"Detestable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... covering. While his bald knee, the ugliest, weakest, most complicated and important joint in the frame, he no doubt regarded with as much veneration as the pious do the shaven crown of a monk. He therefore very complacently and coolly began to disencumber himself of this detestable article of the tailor's skill. I thought it best therefore to push off in time, to spare his daughters this spectacle, merely telling the doctor we would wait for him where ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the trunk of the mosquito-gnat, and of all the detestable troop of blood-sucking flies. It is always a tube; but this tube is no longer a simple straw, but a sheath furnished with stilettos of such exquisite delicacy and temper, that nothing is comparable to them; and these, as they play up and down, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... would, of course, if wanting vitality, crave for stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not the original want of vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallows—and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what I know, from eye-witnesses—have been the cause of the Red Indians' extinction, then how is it, let me ask, that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to their ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Germany king and country are one and the same," replied Bismarck. This is the abominable creed which is inculcated by the military squires who now hold the destinies of France and of Germany in their hands; and on this detestable heresy they dream of building up a new code of political ethics in Europe. Liberalism and common sense are spreading even in the army; but take a Tory squire, a Groom of the Chamber, and a Life-guardsman, boil them down, and you will obtain the ordinary ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... and then, wholly ignorant of what was going to be alleged against him, advanced to the dread tribunal of the frigate. The sight of the quarter-master rigging his gratings, the boatswain with his detestable green bag of scourges, the master-at-arms standing ready to assist some one to take off his shirt was not calculated to allay his apprehensions. With another desperate effort to swallow his whole soul, he found himself face to face with Captain Snipes, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... pen of Jean Bodin, the illustrious French philosopher and jurist. He held up Wier to execration as an impious blasphemer, and asserted that the welfare of Christendom must needs suffer great injury through the dissemination of doctrines so detestable as those set ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... efficient. An English mechanic would have jeered at his crazy machine and contemptible bits of tools, and he had an amateurish, ladylike air of flinching from the chips. But he did it much more quickly than I could have done it, I felt humbly. I only wished he would not smile in such a detestable fashion and suddenly assault me with 'How are you now? All right, eh?' I suppose he was practising his English. And as the finishing touch was put on the washer with a thin, snaky file, he asked suddenly if I ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... intellectual power to truth, and of truth to goodness, that it becomes both morally and poetically unsafe to present what is admirable—what our nature compels us to admire—in the mind, and what is most detestable in the heart, as co-existing in the same individual without any apparent connection, or any modification of the one by the other. That Shakespeare has in one instance, that of Iago, approached to this, and that he has done it successfully, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... for a man to have the right spirit and the right motives, unless he does that which is right in itself. Conscience may be warped by malevolence, selfishness, prejudice, or education, until the man is led to do that which is detestable in the sight of God. The time may come when this man will regret his foolishness, and see that he was ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... so much as mentioned his birthplace. And he concluded his preface with a plain express promise to advance our cause and personally wage war against the barbarians, to the best of his ability. The actual history, and recital of the causes of hostilities, began with these words:—'The detestable Vologesus (whom Heaven confound!) commenced war on ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... city—with its shops of flowers, its avenues of trees through which run the streets, its gardens, its pines and cactus and aloe walks? Only one blemish can I pick out in Nice, and that is a hideous modern Gothic church, Notre Dame, filled with detestable garish glass, so utterly faulty in design, so full of blemish of every sort, that the best wish one could make for the good people of Nice is that the next earthquake that visits the Riviera may shake this wretched structure to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Solomon know what he was talking about when he gave it that detestable name? He added still another word and called it a deceiver. Does it deceive and mock? It meets a young man at a social feast, garlands itself with the graces of hospitality, sparkles in the brilliant jewels of fashion, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... sketches of which Canidia is the heroine, [42] were received with unanimous approval by the beau monde. This wretched woman, singled out as the representative of a class which was gaining daily influence in Rome, [43] he depicts in colours detestable and ignominious, which do credit to his talent but not to his courteous feeling. Horace has no true respect for woman. Nothing in all Latin poetry is so unpleasant as his brutal attacks on those hetaerae ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a long way off," she replied calmly. "You see, Barry and I quarrelled yesterday. We both have vile tempers,—perfectly detestable tempers. Of course, we will make up again—we always do—but there may come a time when he will say, 'Oh, what's the use trying to put up with you any longer?' and then it ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... I take it," argued Polly, "is a house where the detestable human vipers known as boarders are 'taken ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... time, he had lost all patience. He thought no longer of the venison. He thought only of freeing himself from the detestable plight in which he was placed. He sprang and bounded over the ground; now rubbing his head along the surface, now scraping it with his huge paws, and ever and anon dashing himself against the stems of the trees that grew around. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... make me detestable!" he cried, bitterly. "I had to tell you, to explain what I did. I couldn't help doing it. But now if you can forget it, and never think of me again, I can go away, and try to atone for it somehow. I shall ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... amusing, moral, philosophical, and fit to be read, even by those who have an utter Aversion to Romances; for which Reason, I have depretiated it, as it deserves, and have in direct Terms told the CADI-LESQUIER, that 'tis a most detestable Performance. ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... Detestable, detestable, that the flesh and the deuill shoulde deale by their factors. He stand to it, there is not a pandor but hath vowed paganisme. The deuill himselfe is not such a deuill as he, so be he performe his function aright. He must haue the backe of an asse, the snout of an elephant, the wit ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... racemes of orange blossoms. Receding from the mountain, the country again became barren: at Doomree the hills were of crystalline rocks, chiefly quartz and gneiss; no palms or large trees of any kind appeared. The spear-grass abounded, and a detestable nuisance it was, its long awns and husked seed ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... artful and politic, and shews, at least, a desire of being agreeable. But to lay it on as the fashion in France prescribes to all the ladies of condition, who indeed cannot appear without this badge of distinction, is to disguise themselves in such a manner, as to render them odious and detestable to every spectator, who has the least relish left for nature and propriety. As for the fard or white, with which their necks and shoulders are plaistered, it may be in some measure excusable, as their skins are naturally brown, or sallow; but the rouge, which is daubed ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... needed for giving it in its entirety: Berenguela was one of those rare beings who seems to have been born to do right and to have done it. From her earliest youth she was a leading figure, a happy and noble influence in one of the most contemptible and detestable societies of mediaeval Christendom. Married of her own free will to a stranger and an enemy, that she might bring peace to two kingdoms, she was ever a true and loyal wife; unwedded by ecclesiastical tyranny ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... not like the doctor to hold his peace at this glaring opposition to his favorite theory, and yet, to Tom's astonishment, he forebore to quote that threadbare and detestable adage, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"—proverbial and uncomfortable philosophy that Tom hated with all his foolish young heart. Tom, in his budding manhood, often thought fit ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Roman emperor to Achilles, his enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian had lived in the present day, he would have discovered that the race of such writers was not extinguished. He might have found ample proofs that the detestable habit still prevails of interweaving the names of our contemporaries among the accounts of former centuries, and thus corrupting the history of past times into a means of abuse and flattery for the present. This is to degrade history into the worst style of a Treasury pamphlet, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... lay,-apparently innocent;—but surely detestable, nay even Satanic objects. He determined he would have them removed— picked up—cast out—thrust into the nearest drawer, anywhere, in fact, provided they were out of his stern, clerical sight. Mrs. Spruce was continuing conversation in brisk tones, but whether she was addressing him, or ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Jenner erected abroad, at Boulogne and at Brunn, in Moravia, before any in England. Thus the European countries showed their gratitude to the Englishman whose patience, genius and absence of self-seeking had rid them of the detestable world-plague of smallpox. Vaccination was made compulsory by law in no less than five European countries before it was so in the United Kingdom in 1853. In eight countries vaccination is provided free at the expense ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... journey at 4 o'clock that afternoon, having first gone through the necessary business of interviewing the R.T.O. He was a young man of a most detestable kind. The R.T.O. has a bad name among officers who travel in France. He is supposed to be both uncivil and incompetent. My own experience is not very large, but I am disinclined to join in the general condemnation. I have come on R.T.O.'s ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... sir, in that you go too far! You know yourself how much Schwarzenberg is hated in all your territories, how ardently all patriots long for his deposition from the government; for the league with the Emperor is detestable to everybody, and fear of Catholic domination and desire for the Swedish alliance prevail among all ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... bad habits here, he obeys no one, he thinks himself perfectly free to do as he likes, he hits everybody and nobody dares to hit him back. He ought to be placed in the midst of his equals, or he will grow up with the most detestable temper." ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and most generalising poetry; and this feeling of matter-of-fact is impressed by fictions the most improbable, nay, the most ridiculous and revolting. You laugh at the absurdity; you are shocked at the detestable cruelty; yet, for the moment, the thing almost seems as if it must be true. You feel as you do in a dream, and after it;—you wake and laugh, but the absurdity seemed true at the time; and while ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... cause of the Established Church, in active opposition to what he considered the lax latitudinarianism of the Whigs on the one hand and the attacks of the Freethinkers on the other, he found leisure for doing society another service. Nothing was more detestable to Swift than charlatanry and imposture. From time immemorial the commonest form which quackery has assumed has been associated with astrology and prophecy. It was the frequent theme or satire in the New Comedy of the Greeks and in the Comedy of Rome; it has fallen under the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... sweet Phaedime. Well, for the present we must be patient and wait our time. That detestable hypocrite Croesus seems to have established himself as protector of the Egyptian; when he is away, we must ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lay under your feet, my life, my love! You walked on me and never knew it." Aloud he answered: "Was I so detestable? Forgive me. I am trying ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the supply of rank commonplace is pumped up, but the public rush away to buy some cheap story which has signs of life in it. My impression is that it is not good for writers to consort too much with men of their own class; the slang of literature is detestable, and a man soon begins to use it at all seasons if he lives in the literary atmosphere. The actor who works in the theatre at night, and lives only among his peers during the day, ends by becoming a mummer even in private life; a teacher who ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... to my old aunt's, my nearest relative. I wanted to ask her to invite the whole of the Darbois family to spend a month here at Montjoie. A letter from Count Albert, announcing his engagement to Esperance, was a terrible blow to me. I conceived the detestable idea of revenging myself on Albert, but every scheme went against me. I have been beaten without ever having ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... the general Inclination there is to wish that we may preserve our Liberties; and perhaps even the Ministry could for some Reasons find it in their hearts to be willing that we shd be restord to the State we were in before the passing of the Stamp Act, were it not that a Set of detestable Men were continually writing from hence that we shd carry our Claims still higher & there wd be no Bounds to our Demands. I can venture to assure you that there is no Foundation for such Assertions, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Hector's body before they had time to extract much of his blood. Although he declared that he felt very faint he soon recovered, and being attended to by Reggy and Harry, put on his clothes, vowing that it should be the last time he would ever bathe in that detestable country. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... Carneades with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal, how oft they have lain with Hedia or Leontion, or where they last drank Thasian wine, or at what twentieth-day feast they had a costly supper. For such transport and captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances as this is would show a detestable and bestial restlessness and raving towards the present and hoped-for acts of pleasure. And therefore I cannot but look upon the sense of these inconveniences as the true cause of their retiring at last to a freedom from pain and a firm state of body; as if living pleasurably ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... wife; I sue not for my ruddy drops of life, My children fair, my lovely girls and boys; I will forget them; I will pass these joys, Ask nought so heavenward; so too too high; Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die; To be delivered from this cumbrous flesh, >From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh, And merely given to the cold, bleak air. Have mercy, goddess! Circe, feel ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... very numerous. They were the coffee-houses of the ancient day. Hot drinks were sold there, boiled and perfumed wine, and all sorts of mixtures, which must have been detestable, but for which the ancients seem to have had a special fancy. "A thousand and a thousand times more respectable than the wine-shops of our day, these bathing-houses of ages gone by, where men did not assemble to shamefully ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... much heavier calibre. He really thought, while Chateaubriand only felt, and the Legislation Primitive and the Pensees sur Divers Sujets contain much that an enemy of the school will find it worth while to read, in spite of an artificial, and, if a foreigner may judge, a detestable style. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... would make great sacrifices to avoid the hour and three quarters in one of those loathsome little Channel boats,—they always call them loathsome, though I did n't see but they are as good as any boats. I have never found any boat that hasn't a detestable habit of bobbing round. The Channel is hated: and no one who has much to do with it is surprised at the projects for bridging it and for boring a hole under it; though I have scarcely ever met an Englishman who wants either done,—he does not desire ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... formerly; and I asked her, if she had reason to surmise that that was in view? No, she said; it was only her own thought; but it was very likely that my master had either that in view, or something better for me. But, if I approved of it, she would propose such a thing to her master directly; and gave a detestable hint, that I might take resolutions upon it, of bringing such an affair to effect. I told her I abhorred her vile insinuation; and as to Mr. Williams, I thought him a civil good sort of man; but, as on one side, he was above me; so, on the other, I said of all things I did not love ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... detestable, but Eustace had a feeling that Herbert had been very hardly treated in his own home. He could not forget how genuine had been the big fellow's unhappiness over the awful loss of his beloved aunt, and Eustace could have forgiven much ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... to the question than has yet been discussed. The labor scab is no more detestable to his brother laborers than is the capitalist scab to his brother capitalists. A capitalist may get most for least in dealing with his laborers, and in so far be a non-scab; but at the same time, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... Nothing more detestable or more dangerous than witchcraft is conceivable to the Indian. To a young and untrained mind like Okoya's the thought of being exposed to danger from such a source is crushing. The boy felt bewildered, dazed. He leaned against ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... associate any such feelings with it. It was from the Norman, the worst of all robbers and miscreants, who built strong castles, garrisoned them with devils, and tore out poor wretches' eyes, as the Saxon Chronicle says, that the English got their detestable word genteel. What could ever have made the English such admirers of gentility, it would be difficult to say, for, during three hundred years, they suffered enough by it. Their genteel Norman landlords were their scourgers, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... companion,—but his replies to Hall about the "patronage" of my Lord Lansdowne, etc., indicated pretty clearly that he had no sympathy with the small traits and parasitical tendencies of Moore's character. If there was anything specially detestable to Irving and at variance with his very nature, it was that self-seeking deference to wealth and station which was so characteristic ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to wrench the chains from my bruised and torn body. My weary and long-continued struggles led to no termination. Termination! No! The lapse of time, that cures all other things, but makes my case more desperate. For there is no rest for me. Whithersoever I remove myself, this detestable, hated, sleepless, never-tiring enemy is in my rear. What a dark, mysterious, unfeeling, unrelenting tyrant! Is it come to this? When Nero and Caligula swayed the Roman scepter, it was a fearful thing to offend the bloody rulers. The Empire had already spread itself from climate to climate, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... 10,000l. a year for non nobis. Rather sing Dr. Kitchener's Universal Prayer and the English grace. The common people of every country understand only their native tongue; therefore if you do not understand them, you will not understand each other. All Italian music is detestable, and nothing like our genuine native song. Weber's "unconcatenated chords" ought not to be listened to, while we have such composers as Braham and Tom Cooke. The national songs of Great Britain have not sold so well as the Cook's Oracle. "People like what goes into the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... in the evening in the dim little parlor, and agree once more that Bareges has not been exaggerated. We are united in will to leave this detestable spot to its ghosts of ruin and disease, and to leave it as quickly as we can. Our Luz driver, whom we have judiciously retained to remain with his landau over night, appears respectfully at the door, and is instantly ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... character, however, had considerably the advantage over his father's. Val's presented merely what you felt you must hate, even to abhorrence; but the son's, that which you felt to be despicable besides, and yet more detestable still. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Touranian would desist from his love, and the ladies wagered to the contrary. The silversmith having complained to the queen that the monks had hidden his well-beloved from his sight, she found the deed detestable and horrible; and in consequence of her commands to the lord abbot it was permitted to the Touranian to go every day into the parlour of the abbey, where came Tiennette, but under the control of an old monk, and she always ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... 'Pardon me, war is a detestable game. Women in the thick of it add a touch to the brutal hideousness of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very inconsiderate conduct than the ultimate object in this detestable design) will succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics nor in the introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishoprics and parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world, would be the last corruption of the Church, the utter ruin of the clerical ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to Wolverhampton, and thence to Birkenhead. It grew dark before we reached Chester, and began to rain; and when we got to Birkenhead it was a pitiless, pelting storm, under which, on the deck of the steamboat, we crossed the detestable Mersey, two years' trial of which has made me detest it every day more and more. It being the night of rejoicing for the taking of Sebastopol and the visit of the Duke of Cambridge, we found it very difficult to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which modern manners forbid in speech or printed page. Angela's pallid cheek flushed crimson at the sight of the vile epithet. Oh, insane lightness of conduct which made such an insult possible! Standing there, confronting the angry husband, with that detestable paper in her hand, she felt a pang of compunction at the thought that she might have been more strenuous in her arguments with her sister, more earnest and constant in reproof. When the peace and good repute of two lives were at stake, was it for her to consider any ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... weight of its body upon its tail, to swing it about, and, by that, to hold it terrifying over the cat's jaws, and to take pleasure in hearing it squeak, and seeing it struggle for liberty, is such unmanly, such detestable cruelty, as calls for my utmost indignation and abhorrence. But, since you think pain so very trifling an evil, try. Charles, how you like that,' said he, giving him at the same time some severe strokes with his horsewhip. The boy ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... a detestable snivelling word: nothing can redeem it, not even the sermon on the Mount. Seven Days is better, But reminds one of the police court as well as of the creation. Every Seven Days would sound well. But Chesterton's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Armstrong. The talk was difficult, the captain working hard to give his guest a friendly lead; Mr Armstrong trying to appear oblivious of the fact that he had knocked the fellow down twice for a cad; and Roger as head of the house, trying to be affable to a person whom he had expected to find detestable, and who quite came ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething mass of moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice among its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, rising up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory VII, could he have beheld the representative ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... shot across by estafette to wait his Majesty here. Majesty has read with open eyes and throat: Letter from the Crown-Prince to Lieutenant Katte in Berlin: treasonous Flight-project now indisputable as the sun at noon!—His Majesty stept on board the Yacht in such humor as was never seen before: "Detestable rebel and deserter, scandal of scandals—!"—it is confidently written everywhere (though Seckendorf diplomatically keeps silence), his Majesty hustled and tussled the unfortunate Crown-Prince, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... I had offended by squeezing Yoletta's hand, and had been told to read from the book merely to make myself acquainted with the pains and penalties attendant on such an indiscretion, for to call it a "detestable crime" seemed to me a very great abuse ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... priest lives in the family. I think he is a man of very sublime religion, as much above this world as a great mountain; but he has the true sense of liberty and fraternity; for he has dared to oppose with all his might this detestable and cruel trade in poor negroes, which makes us, who are so proud of the example of America in asserting the rights of men, so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... why there is such a stuffy smell here. [With animation] I don't know what we're coming to with these infection notions. It's just detestable! They seem to have forgotten the Lord. There's our master's sister, Princess Mosolva, her daughter was dying and, will you believe it, neither father nor mother would come near her! So she died ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... two more years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional chroniques in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... to Madame Clerambault's assistance; an old relation who had brought her up died, leaving her little property in Berry to the Clerambaults. The mourning was a good excuse for quitting Paris, which had now become detestable, and for tearing the poet from his dangerous surroundings. There was also the question of money and of Rosine, who would be better for change of air. Clerambault gave in, and they all three went to take possession ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... publishing houses who have withdrawn their advertising from it, and who never send their books for review. Everyone foresaw that kind of thing from the day Mr Fadge became editor. The tone of his paragraphs has been detestable. Two reviews of the same novel, eh? ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... his life this unlucky author had not been without ambition; it was only when disappointed in his political projects that he resolved to devote himself to literature. As he was incapable of attempting original composition, he became known by his detestable versions. He wrote above eighty volumes, which have never found favour in the eyes of the critics; yet his translations are not without their use, though they never retain by any chance a single passage of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... hand in marriage. Lastly, he remarked that I seemed to be living in very poor circumstances (which was not surprising, said he, in view of the kennel that I inhabited); that I should die if I remained a month longer in that den; that all lodgings in St. Petersburg were detestable; and that he would be glad to know if I ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... propositions; it was a long way to Hurstley, and the reptile never ceased tormenting her every step of it, till the village was in sight: twice she ran, and he ran too, keeping up with her, and pouring into her ear a father's cruel fate and his own detestable alternative. She never once spoke to him, but kept on praying in her own pure mind for a just acquittal; not for one moment would she entertain the wicked thought of "doing evil that good might come;" and so, with flushed cheek, tingling ears, the mien of an insulted empress, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to me, Dolores, so that I might have put this sword you speak of to one good use before breaking it and flinging it from me like the vile thing it is! Would to God the earth would open and swallow up this land for ever, though I sank down into hell with it for the detestable crime of taking part in its ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... think so; you are too much an earthly being for that. Come, now, take off that detestable mask and let me see what you ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... mean the country adjacent to cities—feels and sees what would escape vulgar eyes, and draws suitable inferences. This train of reflections might have led me further, in every sense of the word; but I could not escape from the detestable evaporation of the herrings, which poisoned all ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... made noble protests on behalf of his contemporaries. You have only got to compare these lachrymose observations with the summary of the year's literature in any newspaper—'literary output' is the detestable expression always used—and you will find the same note of depression. 'The year has not produced a single masterpiece. Glad as we have been to welcome Mr. Blank's verse, "Larkspurs" cannot be compared with his first delicious volume, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... the school; but that makes no difference, for Mrs. Ward doesn't allow the word money or rank to be spoken of—she lives above all that. She says that money is a great talent, and that people who are merely purse-proud are detestable. Oh, but I've told you enough, ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... tempestuous existence was sentenced to complete abolition, first by Philip the Handsome, then by Philip the Long and Charles the Handsome, and, finally, by Philip of Valois, "for certain misdeeds and excesses notorious, enormous, and detestable, and on full deliberation of our council." The early portion of the history connected with the commune of Laon has been narrated for us by Guibert, an abbot of Nogent- sous-Coucy, in the diocese of Laon, a contemporary writer, sprightly and bold. "In all that I have written and am still ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... profound vice"—to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbour not absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable—only that we are detestable; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took farewell of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook himself to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon all mankind, wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and the houses fall upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest humanity, war, outrage, poverty, diseases, might fasten upon its inhabitants, praying the just gods to confound all Athenians, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... only too well represented the state of public feeling. All Middlesex—nay, all England—was roused to indignation, and poor Edmund's youth and infirmities made the crime appear the more cowardly and detestable. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wisdom extinguished my enthusiasm. You affirmed that an equal number of devotees streamed formerly round the Irmensaeule and to Jupiter's temple; an equal number of votaries, with like exultation, ascended the stake kindled in honor of Brahma. "Can the very feeling," you added, "which you found so detestable in heathenism prove the truth ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and later he worked to destroy it. After three hundred years, the Catholic Church still lives, with more communicants than it had in the days of Luther. The fact that it still exists proves its usefulness. It will still live, and it will change as men change. The Church and the Pope are not the detestable things that Martin Luther pictured them; and Protestantism is not the sweet and lovely object that he would have us believe. All formal and organized religions will be what they are, as long as man is what ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Englishmen, they cannot speak French, and we require an interpreter," said the mayor. "Do any of you, my friends, understand the language of those detestable islanders?" ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... any where but in this infernal gloom! It is a detestable country! This town is one everlasting fog, and its inhabitants are as cloudy as its skies! Every man broods over some solitary scheme of his own, avoids human intercourse, and hates to communicate the murk of his mind. I am in a wilderness. I fly the herd, and the herd flies me. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... one of the Strasburg conspirators, was particularly unmanageable; and late in the afternoon he insisted on going ashore to buy some cigars, saying that those on board were detestable. In vain Persigny and Orsi, who in the prince's absence considered themselves to be in command, assured him that to land was impossible; Parquin would not recognize their authority. The rest of the story I will tell in Count Orsi's own ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... others; but, elsewhere, people can fortify their houses, and call out and arm their retainers, and stand on their guard. But that here, in a city like this, private feuds should be carried on, and men stabbed when unconscious of danger, seems to me detestable." ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... with which he was dealing, repelled even those who respected his motive and mission. Sensitive, sad-hearted women like Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred could no more open their hearts to him than to a benevolent and impersonal board of trustees sitting around a green baize table. That detestable class, however, who thrive on opening their hearts and dilating on their spiritual experiences, could talk to him, as he would say, in a "most edifying and godly manner," and through him, in consequence, reap all the pecuniary advantages ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... not lighted, and Caesar sent a man to the Capital for acetylene lamps, which were put up on the walls, and which made a detestable smell. The reunion took place at nine at night. Caesar presided, and had San Roman, the bookseller, on his right, and Dr. Ortigosa on ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... chargers; and the restaurant of the inn (which has the luck to face the pink and grey palace) swarmed with khaki tea-drinkers turning indifferent shoulders to the widest view in Europe. It is one of the most detestable things about war that everything connected with it, except the death and ruin that result, is such a heightening of life, so visually stimulating and absorbing. "It was gay and terrible," is the phrase forever recurring in "War and Peace"; ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... different materials. As the ornamentation is always to be subordinate to the object, considerations regarding size, use, position, material, etc., must govern it. An ornament that would be admirable applied to one object, might be detestable if applied to another. A design cannot be made without reference ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... nothing was to be had. After some persuasion she promised us coffee, cheese, and bread, which came in due time; but with the best will we found it impossible to eat anything. The butter was rather black than yellow, the cheese as detestable to the taste as to the smell, the bread made apparently of saw-dust, with a slight mixture of oat-bran, and the coffee muddy dregs, with some sour cream in a cup, and sugar-candy which appeared to have been sucked and then dropped in the ashes. The original colour ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... used the gaff. Ben was out of the question, having his oars to look after, and even if he had been free the position would not allow me to bring the fish up to him. The gaff was strong and big, and it was furnished with a rank barb, generally a detestable implement ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... These plates were about five inches long and four inches wide and one inch thick, and had on them a figure of Christ on the cross. We take from the French edition of Kaempfer's History of Japan(215) an account of what he calls "this detestable solemnity." It was conducted by an officer called the kirishitan bugyo, or Christian inquisitor, and began on the second day of the first month. In Nagasaki it was commenced at two different places at once, and was carried on from house to house ...
— Japan • David Murray
... be des eleves de la patrie. The abbe, become a member of the Committee of Public Safety, denounced Madame de Fleury, in the strange jargon of the day, as "the fosterer of a swarm of bad citizens, who were nourished in the anticivic prejudices de l'ancien regime, and fostered in the most detestable superstitions, in defiance of the law." He further observed, that he had good reason to believe that some of these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and abetted Monsieur de Fleury's ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sopesellers, and some they sent over see to the bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons. Yea, the unyversytees of this realme are not all clere in this detestable fact.... I know a merchant man which shall at thys tyme be namelesse, that boughte the contentes of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllynges pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. Thys stuffe hath he occupyed in the stede of graye ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... the shelter he had obtained. No, not for the soul of him. He was pursued for his life, at the moment when he first flew into my arms. But I did not know it; no, I did not then know him. May the curse of heaven, and the blight of hell, settle on the detestable wretch! He pursue for the sake of justice! No; his efforts have all been for evil, but never for good. But I raised the alarm; miserable and degraded as I was, I pursued and raised the watch myself Have you not heard the name of Bell Calvert coupled with that ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... fanatics that set atheism up as an obligatory dogma and a superior duty; the socialists who, to suppress egoism, propose a community of property, and who found a republic in which any man that proposes to re-establish "detestable ownership" shall be declared an enemy of humanity, treated as a "raging maniac" and shut up in a dungeon for life. It is sufficient to have studied the operations of large armies and of great campaigns.—With different gadgets and opposite ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Oh, don't bother about me, Mr. Pathurst. Sea-sickness is only detestable and horrid, like sleet, and muddy weather, and poison ivy; besides, I'd rather be sea-sick than have ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... them whether I give you up to the police or take the law into my own hands. And let me tell you that the latter course would be much simpler for me. And I would take it, too, did I not feel that you were a very clever and exceptional man; did I not have a sort of sneaking admiration for your detestable skill and ingenuity.' ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... thee— 25 Rede of the Lord— Because Me thou hast wholly forgotten And trusted in fraud. So thy skirts I draw over thy face, 26 Thy shame is exposed. Thine adulteries, thy neighings, 27 Thy whorish intrigues; On the heights, in the field have I seen Thy detestable deeds. Jerusalem! Woe unto thee! Thou wilt not be ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... her former Christian baptism; and gave herselfe up to the Devill to serve him, and for the Devill to be her lord and master; by which wicked and diabollicall couvenant, shee the said Abigaill Barker is become a detestable witch, contrary to the peace of our Soveraigne Lord and Lady the King and Queene, their crowne and dignity, and the law in that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... Le Capitaine (he always called my father so), I am a Frenchman, fond of liberty and change, and this detestable prison became so very irksome to me, with its scanty food and straw beds on the floor, that I had for some time determined to make my escape and go to Ireland, where I believe sympathies are strong towards the French nation. I am, as you know, acquainted with Monsieur ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... chance missed by his eccentric friend, which he described to me just before he left Italy. "I saw last night an old palazzo of the Doria, six miles from here, upon the sea, which De la Rue urged Fletcher to take for us, when he was bent on that detestable villa Bagnerello; which villa the Genoese have hired, time out of mind, for one-fourth of what I paid, as they told him again and again before he made the agreement. This is one of the strangest old palaces in Italy, surrounded by beautiful woods of great trees (an immense rarity here) ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster |
