"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time he received Tiddler's atrocious sketch, representing the author of The Insurgent as a Diogenes looking for gray-eyed girls, he had ceased to smile over the thing. The joke ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... destiny," he averred, sitting motionless in his atrocious suit, so young yet so full of bizarre recollections, impassive at the inevitable thought that this "destiny" of his might be preparing events stranger still than ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... enacted, as seems reasonable, that persons dying in hospitals and almshouses, who die without their friends claiming their remains, should be given up to the men of science, this would be subjecting poverty to the penalty of these atrocious criminals whom law distinguishes by the heaviest posthumous disgrace which it can inflict. Even cultivated minds revolt from the exposure on an anatomical table, when the case is supposed to be that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Sydney, and were ordered to "overhaul and inspect every blackbirder," and ascertain if the "blackbirds" were really willing recruits, or had been deported against their will, and were "to be sold as slaves". And many atrocious deeds came to light, with the result, as far as Queensland was concerned, that every labour ship had to carry a Government agent, who was supposed to see that no abuses occurred. Some of these Government agents were conscientious ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... public. Some plants, by means of grafting, bore flowers of half a dozen different varieties. Several plants had been wondrously trained into the form of kuruma, etc. Not a few of the varieties exhibited were, according to our ideas, atrocious in colouring, but many were beautiful and all were marvels of cultivation. Even greater manipulative and horticultural skill was represented in the chrysanthemums I saw at the Imperial garden party. A chief of ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... hate; that he listened to the pernicious counsels of the companions who had, by pretended sympathy and flattery, obtained that place in his confidence which no parental kindness had ever secured? Those historians who are zealous for the glory of Peter the Great, have eagerly refuted, as a most atrocious calumny, the report of his having had any part in the mysterious death of his son. But how will they apologize for the Czar's neglect of that son's education, from which all the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... The atrocious attempt of Lewis XIV. to convert the Protestants in his dominions to the Roman Catholic faith by quartering dragoons upon them, with license to misuse to the uttermost those who refused to conform, this 'booted mission' (mission bottee), as it was facetiously called at the time, has bequeathed ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... instance. In the Republic of the Seven Provinces the atrocious executions of witches and wizards ceased more than a century before they did in all other countries. This was not owing to the merit of the Reformed pastors. They shared the popular belief which demanded persecution. It was the magistrates whose enlightenment even as early as the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... directed it in the same atrocious fist to the baronet, and then, rising, proceeded ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... the fruit of the last ten years, the town presented at first sight a disreputable appearance. Most of the buildings were low and of wood. In the middle period of the '70s, when a great part of San Francisco was building, there was some atrocious architecture perpetrated. In that time, too, every one put bow windows on his house, to catch all of the morning sunlight that was coming through the fog, and those little houses, with bow windows and fancy work all down their fronts, were characteristic ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... enduring their tortures in one apartment, the queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be infamous as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... of the spirit of brotherhood that the Jew has encountered from the outside world has found a balance in an increased expression of love within his family. That most atrocious English plan of taking the child from his parents at a tender age and placing him in a boarding-school managed by holluschickies has never been ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... as we have seen, in the summer of 1793. The king of France had been put to death on the 21st of January in that year; and in less than a month afterwards the convention had declared war against England. The murder of the king, alike imprudent as atrocious, had in fact united the princes of Europe against the revolutionary cause; and within France itself a strong reaction took place. The people of Toulon, the great port and arsenal of France on the Mediterranean, partook ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the fashions in eyes," laughed Sylvia. "Oh, this is atrocious of us—it is simply horrible to sit here and say such things. I am cold-blooded enough as it is—material enough, mean, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... advises him to do he does. Morgatch brought forward plenty of witnesses to prove that the heretics had been seen in Saveleff's house, and that he and his wife and daughter had served them with food; and what is more, read out of the Bible, and prayed with them. Such atrocious crimes, of course, could not go unpunished; Morgatch, to make sure of the condemnation of his victims, brought forward evidence to prove that, not content with holding those pernicious doctrines themselves, they had ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... and said, "But there is a branch of the military service designated as the Psi Corps, and if you wish to discuss it in the future, kindly refer to it by its official title or abbreviation, and not by that atrocious nickname of 'sick.' I am sure the Central Command Authority knows what it is doing, and if they did intend to assign such personnel they must have very good reasons ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... the fact that a large number of colonists in New South Wales, including many wealthy landed proprietors and magistrates, petitioned the Local Government on behalf of a party of convicts, found guilty on the clearest testimony of having committed one of the most wholesale, cold-blooded, and atrocious butcheries of the Aborigines ever recorded [Note 49 at end of para.], and to the acts of the Colonial Governments themselves, who have found it necessary, sometimes, to prohibit fire-arms at out-stations, and have been compelled to take away the assigned servants, or withdraw ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... a little mournfully. It was impossible for Nicky to banish altogether from his manner the delicate reproach he felt, impossible not to be alive to the atrocious irony that brought him here to be, as Jane said, an angel, to sit and listen to this fellow Prothero. He understood that they were all there to do something for Prothero. Brodrick had been brought solely for that purpose. Tanqueray, too, and Miss Bickersteth and Miss Gunning, and he. Jane Holland ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... he explained it all to Monitaya, dwelling on the fact that McKay himself was a warrior chieftain and familiar with the fighting methods of such men as the atrocious Blackbeard, and depicting graphically the horror of an attack by the barbarous Red Bones on the defenseless women. It took him some time to divert the chief's stubborn mind from the original plan, but in the end ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... slowly and very quietly. It took the women servants nearly two minutes to realize that he was using the most atrocious language. Then they fled. The three footmen stood their ground a little longer. Mr. Donovan raised his voice a little. He felt old powers returning to him. He became fluent. One by one the footmen slank away. Mr. Donovan ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... country. Sometimes the commandos had to break through the lines and leave the women behind alone; and when the burghers later on returned they would perhaps find that the women had been driven from their houses, and, in some instances, treated with atrocious cruelty. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... there was a change. The reverses of the last campaign, hunger, weariness, and possibly some incipient sense of atrocious misgovernment, began to produce their effect; and some, especially in the towns, were heard to murmur that further resistance was useless. The Canadians, though brave and patient, needed, like Frenchmen, the stimulus of success. "The people ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... fond of figs, and while my poor Dario was tasting them, I jested and told him to leave the finer ones for me to-morrow. Yes, the abominable blow was meant for me, and it is on him that it has fallen by the most atrocious of chances, the most monstrous of the follies of fate. Ah! Lord God, Lord God, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... weighed on my thoughts, but I did not reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in my own mind that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness, and I banished from my mind every thought that could ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... painful duty of my official life, Boy! There has been a design, a purpose in breaking down Pope without regard to the consequences to the country that is atrocious. It's shocking to see and know this, but there is no remedy at present. McClellan has the army with him and I must ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the Abrolhos in the yacht Sardam, he was under the necessity of executing some atrocious conspirators, and two were set on shore upon the opposite main land.* Tasman was directed by his instructions, in 1644, to "inquire at the continent thereabout, after two Dutchmen; who, having forfeited their lives, were put on shore by the commodore Francisco Pelsert, if still alive. In such case, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... his last visit to that city, and a letter which he had recently dispatched to the prefect at Naples had not yet been answered. As far as his knowledge just yet was concerned, the whole thing had gone into a more impenetrable mystery than ever, and the principals in this case, after committing atrocious crimes, after baffling the police of different nations, seemed to have vanished into the profoundest obscurity. But on this occasion he reiterated that determination which he had made before of never losing sight of this purpose, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... feel?" reiterated Dick, trying to pass his hand over his forehead, and failing, for the member seemed heavier than lead. "Why, I seem to have no more strength than a baby; my head is nothing but one big, atrocious ache; and I don't seem to be able to remember things very well. For instance, I don't in the least know where we are, or how we got ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... understand that Elinor was to have almost, if not quite, everything. The poor lady had died, it seemed, in the room which Mary now occupied, probably in the same bed. Mary deeply pitied her if she had been long in dying. The wall-paper was atrocious, with a thousand hideous faces to be worried out of it by tired eyes. The girl had wondered why the money had been left entirely to her, but now she guessed in a flash why the Home-Davises had had none of it. The years in this Cromwell house ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 1866, he had started upon a tour to carry on evangelistic work among the Barolong villages along the margin of the Kalahari desert. While visiting one of these, a low class trader arrived who had been guilty of atrocious conduct at Motito. The natives insisted upon the trader going to Kuruman, where his conduct could be investigated, and, upon his refusing to do so, prepared to take him by force. He intrenched himself in his waggon with all his guns loaded, and dared ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... I'll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the language, the spelling of this recipe is particularly atrocious. By-the-by, dog here probably means ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... king,—was tried three times on three successive days, before the cruel Ellenborough, but as many times acquitted. George Cruikshank inveighed ardently, earnestly, and at last successfully, with pencil and with etching-point, against the atrocious blood-thirstiness of the penal laws,—the laws that strung up from six to a dozen unfortunates on a gallows in front of Newgate every Monday morning, often for no direr offence than passing a counterfeit one-pound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... a word more," I said, stepping in and laying my hand on his cool forehead. It proved to me that this atrocious absurdity was rooted in the man himself and not in the disease, which, apparently, had emptied him of every power, mental and physical, except that one ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... and made the change. She looked in the glass and was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death toilet perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day, which was of a blazing red complexion. Then she was ready for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were unpleasant, atrocious, unfortunate in many ways; for as most of us can remember, they fixed upon southern life the habit of assassination, which continued for many years in a manner most revolting and shocking to northern moral sense and it has only recently begun to die out. But who was to blame? England ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... lover with whom one fears that one has had this kind of wrong must become odious for several days. Can one be surprised at the force of a habit, the slightest infractions of which are punished with such atrocious shame? As to the utility of modesty, it is the mother of love. As to the mechanism of the feeling, nothing is simpler. The mind is absorbed in feeling shame instead of being occupied with desire. Desires are forbidden, and desires lead to actions. It is evident that every tender ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in her glass. None the less, to rescue the child, even if she had to become falser still, would be in some measure an atonement for the treachery to which she had already lent herself. She began to hate Georgina, who had drawn her into such an atrocious current, and if it had not been for two considerations she would have insisted on their separating. One was the deference she owed to Mr. and Mrs. Gressie, who had reposed such a trust in her; the other was that she must keep hold of the mother ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... of his country, and through the stage, the favorite amusement of Athenians, aiding to carry on the one great common work, which Plato proposed in his dialogues, and in which all the better and nobler spirits of the time seem to have concurred as by a confederacy—the reformation of an atrocious democracy. There is as much system in the comedies of Aristophanes as in the dialogues of Plato. Every part of a vitiated public mind is exposed in its turn. Its demagogues in the Knights, its courts of justice in the Wasps, its foreign ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... livid, And why the DISSOLUTION SPOOK stands out So ominously vivid. Some key to the result of the appeal They yearn for vainly, all their nerves a-quiver; The presence of the Shadow they all feel, And sit, and brood, and shiver. There is a sombre rumour in the air, The shadow of a Presence dim, atrocious; No human creature can be festive there, Even the most ferocious. An Omen in the place there seems to be, Both sides with spectral perturbation covering. The straining eyeballs are prepared to see The Apparition hovering. With doubt, with fear, their features are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... returning from the chase to his palace at Niyavaran. The attempt failed, but was the cause of a fresh persecution, and on the 31st of August 1852 some thirty Babis, including the beautiful and talented poetess Qurratu'l-'Ayn, were put to death in Tehran with atrocious cruelty. Another of the victims of that day was Hajji Mirza Jani of Kashan, the author of the oldest history of the movement from the Babi point of view. Only one complete MS. of his invaluable work (obtained by Count Gobineau in Persia) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the deep, except when a long continuance of fine weather rendered their usual avocation less prosperous than usual. They consisted in all of about thirty families, wreckers, for the most part, from father to son, and even from mother to daughter—for women joined freely in the atrocious trade. Atrocious indeed! for murder necessarily accompanied pillage, and it rarely happened that many of the crew and passengers of the unfortunate vessels escaped alive. Bodies were indeed found along the shore; but even ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... therefore, that before an author be charged with plagiarism, one of the most reproachful, though, perhaps, not the most atrocious of literary crimes, the subject on which he treats should be carefully considered. We do not wonder, that historians, relating the same facts, agree in their narration; or that authors, delivering ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... what he heard. What course was he to pursue? Should he at once make his way to the palace and give information of the atrocious plot? It was not at all likely, should he do so, that he would be believed. He lay on his bed in deep distress of mind. That his companion who had brought him to London was engaged in the plot, he had no doubt ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... situations for the tragedy of character. His Rhadamiste et Zenobie (1711), which has an air of Corneillean grandeur and heroism, notwithstanding a plot so complicated that it is difficult to follow, was received with unmeasured enthusiasm. To be atrocious within the rules was to create a new and thrilling sensation. Torrents of tears flowed for the unhappy heroine of La Motte's Ines de Castro (1723), secretly married to the Prince of Portugal, and pardoned only when the fatal poison is in her ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... were not expected to know how matters stood, when I had taken so much pain to conceal the truth. I was sorry I had not held my peace a little longer, or altogether. Men never can understand a woman's right to resent selfishness, however atrocious; even when they are knowing to it, which in this case they were not. I might as well have held my tongue, since every unguarded speech of mine militated against ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... more likely to be docile under the treatment to which they proposed to subject them. At first Captain Bertram would scarcely believe that people professing to be civilised and Christians could be guilty of an act of such atrocious barbarity. He remembered, however, who these Chilians are; that in their dispositions and education they differ in no way from Spaniards, and that the Spanish have been to the last the most active agents in the African slave-trade. Those who know the high state of civilisation ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... of her dear husband, there might have been a possibility of her exerting the Christian virtues of resignation and forgiveness; but such a personal outrage as that contained in this epistle precluded all hope of pardon, and rendered penitence of no signification. His atrocious crime being now fully ascertained, this virago gave a loose to her resentment, which became so loud and tempestuous, that her informer shuddered at the storm she had raised, and began to repent of having communicated the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... them to supper. It was not the usual cheery meal, though Juan told an unusually atrocious lie, and Blinky made several attempts to be funny. The sudden terrible catastrophe of the day did not quickly release ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... "barring out" of tyrannical masters. A school of this description was a complete place of torment for the orphan, the unfriended, and the deserted. Lads then stayed at school till they were eighteen and even twenty, and fagging flourished in all its atrocious oppression. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... help me in this. The most dreadful, the most atrocious fraud has been committed. Some one has been base enough, audacious enough, wicked enough, to go to my desk privately, and take away my real essay—my work over which I have labored and toiled. The expressions of my—my—yes, I will say it—my ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... was frightfully painful; but he thought he could manage to walk with it. His left shoulder and arm, however, at the least movement, caused him atrocious agony, as if the bones had been crushed by the wheel of some machine. He sought for his handkerchief, and enveloped his bleeding arm in it, tying the ends of it with his teeth. Then he tottered to a woodpile near by, and, taking one ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... have nothing to say in this matter," said Dick Chester. "It would seem that your attack on Rover was a most atrocious one, and out here you will have ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... Feng, who had been left to bear the brunt of foreign resentment, send back, in a state too terrible for words, fourteen prisoners, less than half the original number of those so recently captured. Something in the form of a punitive act now became necessary, to mark the horror with which this atrocious treatment of prisoners by the Manchu court was regarded among the countrymen of the victims. Accordingly, orders were given to burn down the Summer Palace, appropriately condemned as being the favourite residence of the Emperor, and also the scene of the unspeakable ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... part of the story, was more atrocious ... it intimated that I had, during my sojourn at Laurel, been an undesirable that would have made Villon pale with envy ... an habitue of the Bottoms ... that I had been sleeping with negro women and rolling ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... have a will of my own, even sometimes in matters that are not exactly my concern, and I said now, with a composure that rivalled Euphrosyne's: "It is out of the question that you should marry him. I'm going to get him hanged, and, anyhow, it would be atrocious." ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... of the skilful and most learned man, {203a} On account of the fair corpse, which fell prostrate upon the ground, Thrice six officers judged the atrocious deed {203b} at the hour of mattins, And Morien lifted up again his ancient lance, And, roaring, stretched out {203c} death Towards the warriors, the Gwyddyl, {203d} and the Prydyn; {203e} Whilst towards the lovely, slender, blood-stained body ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... built well into the nineteenth century. It is more notable as a monument to the industry of the man who brought about its erection, taking the place of a former structure burnt during the Revolution, than as a satisfactory example of a great church. The same may be said with equal truth of the atrocious Renaissance and Pagan structures to be seen at Cambrai and Arras, though the conditions under which they were built differ. At Cambrai, however, the present building replaces a former ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... decency. Had such been the arrangement, no after writer could have remarked, as the Rev. Mr. Cumming does now, that no 'pealing organ' mingled 'its harmony of bass, tenor, treble, and soprano' when you sung, or have recorded the atrocious fact, that not only was John Brown of Priesthill shot by Claverhouse, but actually buried by his friends without the funeral service. And how striking and affecting an incident would it not form ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... despair, now walks in the light of the Sun of Righteousness, through the second part of the valley. There he encounters the persecution of the state church. Act after act of Parliament had been passed-full of atrocious penalties, imprisonments, transportation, and hanging-to deter poor pilgrims from the way to Zion. "The way was full of snares, traps, gins, nets, pitfalls, and deep holes." Had the darkness of mental anguish been added to these dangers, he must have perished. The butcheries of Jefferies strewed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to the women, bringing wood and water, and as inoffensive as children. Many of them, probably young men without domestic ties, refused to return when the treaty of peace was signed, but, with a docility which was as remarkable as their obedience under the atrocious treatment of their own government, only asked for their bread and toleration. I have seen in Cettinje, when the men were all on the frontier fighting, Turkish prisoners enough to take possession of the place if they had been disposed ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... heard of Numidia in Tarquin's days?) fights a lively water-combat with Horatius actually as he is carrying Clelie off, over the Lake of Thrasymene. All the stock legends of the Porsena siege and others are duly brought in: and the atrocious Sextus, not contented with his sin against Lucrece, tries to carry off Clelie likewise, but is fortunately or wisely prevented. Otherwise the invariable propriety which from the time of the small love-novels (v. sup. pp. 157-162) had distinguished these abductions might ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Confessions carry us into exaggerations. The brutality of his master and the harshness of his life led him to nothing very criminal, but only to wrong acts which are despicable by their meanness, rather than in any sense atrocious. He told lies as readily as the truth. He pilfered things to eat. He cunningly found a means of opening his master's private cabinet, and of using his master's best instruments by stealth. He wasted his time in idle and capricious tasks. When the man, with all the ravity of an adult moralist, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... came on board last is the inveterate enemy of both Mr. Royce and myself. We're trying to unearth a particularly atrocious piece of villainy in which he's concerned. I have reason to believe him capable of anything, and a very fiend of cleverness. I don't know what he may plot against us, but I'm certain he'll plot something. Mr. Royce doesn't even know him ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... he had addressed them as gentlemen, the terrible scenes would have instantly ceased, and the system of Repartimientos would have been abandoned by men who were only waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership, "atrocious." Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells where an infamous overseer was still living in Spain,—or at least, he says, "his family ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the crowd of crusaders numbered 700,000, after the great slaughter in Hungary. Jerusalem was taken, A.D. 1099, and it was there "where their triumph was consummated, that it was stained with the most atrocious massacre; not limited to the hour of resistance, but renewed deliberately even after that famous penitential procession to the holy sepulchre, which might have calmed their ferocious dispositions if, through the misguided enthusiasm of the enterprise, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... the entreaty had been addressed neither to old Rui, the chief priest, nor to himself, the only persons who could possess the privilege of blessing the monarch, nay—but to the most atrocious wretch that breathed, to the foreigner the Hebrew, Mesu, whom he hated more than any other man ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not been for the vigilance, energy, and patriotism of Cicero, it is possible this atrocious conspiracy would have succeeded. The state of society was completely demoralized; the disbanded soldiers of the Eastern wars had spent their money and wanted spoils; the Senate was timid and inefficient, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had myself committed, and thus may very well have caused the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... govern only in the name of their god, so they make him speak continually; they set forth his oracles, and all things are done by God's express commands." From this cause come human sacrifices and the most atrocious tyranny; and the more divine such a government calls itself, the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... friends, instinctive vices of children, impurity of women, hidden guilt in men of saint-like aspect,—and, in short, all manner of black realities that sought to decorate themselves with outward grace or glory. But at every atrocious fact that was added to his catalogue, at every increase of the sad knowledge which he spent his life to collect, the native impulses of the poor man's loving and confiding heart made him groan with anguish. Next, with his heavy ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beautiful hair, and slapped the pale cheeks, which instantly reddened, and gave to the features such an expression of unequivocal indignation, that the spectators, struck by the change of color, with loud murmurs cried out for vengeance on barbarity so cowardly and atrocious. 'It could not be said,' writes Dr. SUE, a physician of the first eminence and authority in Paris, 'that the redness was caused by the blow, since no blow can ever recall any thing like color to the cheeks of a corpse; beside, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... master of the caravan was the cause of a long war, causing hundreds of atrocious murders and the destruction of a great deal of property along the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... barbarous punishment of rebels ever known. An officer named Kirk was sent by the king to hunt down the Monmouth rebels, or those sympathizing with them. His atrocious deeds would fill a volume, and are so revolting as to seem incredible. Another brutal ruffian of the time was Judge Jeffries. The judicial ermine has often been disgraced by prejudiced judges; but Jeffries was the worst monster that ever sat on the bench. He hung men with as much relish as did ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... disturb a great rock. She used her drawing-room when Bo-peep was out, and regarded it with intense satisfaction. It is true that the colors were crude, for James Martin would have screamed at any Liberty tints. But the carpet was good of its kind, the pictures on the walls not too atrocious. Although they were in gilt frames, the large mirrors over the mantelpiece and at one end of the room were first rate; in short, the drawing-room was fairly presentable, and Mrs. Martin had some traces of her old life still lingering about her which gave a look of ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... hard against Richard, even though he wrote under Henry the Seventh, who would have suffered no apology for his rival, and whose reign was employed not only in extirpating the house of York, but in forging the most atrocious calumnies to blacken their memories, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... this, they instantly, and with the most atrocious perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root of all property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by the principles they established, and the example they set, in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... January 30, the chief justice, John of Metingham, sitting in Westminster Hall, pronounced the clergy to be outlays. "Henceforth," he declared, "there shall be no justice meted out to a clerk in the court of the lord king, however atrocious be the injury from which he may have suffered. But sentence against a clerk shall be given at the instance of all who have a complaint against him." Winchelsea retaliated by publishing the sentence of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Voltaire so admirably says, "dissolves every virtue in the passions which surround it." Perhaps what the "Maximes" most resembled was the then recently-published analysis of egotism in "Leviathan." But the cool and atrocious periods of what Sir Leslie Stephen calls "the unblushing egotism" of Hobbes have really little in common with the sparkling rapier-strokes of La Rochefoucauld, except that both these moralists— who may conceivably have met and compared impressions in Paris— combined ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... persecutions; the horrors that have been committed in the name of Islam, are perhaps a little more atrocious than any in history although the unspeakable cruelties of the Inquisition would seem to have ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... close proximity of that band of twelve, armed, desperate, escaped murderers. Their attitude towards the hunters, together with scraps of conversation they had uttered, had bred in Charley's active mind a theory for their actions and object, a theory involving a crime so vile and atrocious ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Harassed and embittered as she was, Olive Chancellor still proposed to herself to be rigidly just, and that is why she pitied Verena now with an unspeakable pity, regarded her as the victim of an atrocious spell, and reserved all her execration and contempt for the author of their common misery. If Verena had stepped into a boat with him half an hour after declaring that she would give him his dismissal in twenty words, that was because he had ways, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... it was not enough to burn books of an unpopular tendency, cruelty against the author being plainly progressive from this time forward to the atrocious penalties afterwards associated with the presence of Laud in the Star Chamber. All our histories tell of John Stubbs, of Lincoln's Inn, who, when his right hand had been cut off for a literary work, with his left hand waved his ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... many atrocious crimes are committed. Imprisonment, capital punishment and war are yet crude in their methods. They are still susceptible of more refining. Here cruelty has rather a thin garment on and needs to be ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... of humanity by bombing hospitals far behind the battle front. Describing one of these atrocious attacks, which took place May 29, 1918, Colonel G. H. Andrews, chaplain of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... later Bertram had again entered the German lines, imploring to be shot for pity's sake. But it was too late; all the rifles were in use in the firing-line. It was not till he heard this that Bertram Borstal, racked with indigestion, realised the atrocious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... a shock of glad surprise. After all, there is no reason why the old-established houses should not go on doing a good business on a Volstead basis. It has never been so much a question of what a man drinks as the atmosphere in which he drinks it. Atrocious cleanliness and glitter and raw naked marble make the soda fountains a disheartening place to the average male. He likes a dark, low-ceilinged, and not too obtrusively sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything that the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... place as a lover of nature would have been loath to quit; and even in his time of need Hilary was not insensible to the beauties of the spot, but he could not help feeling that the rutty roadway was atrocious. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... again, and began to wonder. It was strangely explicit, even for a letter of a jealous and spiteful woman. It told her that Arabian was beyond the pale, that he ought to be in prison. In prison! That was going very far in attack. To write that, unless it were true, was to write an atrocious libel. But a jealous woman would do anything, risk anything to ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... simple-hearted citizens in pursuit of a light-hearted Saturday and Sunday, we often wonder how it is that humanity will so gleefully inflict upon itself sufferings which, if they were imposed by some taskmaster, would be called atrocious. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... against a public world that he believed was going to the devil. "I am not surprised," he wrote in 1776, "at the idea of the devil being always at our elbows. They who invented him no doubt could not conceive how men could be so atrocious to one another, without the intervention of a fiend. Don't you think, if he had never been heard of before, that he would have been invented on the late partition of Poland?" "Philosophy has a poor chance with me," he wrote a little later in regard to America, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... consequence of the non-appearance of Madame Chateauneuf, a favourite French dancer, a noble marquis deliberately proposed that the theatre should be fired, and a pile of rubbish was forthwith heaped upon the stage in order to carry into effect this atrocious suggestion. At the Haymarket Theatre, in 1749, the audience, enraged at the famous Bottle Conjurer hoax, were incited by the Culloden Duke of Cumberland to pull down the house! The royal prince stood up in his box waving his drawn sword, which someone, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... illuminated through the woods. Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... without a cent of pay for the wages he had been earning all that dreadful time, was a worse thief and a worse robber than he! I ought to have told him that in so far as he had been cheated of his wages by the law he was the victim, the martyr of an atrocious survival of barbarism. Oh, I have thought of it since with shame and sorrow! I was sending him out into the cold that was gathering for the Baby Blizzard without the hope of his overcoat, but since ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... little; which was not to be wondered at under the circumstances, for I afterwards learned that while I was below in my berth, suspecting nothing worse than the purchase and transfer of a cargo of slaves from one ship to another, a most atrocious and cold-blooded act of piracy had been committed, and that, too, under the shadow and disguise of the British flag; Mendouca having coolly hoisted British colours the moment that I left the deck, and, in ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... with artistic objects, some good, some bad, some atrocious, but all recalling the singer's past triumphs, and all jumbled together, on tables, easels, pedestals, brackets and shelves with much less taste than an average dealer in antiquities would have shown in arranging his wares. There was not even light enough to see them distinctly, for the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... upright, staring straight ahead and a little down, as if in careful consideration. As I stepped toward him the pliable bamboo floor undulated; the movement was carried to him and he began to nod, very gently and gravely. He seemed to be saying: 'No, Ah cain't affawd it.' It was atrocious. Finally I was by his side and he was again motionless, staring thoughtfully. Then I saw he was considering. In his hands, which lay twined on his knees, were a lot of little metallic oblongs. I disengaged them. The muchacho drew nearer, and with the torch over my shoulder I examined ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... acted as an effectual damper on conversation in so far as Curtis and Devar were concerned. If their suspicions were justified, he was a principal in an atrocious crime, and mere propinquity with such a wretch induced a feeling of loathing comparable only with that shrinking from physical contact to which mankind yields when confronted with leprosy in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Jove! there she is—on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer's wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Pentheus, by hurling her thyrsus, {and} cried out, "Ho! come, my two sisters;[97] that boar which, of enormous size, is roaming amid our fields, that boar I must strike." All the raging multitude rushes upon him alone; all collect together, and all follow him, now trembling, now uttering words less atrocious {than before}, now blaming himself, now confessing that he ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... mistress, I tell you!" cried the man again. "Do what you will," replied Martiniere, "I shall not stir from this place. Go on and finish your wicked deed; but remember that you also will die a shameful death at the Place Greve, like your atrocious partners in crime." "Ah! yes, you are right, La Martiniere," replied the man, "I do look like a villainous robber and cut-throat, and am armed like one, but my partners have not been executed,—no, not yet." Therewith, hurling looks of furious ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of the bladder, a fact he tried to keep to himself, he continued to joke and laugh as much as usual, and went on with his reading and writing as if little were the matter. At last the agony became too atrocious, and he remarked in a fit of absence 'If I don't get better before night, I shall be an angel.' Questions followed, consternation reigned around, and the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... incursions, engendered a general feeling of resentment, that sought in some instances, to wreak itself on those who were guiltless of any participation in those bloody deeds. That vindictive spirit led to the perpetration of offences against humanity, not less atrocious than those which they were intended to requite; and which obliterated every discriminative feature between the perpetrators of them, and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... which he conducted to run some risk in defending morals, and exposing distinguished culprits on behalf of the public. And then, without some such risk, how could Phineas Finn be adequately punished for the atrocious treachery of which he had been guilty? As to the Chancellor's order, Mr. Slide thought that he had managed that matter very completely. No doubt he had acted in direct opposition to the spirit of the injunction, but legal orders are read by the letter, and not ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... wretched isolation as an old bachelor, with nobody to care for him, and he also suffered atrocious mental torture, torn by paternal tenderness springing from remorse, longing and jealousy, and from that need of loving one's own children, which nature has implanted into all, and so at last he determined to make a despairing attempt, and going up to her, as she entered ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... discussion by saying that if our portrait statuary became much worse, when some monster murderer had been tried and found guilty, the judge, putting on the black cap, should say, 'Prisoner at the bar, a jury of your countrymen having found you guilty of a most atrocious crime, you must be hanged until you are dead, and then a statue shall be erected to perpetuate your memory, and God help your soul.' Carlyle assented, but not in any hearty manner. No doubt I had ventured a little out of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Sir Chichester, "is the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... revere your scruples," said Mr Monckton, "even while I consider them as causeless; for causeless they undoubtedly were: the man who could act so atrocious a part, who could so scandalously pillage a young lady who was his guest and his ward, take advantage of her temper for the plunder of her fortune, and extort her compliance by the basest and most dishonourable ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to abduct such slaves, or to incite them to insurrection, or to employ negroes in war against the Confederate States, or to overthrow the institution of African slavery and bring on a servile war in these States, would, if successful, produce atrocious consequences, and they are inconsistent with the spirit of those usages which, in modern warfare, prevail among the civilized nations; they may therefore be ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Tirau's eye here displayed a faint interest. Charley threw her, with the air of a prince, a whole piece of turkey twill, 12 yards—value three dollars, cost about 2s. 3d. Tirau put out a little hand and drew it gingerly toward her. Tibakwa gave us an atrocious wink. ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... share in the contest, massacred many of the inhabitants, and carried others of them away as slaves. But shocking as this transaction might appear, there was not a single history of Africa to be read, in which scenes of as atrocious a nature were not related. They, he said, who defended this trade, were warped and blinded by their own interests, and would not be convinced of the miseries they were daily heaping on their fellow-creatures. By the countenance they gave it, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... The atrocious gambling of the Hindoo Rajas has been related;(14) and I have incidentally adverted to similar concomitants of the vice among all nations. I now propose to bring together a series of facts specially ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... allowed, was very common among the ancients. The stern and rigid virtues of the Romans allowed this among many other customs, that were more unnatural than amiable, and such as in civilized societies of the present day would have been considered among the most atrocious of moral crimes. A Roman father, if his infant was meant to be preserved, lifted it from the ground in his arms; if he neglected that ceremony, the child, it would seem, was considered as doomed to exposure in the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the distinguishing elements of what is called "a civilized State." But this puts Germany among the barbarous savages. Three indictments and convictions have blackened the name of Germany throughout all the world. First, her atrocious and dishonourable methods of warfare; second, the carrying off into slavery of non-combatants, the Belgians and French, and third, the breach of the pledged word and the solemn treaties with ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... doctor believes. That is what Bates told me. I was so shaken on hearing his news, which was confirmed by the two detectives, that I really gave little heed to details.... She was strangled— a peculiarly atrocious thing where an attractive and ladylike woman is concerned. I have never spoken to her, but have met her at odd times on the stairs. I was immeasurably shocked, I assure you. In fact, I was on the point of telegraphing ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... center of the largest level space on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara would have liked to have seen him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... below her station. The massacres committed by the Raspanti in Ravenna would furnish a whole series of illustrative crimes. From the deeds of Alfonso Piccolomini, Sciarra and Fabrizio Colonna details sufficient to fill a volume with records of atrocious savagery could be drawn. The single episode of Elena Campireali, who plighted her troth to a bandit, became Abbess of the Convent at Castro, intrigued with a bishop, and killed herself for shame on the return of her first lover, would epitomize in one drama all ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... might only have been here in person to-day, it would have been perfect. I think that he must have been, in spirit, for I 'felt' his presence quite near me several times; I confided as much to Dr. Bentley and he made an atrocious pun on the word 'presents.' I wish he wouldn't; it is the only thing about him that I don't like, but he will make them. Wasn't Donald thoughtful and dear to have bought a Christmas gift for me during ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... they sorted out women and girls who were to be deported. There then took place scandalous scenes: young girls belonging to the most worthy families in the town had to pass medical visits even with the speculum and had to endure most atrocious physical and moral suffering. These young girls were segregated like beasts anywhere in the rooms of the town halls and schoolhouses, and were mingled with the dregs ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... hidden inside was clearing its throat to prevent itself from choking; after a few seconds of this, a voice, so thin and whispering that it seemed impossible that it should ever have come from a person who owned a chest, commenced to sing with an atrocious perversion ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... thousand pounds in the hope of receiving tens of thousands when his accomplices should return, laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It was fortunate for the Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was the object were too atrocious ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... labored in the invention of some device, by which he might yet escape the impending death, and save a life which—his good name being utterly blasted and gone, could have been but a prolonged shame—he conceived and hatched a plan, in its ingenuity, its wickedness, and atrocious baseness, of a piece with his whole character and life. In the handwriting of the Emperor, which he could perfectly imitate, he drew up a list of some of the chief officers of the army—by him condemned to death on the following day. This paper, as ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... scholar, an eloquent orator. His polished manners and lively conversation were the delight of aristocratical societies; and none who met him in such societies would have thought it possible that he could bear the chief part in any atrocious crime. His political principles were lax, yet not more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of that age. Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those who most disliked him did him the justice ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... An act of atrocious piracy having been committed on one of our trading ships by the inhabitants of a settlement on the west coast of Sumatra, a frigate was dispatched with orders to demand satisfaction for the injury if those who committed it should be found ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... And when Viola had drifted away, I remember Charlie Thesiger strolling up to us. The supercilious youth had been, getting a drink "all comfy" on his own account, and his little stiff moustache was still wet with Jimmy's champagne-cup above the atrocious smile ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the individual has supreme intelligence, that any such disregard of what constitutes true art should be tolerated. Henry Irving, for example, was extraordinarily effective in certain roles, while in others his acting was atrocious. But even in these latter there was intellect behind what he did, and the spectator became so interested in observing his manner of striving for an effect, that he forgave him for falling short of what he strove for. But this ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... suggest, be circulated through the district, the old scandal would be revived. And though no sane person could ever believe Mrs. Carstairs guilty of such a vile action, I suppose there are a good many lunatics about who would put these atrocious things down ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fitted to mediate between the sections and to cover with his protection those who had surrendered to his sword. But Grant was now a mere tool in the hands of the Republican politicians, and those politicians were determined that the atrocious system should be maintained. They had not even the excuse of fanaticism. Stevens was dead; he had lived just long enough to see his policy established, not long enough to see it imperilled. Sumner still lived, but he had quarrelled with Grant and lost much ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... victims of their cruelty, their thirst for blood became more intense, as the time wore on; and when they found they could not crush the spirit of a free people, or extinguish the light of gospel truth, they had recourse to the most despotic and atrocious measures for effecting their diabolical purposes. What has been designated "THE KILLING TIME" of the Scottish persecution, embraced the greater part of Renwick's public ministry. The graphic pens of such able writers as ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... confinement, rushed upon the garrison at the same time with the mountaineers, who had besieged the place on the land side. The uselessness of the artillery, the breaches of the fort, the attacks of the English, all combined to force the retreat of the garrison, "in the midst of scenes of blood and atrocious murders." ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... important witness, a most important factor in his rehabilitation? Perhaps so, perhaps not, for it was by no means certain that Monte-Cristo could force Solara to confess and make at least partial and tardy amends for his atrocious misdeeds. It was highly probable that Annunziata's wretched father, even if brought to bay, would persist in preserving a stony and unbroken silence, would make no admissions whatever. Taking this view of the matter ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... to her husband, and as she looked up to him as if for protection, the moon-beams shining on her beautifully fair countenance showed it paler than usual with terror, while tears glittered in her fine dark eyes. "O caro mio!" would she murmur, shuddering at every atrocious circumstance of the story. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... considerable time and trouble to repair all the damage his son's boyish excesses had wrought both at Westbourne Terrace and in the City. He found the discipline of his clerks' room and counting-house sorely relaxed, and his office-boy in particular attempted a tone towards him of such atrocious familiarity that he was indignantly dismissed, much to his astonishment, the very first day. And probably Paul will never quite clear himself of the cloud that hangs over a man of business who, in the course of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... astonished as I was, my mind refused to admit, even for a moment, the probability, hardly the possibility, of Eugenie de Tourville's guilt. The reckless malignancy of spirit evinced by so atrocious an act dwelt not, I was sure, within that beauteous temple. The motives alleged to have actuated her—fear of a criminal charge, admitted to be absurd, and desire to rid herself of an obstacle to her marriage with Arthur Rushton—seemed ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... when John Burnham explained how the autocrat's triumvirate could at will appoint and remove officers of election, canvass returns, and certify and determine results, he could understand how the "atrocious measure," as the great editor of the State called it, "was a ready chariot to the governor's chair." And in the summer convention the spirit behind the measure had started for that goal in just that way, like a scythe-bearing chariot of ancient days, but cutting down friend as well as foe. ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... continued. "How is it that the wittiest and most satirical people on earth will consent to wear upon their heads a bit of stove-pipe?—as one of our great writers has called it. Here are some of the infections I have been able to give to those atrocious lines," he added, pointing to a number of his creations. "But, although I am able to conform them to the character of each wearer—for, as you see, there are the hats of a doctor, a grocer, a dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth—the style itself remains ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... celebrated Fra Paolo. The collections of Maxims which this bold monk drew up at the request of the Venetian Government, for the guidance of the Secret Inquisition of State, are so atrocious as to seem rather an over-charged satire upon despotism, than a system of policy, seriously inculcated, and but ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. This human drama, without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things—I ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park |
