this, happily, is untrue. To attain the appalling preeminence in evil which thus involves the entire loss of a personality and the weakening of the developing individuality behind, a man must stifle every gleam of unselfishness or spirituality, and must have absolutely no redeeming point whatever; ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... how had you the courage to go with her in that terrible boat? She actually took you into the current—that appalling current where one ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... are to be seen here, the Church of St. Germain, or rather, the fragment which was spared by the Huguenots, now being used as an adjunct to a hospital; and the Church of St. Pierre. The latter is the most appalling example of a Renaissance building which one is likely to meet with, and shows in its remarkable facade, in sheer perversion of misdirected labour, the grossness of pseudo-classicism, which quite entitles it to rank with that other equally abominable ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... leaving the command with but few leaders to conduct the broken ranks in precipitate retreat. On our left, in the front of the Tennesseans and Kentuckians, the greatest execution had been done. The slaughter here was appalling. Within a space three hundred yards wide, and extending out two hundred yards from our breastwork on the battlefield, an area of about ten acres, the ground was literally covered with the dead and desperately wounded. A British officer, who ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... been described. The most sensational accounts of the yellowest journals fell far short of the truth—simply because its full horror was beyond the power of words to portray. Figures and statistics can give little idea of the results of such an appalling calamity; and to this day, people at a distance have no realization of the unutterable woe which our Red Cross band of less than a dozen, strove to alleviate. We arrived on the eighth day after the tragedy, in which upward of ten thousand lives went suddenly ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... he perceived a thing that was formless, that was invisible—but that was appalling—silence. Silence that made him shrink and quake—he that had loved, had longed for silence! Silence would crush him now. And solitude!—how often he had craved it! He had solitude a ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... for aching hearts that wait Today in homes made desolate By one sharp blow appalling— For all who kneel by altars lone, And strive to say "Thy will be done," ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... students, in the dining-room, to support the discipline of the school, and had intimated that he intended to prosecute Thornton in the courts for the assault upon him. I was rather startled at this intelligence, for a court was an appalling ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... answer, and, as he then felt, would shrink with morbid sensitiveness and dislike from the kindest and most delicate presentation of the transforming truth. But the divine love is ever seeking to win our attention by messengers innumerable; now by the appalling storm, again by a summer sunset; now by an awful providence, again by a great joy; at times by stern prophets and teachers, but more often by the gentle human agencies of which Annie was the type, as with pitying face she bent over the worn and jaded man of the world and hoped and prayed that ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... for us. Two of our electrical ships, with their entire crews, had been wiped out of existence, and this appalling blow had been dealt by a few stranded and disabled ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity; that list of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for a long time—namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's notice to deface and deform our English tongue. These strange, fantastic, grotesque, and weird titles open up to my prophetic vision a most unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach—and ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... destruction of an empire, it was the destruction of a phase of human thought, of a system of human beliefs, of morals, politics, civilisation, as all these had existed in the world for ages. The drama is so vast, the cataclysm so appalling, that even at this day we are hardly removed from it far enough to take it fully in. The mind is oppressed, the imagination flags under the load imposed upon it. The capture and sack of a town one can fairly conceive: the massacre, outrage, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... Marutta said, "This appalling crash of the thunderbolt together with the howling of the winds, seem terrible to my ears and my heart is afflicted again and again, O Brahmana, and my peace of mind is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have, more especially during the last 60 years, in this country accumulated wealth to an extent which is almost unparalleled in the history of the world, but we have done it at an appalling waste of human material. We have drawn upon the robust vitality of the rural areas of Great Britain, and especially Ireland, and spent its energies recklessly in the devitalizing atmosphere of urban factories and workshops as if the supply were inexhaustible. We are now beginning to realize ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... for first of all we must have a taste of those dainty lips; stand back, bl—t you," he vociferated with a volley of appalling oaths, that sent the disorderly men, who were again crowding behind him, back into the rear; "we would be alone, d—— you; ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sense of loneliness that seemed to threaten to overwhelm me. I wanted to be alone, and yet I feared to be. I was aware, in spite of their congratulations on my efforts, of a growing dislike for my associates; and in the appalling emptiness of the moments when my depression was greatest I was forced to the realization that I had no disinterested friend—not one—in whom I could confide. Nancy had failed me; I had scarcely seen Tom Peters that winter, and it was out of the question to go to him. For ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... W. Wilson, "with unabated gallantry and courage, divided their attention between the fire and the enemy. The bandsmen went to the guns, and, though the position of the ship was critical, and her loss appalling, there was no panic. The fire was on the lower deck, just above the magazine. In charge of the magazine were a gunner's mate and a seaman. The shell had apparently dented the plating over the powder, and the red glow through the crevices showed the danger. But these brave men ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and foster-sister "Noun," who disguises herself in Indiana's garments and occupies her room, receives there a lover who is afterwards her mistress's, but soon commits suicide; the lover himself, a most appalling "tiger," as his own time would have called him; and the enigmatic English cousin, indifferently designated as "Sir Rodolphe Brown," "Sir Ralph," "Sir Brown," and "M. Brown," with whom Indiana makes a third trial of hitherto "incomprised" and unattained happiness—are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... not the recurrent waves of terror, the ever latent fear of Brandes, or even her appalling loneliness that broke her down; it was sheer fatigue—nature's merciless third degree—under which mental and physical resolution disintegrated—went all ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... one would believe it at first; and even now Elizabeth will not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who would credit that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all the family, could suddenly become so capable of so frightful, so appalling a crime?" ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the same time. There were the cries and sobs of little children, the moans of sickness, the thuds of falling furniture and the crashes of breaking crockery. There were yells of rage, and—worst of all—bursts of appalling profanity. Rose-Marie, standing there in the darkness of the fourth flight, heard words that she had never expected to hear—phrases of which she had never dreamed. She shuddered as she started up the fifth flight, and when, at last, she stood in front of the Volsky flat, ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... so that their duties can be carried on without friction when they are brought together. The base hospitals of the navy should be put in condition to meet modern requirements and hospital ships be provided. Unless we now provide with ample forethought for the medical needs of the army and navy appalling suffering of a preventable kind is sure to occur if ever the country goes to war. It is not reasonable to expect successful administration in time of war of a department which lacks a third of the number of officers necessary to perform the medical service in time of peace. We need men ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... whole, nor as a struggle of passion, is among the greatest in any view, and positively the greatest for scenical grandeur, and in that respect makes the nearest approach of all English tragedies to the Grecian model;) he does not fear to introduce, for the same appalling effect as that for which Aeschylus introduced the Eumenides, a triad of old women, concerning whom an English wit has remarked this grotesque peculiarity in the popular creed of that day,—that although potent over winds and storms, in league with powers of darkness, they yet stood in ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... cheek to mine— Kiss me, oh! my ain laddie! Never mair may lip o' thine Press where it hath lain, laddie! Hark! I hear the angels calling, Heavenly strains are round me falling, But the stroke—thy soul appalling— 'Tis my only pain, laddie! Yet the love I bear to thee Shall follow where I soon maun be; I 'll tell how gude thou wert to me— We part to meet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fighting in Tyrol is concentrated. But Bordeaux is farther from the battle-line of France than is Naples from the Italian front, and the multitudes of wounded in Bordeaux, the multitudes of women in black in Bordeaux, make one of the most appalling, most significant pictures of this war. In two days in Naples I did not see one wounded man. But I saw many Germans and German signs, and no one had scratched Mumm off the wine-card. A country that is one of the Allies, and yet not at war with Germany, cannot ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... they are commonly all life, using the whip, or more commonly a thick stick, barbarously upon their dogs, vociferating as they go "Sacres Crapeaux," "Sacree Marne," "Saintes Diables," and uttering expressions of the most appalling blasphemy. In the rivers, their canoe songs, as sung to a lively air and chorus with the paddle, are very cheerful and pleasing. They smoke immediately and almost incessantly, when the paddle is from their hands; ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... kind of state, The painter meant for steadiness; But has a tinge of sullenness; And, at first sight, she seems to brook As ill her needle, as he his book. This is the Picture. For the Frame— 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling; And sober, as the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of man! that, with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough chess games. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... see 'Faust' played at the little country theater: it was done with scarcely any means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains, and a blue light or two. But the night on the Brocken was nevertheless extremely appalling to me,—a strange ghastliness being obtained in some of the witch scenes merely by fine management of gesture and drapery; and in the phantom scenes, by the half-palsied, half-furious, faltering or fluttering past of phantoms ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... appalling. To be the rival of Mr. Millbank on the hustings of Dartford! Vanquished or victorious, equally a catastrophe. He saw Edith canvassing for her father and against him. Besides, to enter the House of Commons a slave and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... passengers—those who did not go to their state-rooms at once—sat in the cabin reading, or dozing on the chairs and sofas. A few men stayed out on deck for an hour or two, smoking; but at last they too went in. The darkness was appalling. The officer on the bridge blew his steam fog-whistle every few minutes, and kept his lanterns hung out; but they must have been ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... acid. All surfaces and angles are yielding to the attacks of time, weather, and microscopic organisms; paint peels, stucco falls, tiles tumble, stones slip out of place, and in every chink tiny green things nestle, propagating themselves through the jointures and dislocating the masonry. There is an appalling mouldiness, an exaggerated mossiness—the mystery and the melancholy of a city deserted. Old warehouses without signs, huge and void, are opened regularly every day for so many hours; yet the business of the aged merchants ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... had raged and cursed, if he had seemed to be in a passion, if his fists had been clenched, or the muscles of his face set, it would not have been so appalling. But this deadly composure, the careless indifference with which he held his pistol in his right hand, while his left hung loosely at his side, was more than terrifying; it was ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... and flirting was very far from her intentions at any time, or under any circumstance. For instance, she was very sure she would never allow any man but her husband to kiss her!—the bare idea was appalling! ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... That soul-appalling outcry died away, merged into a sobbing, moaning sound which defied Soames' efforts to exclude it.... He rose to his feet, feeling physically ill, and turned to close ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... unusual to the bold character of his features. This, with the appalling statement, acted on us like a galvanic shock, and by one impulse we leaped from the fire and threw ourselves flat upon ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... been too strong, and in the matter of grammar we are still the slaves of the ancient world. As for spelling, the irregularities of our language seem to have driven us to one sole method, memorizing: and to memorize every word in a language is an appalling task. Our rhetoric we have inherited from the middle ages, from scholiasts, refiners, and theological logicians, a race of men who got their living by inventing distinctions and splitting hairs. The fact is, prose has had a very low place in the literature of the world until within ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... statement, coupled with her calm serenity, was appalling to the old man. She didn't so much as lift her eyes when she told him, but when the lid was fastened she whirled suddenly with that impetuosity which always startled him more than a little, her hands tightly clasped in front of her, and ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... what power was kindled, and arose Within the sphere of that appalling fray! For, from the encounter of those wond'rous foes, A vapor like the sea's suspended spray Hung gathered; in the void air, far away, Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap, Where'er the eagle's talons made their ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... those moments when its veracity and power are at the highest point. A great work of art may be tragic in the view of life which it presents, but it must show no sign of the succumbing of the spirit to the appalling facts with which it deals; even in those cases in which, as in the tragedy of "King Lear," blind fate seems relentlessly sovereign over human affairs, the artist must disclose in his attitude and ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that to which Northerners are accustomed, but still surrounded by trees, and with a distance that could render things lightly blue. Instead of that this large building stood in the complete waste which I have already described at such length, which is so appalling and so new to an European from any other province of Europe. As I approached the building I saw that there gathered round it a village, or rather a group of dependent houses; for the church was so much larger than anything in the place, and the material of which the church ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... was vain. Both at that spot, and as far as he could see, the sheer base of the cliff offered him no place where it was possible to rest a foot, no place where he could mount three feet above the shingle. But his scrutiny brought home to him another appalling fact—namely, that the sea-mark, where the highest tide fringed its barriers with a triumphal wreath of hanging seaweed, and below which no foliage grew, was high up upon the cliff, far ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... here, moreover, further removed from my family, of whom I heard no more. The new faces that appeared wore a gloom at once strange and appalling. Report had greatly exaggerated the struggle of the Milanese and the rest of Italy to recover their independence; it was doubted if I were not one of the most desperate promoters of that mad enterprise. I found that my name, as a writer, was not wholly unknown ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... for a moment to the appalling sounds which rolled forth from the room where Teresina, the nurse, slept. Then Beppo said: "If the baby can sleep through that noise, she can sleep through anything. It sounds like a thunder-storm in ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... thought and artistic achievement colossal in the aggregate, and perfectly appalling in the case of Leech ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... that as in the struggle between liberty and slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with their success, so the exertions on the other side should become more strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed and appalling encroachments of priestcraft and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... There was an appalling silence to my appeal. It was not pleasant to have twelve masked faces turned upon you and to see twelve pairs of vindictive Italian eyes fixed with fierce intentness upon your face. But I stood as a debonair soldier should, and I could not but reflect how much credit I was bringing ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on lending her her watch till recess, and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Amy upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums. But Amy had not forgotten Miss Snow's cutting remarks about 'some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not too proud to ask for them', and she instantly crushed 'that Snow girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... reached a sad extreme. I had lost all trust in a Fatherly God, and all good hope of a better life. I had come near to the horrors of utter Atheism. And the universe had become an appalling and inexplicable mystery. And the world had come to be a dreary habitation; and life a weary affair; and many a time I wished I had never been born. And there were occasions when the dark suggestion came, "Life is a burden; throw it down." But I said; "Nay; there are my wife and children: I will ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... under thirty, and was not married. He could not exactly be called ugly in spite of his hangdog countenance, in which I saw the outward signs of cruelty, disloyalty, treason, pride, brutal sensuality, hatred, and jealousy. The mixture of bad qualities was such an appalling one that I thought his physiognomy was at fault, and the goods better than the sign. He asked me to come and see him so graciously that I concluded that the man gave the lie to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... exceptional children who read everything regardless of its character and come out all right. We do not know that any child is of such a make-up. We must deal with him as though he were not the exceptional but the normal child." The influence of all that he reads upon the mind of the child is sufficiently appalling, but it is not to be compared with the influence on his character. Henry Churchill King says: "It is his susceptibility to the faintest suggestion that makes the child so marvelous an imitator." The significance of this truth lies not only in the fact ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... afternoon of the first day of January Dr. Johnston spent a long time at the cabin, striving against the impossible to solve the problem which confronted him like an appalling mystery, far too deep to be pierced by the feeble ray of science ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Sherman with the mayor and councilmen of Atlanta concerning the removal of citizens, in which the latter write: "We petition you to reconsider the order requiring them to leave Atlanta. It will involve in the aggregate consequences appalling and heartrending. Many poor women are in an advanced state of pregnancy, others now having young children, and whose husbands for the greater part are either in the army, prisoners, or dead. Some say, 'I have such a one sick at my house; who will wait on them when I ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... The extraordinary theory that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are confined to those who have taken part in a certain ecclesiastical ceremonial, narrow and mistaken as it may be, is surely a mild and simple form of error, compared with the appalling notion that those gifts are confined to men, and are to be for ever withheld from the other half of the human family. The Churches of the world seem at length prepared to debate within themselves whether they should venture to follow our example, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... appalling commentary on the condition of our thoughts on this subject that the pregnant woman was but recently considered unfit to be represented in the statues placed on one of our public buildings. How convincingly this speaks to women, "Be not ashamed of ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... example of the two girls was not without its effect. They, struggling on in chastity against appalling odds, became the models, not only to Mrs. Cassatt, but all the mothers of that row held up to their daughters. The mothers—all of them by observation, not a few by experience—knew what the "fancy lady's" life really meant. And they ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... with murderous purpose on my face, there came one awful cry, a scream that startled the gulls from slumber and awoke echo after echo along the shore—a scream like no sound in earth or heaven—a scream inhuman and appalling. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that a pair of narrow stairs face the front-door and take up half the passage-way, directly you get past the drawing and dining-room doom doors. The cottage is not high enough to strike the eye, but the squareness, or more properly the cubeness, of these two-storied houses is appalling. They look for all the world like houses built of cards, except that the cards are uncommonly solid. For my own part, I should never care to live in a two-storied house again, after experiencing the comfort of never having to go upstairs, and having all the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... sinful as this prayer was, I believe the God of pity heard and answered it; for, notwithstanding my disinclination to the fulfilment of this vow, made under circumstances so appalling, He bore with me, but never allowed me to forget it. Every appearance of evil —and especially the return of the cholera in our midst the next fall —seemed to me, "like the fingers upon the wall," ready to write my doom. I often tried to become interested in reading the Bible, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... seemed as if he had shown off the humours of at least a third of the enormous household. Stephen had laughed at first, but as failure after failure occurred, the antics began to weary even him, and seem unkind and ridiculous as hope ebbed away, and the appalling idea began to grow on him of being cast loose on London without a friend or protector. Ambrose felt almost despairing as he heard in vain the last name. He would almost have been willing to own Hal the scullion, and his ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by the catastrophe, threw himself down, expecting a mighty explosion; the ebon darkness was appalling after the scintillating rain of fire. But the liberated gas in the guise of an elongated cloud had rushed seaward, and there gathering density and strength, assumed the shape of a terrific funnel, an inky spiral, its gyrating sides streaked with intermittent flashes. Its volcanic ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe that nothing more was ever seen, but the kitchen at night, when all the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... whirling and flying objects, like the broken boughs and limbs of trees. It was like some living monster, vast, supernatural, rushing through the sky, and tearing and trampling the earth with fury. The mysterious swinging movement, the uproar, the gloom, the lightnings, were appalling. And now Lion set ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... chances to be struggling in the water, and many are the authentic stories related of Newfoundland dogs saving life in cases of shipwreck. Indeed, they are regularly trained to the work in some countries; and nobly, fearlessly, disinterestedly do they discharge their trust, often in the midst of appalling dangers. Crusoe sprang from the bank with such impetus that his broad chest ploughed up the water like the bow of a boat, and the energetic workings of his muscles were indicated by the force of each successive propulsion ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and how opposed to the violent conduct of mankind. A most appalling murder has been committed;—a virtuous and pious young man is brutally murdered by his only brother:—what is the divine judgment? If any man kill him, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold: set a mark upon him—drive him from the abodes of man—shut him up in a cage like a wild beast—but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... by removing the physical depression and destitution in which a large proportion of them, without any fault of their own, are compelled to drag out a weary and almost hopeless existence. To some peculiarly constituted minds, "over-production" is the explanation of the present appalling distresses of this country; and what they are pleased to consider a healthy state of things, is to be restored by a diminution of production;—yet nothing is more certain, than that the largest amount of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... cook, the portress, and myself, all which personages were now gathered in the small and heated chamber), looked very scrutinizingly at the new doctor when he came into the room. I, at least, was taken up with endeavouring to soothe Fifine; whose cries (for she had good lungs) were appalling to hear. These cries redoubled in intensity as the stranger approached her bed; when he took her up, "Let alone!" she cried passionately, in her broken English (for she spoke English as did the other children). "I will not you: I will ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... have not kept a fleet in the Mediterranean which is equal to dealing alone with a combination of other fleets in the Mediterranean. We would have exposed this country from our negative attitude at the present moment to the most appalling risk. We feel strongly that France was entitled to know—and to know at once—whether or not in the event of attack upon her unprotected northern and western coasts she could depend upon British support. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... unfortunate remark, Mrs O'Flaherty bounds from her seat: and an appalling tempest of wordy wrath breaks out. The remonstrances and commands of the General, and the protests and menaces of O'Flaherty, only increase the hubbub. They are soon all speaking at once at the top ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... jungle, no chimera of heathen imagination, could be so appalling. No sooner is the impassable bar placed between God and itself than what theologians call the creature's radical love of the Creator breaks out in a perfect tempest of undying efforts. It seeks its centre and it cannot reach it. It bounds ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... table and his arm-chair standing near the table, where he sat when he asked Lucy to be his wife, and where she now sat down, panting for breath and gazing dreamily around with the look of a frightened bird when seeking for some avenue of escape from an appalling danger. There was no escape, and, with a moan, she laid her head upon the table and prayed that Arthur might come quickly while she had sense and strength to tell him. She heard his step at last, and rose up to meet him, smiling a little at his sudden start ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... for it, neck or nothing! She is within sixty yards of us, and she keeps advancing. We turned the horses' tails to her. I knelt on one side, and taking a steady aim at her breast, let fly. The ball cracked loudly on her tawny hide, and crippled her in the shoulder; upon which she charged with an appalling roar, and in the twinkling of an eye she was in the midst of us. At this moment Stofolus'a rifle exploded in his hand, and Kleinboy, whom I had ordered to stand ready by me, danced about like a duck in a gale ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... "Struck with the appalling thought that every additional rod we travelled involved an increase of expense, my first impulse was to jump out and dismiss him. But then came the more frightful nightmare fancy, that it was not possible to dismiss him unless I could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... o'clock on Sunday morning, the weather still growing worse. The crew, with the exception of seventeen, had succeeded in quitting the ship, and these nobly declared that they would remain to share the fate of their officers. The situation of the whole was indeed appalling, and sufficient to quail the boldest heart; the sea breaking over them, the fore part of the ship under water, and the rest expected momentarily to go to pieces. Under these circumstances, the officers, feeling that they could be of no further use ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... a sorcerer are appalling. When a Tarahumare walks with a sorcerer in the forest and they meet a bear, the sorcerer may say: "Don't kill him; it is I; don't do him any harm!" or if an owl screeches at night, the sorcerer may say: "Don't you hear me? It is I who ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... which a mother had wrapped her baby, seized the child, and dashed its brains out on the ground. As the mother sprang forward, he buried his tomahawk in her brain. It was the signal for a massacre. Magua raised the fatal and appalling war-whoop. At its sound two thousand savages broke from the wood and fell upon the unresisting victims. Death was everywhere, and in his most terrific ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... O vision appalling When the one believed-in thing Is seen falling, falling, With all to which hope can cling. Off: it is not true; For it cannot be That the prize I drew Is a blank ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... appalling, and consequent upon the suddenly-impressed knowledge that, in spite of the fact that there was about a mile and a half of space of which an infinitesimally small portion was occupied by danger, they were gliding through the black darkness dead on to that little space, for suddenly in front there ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... general reader, than that which comprised the fortunes of Wolsey. The eventful life of the Cardinal, checkered as it was by the vicissitudes of fortune, his sudden elevation, and finally his more sudden fall and death, display an appalling picture of "the instability of human affairs." This prelate and statesman, who even aspired to the Papal throne itself, "was an honest poore man's sonne in the towne of Ipswiche,"[1] who having received a good education, and being endowed with great capacity, soon rose to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... in the name of my as yet unwritten poems, my masterpieces for which France, for which the whole brotherhood of letters, so anxiously waits, to put a term to this appalling chastisement!" ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... did, some nameless evil would at once overtake them. These nameless terrors, these bodiless superstitions, are always the deepest. People fight hardest to preserve their bogeys. They fancy some appalling unknown dissolution would at once result from reasonable action. I tried one day to persuade a poor devil of a fellow in Samoa who'd caught one of these fish, and who was terribly hungry, that no harm would come to him if he cooked it and ate it. But he was too slavishly frightened ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen |
