"Repulsiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Square, through Chatham street, one suddenly emerges from the dark, narrow lane, into a broad square, with streets radiating from it to all parts of the city. It is not over clean, and has an air of sharpness and repulsiveness that at once attracts attention. This is Chatham Square, the great promenade of the old time denizens of the Bowery, and still largely frequented by the class ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of the many who have handled it in prose and verse, has been able to spoil. Our Middle English form is not consummate, and is in some places crude in manner and in sentiment. But it is notable that the exaggerated and inartistic repulsiveness of Mark, resorted to by later writers as a rather rudimentary means of exciting compassion for the lovers, is not to be found here; in fact, one of the most poetical touches in the piece is one of sympathy for the luckless husband, when he sees the face of his faithless ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... objects than a drowned corpse. On that bright June morning a dreadful apparition lost little of its grim repulsiveness because the body was that of a young and ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... thinks," I said, "at any age he's a fit mate for a fresh young creature in her teens. If they only knew—the dreadful old ogres!" Yes, I said that. I piled it on—oh, I stuck at nothing! "The men think an ugly old woman monopolizes all the opportunities humanity offers for repulsiveness. But there's nothing on the face of the earth as hideous," I said, "as an ugly old man. Doesn't it stand to reason? He's bound to go greater lengths than any woman can aspire to. There's more of him to be ugly, isn't there? I appealed to them—everything ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... among the rulers of men—but instead he was little above the level of a clown. The destinies of a nation might have rested in the hands that he turned only to selfish fantasy. The whole appearance of him, arresting and almost awe-inspiring as it undoubtedly was, had in it the repulsiveness of the unnatural—and, with that, all ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... horse or of foot? and of how many men? and so forth. The mystery was resolved at the time and place appointed. A camel—a picked sample, seemingly, for general ugliness and the vicious way it writhed its mouth—shambled up to my tent. Its rider, who in all specialties of repulsiveness tallied with the beast to a hair, impaled a letter on the tip of his spear and handed it down. It was from the Resident at Lucknow. In its unpromising bearer I beheld my guard. If the look of a thorough ruffian, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... rough and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues. Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the repulsiveness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an ugly thing in contrast with that lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce some effect beyond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in the phrase. At the age of two-and-twenty Mary had certainly not attained that perfect good sense and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is still just so much geography and arithmetic and grammar study; not so much potentiality of child-experience with regard to language, earth, and numbered and measured reality. Hence the difficulty of bringing the mind to bear upon it; hence its repulsiveness; the tendency for attention to wander; for other acts and images to crowd in and expel the lesson. The legitimate way out is to transform the material; to psychologize it—that is, once more, to take ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... killed and eaten; and at marriages and other domestic occurrences feasts are provided, which usually end in foul orgies. In the clothes and person the Changars are decidedly unclean, and indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the tribes can ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... but in one which would utterly disconcert the usual valuers. The Confessions, if it were not an autobiography, would be one of the great novels of the world. A large part of it is probably or certainly "fictionised"; if the whole were fictitious, it would lose much of its repulsiveness, retain (except for a few very matter-of-fact judges) all its interest, and gain the enormous advantage of art over mere reportage of fact. Of course Rousseau's art of another kind, his mere mastery of style and presentation, does redeem ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... into the dreadful sore—known in the hobo vernacular as a "jigger"—upon the road kid's arm. The poor little lad shrieked with pain as the acid ate into his quivering flesh, which deepened the wound still more and gave it a "fresh" look, which greatly added to its horrid repulsiveness so as to all the more arouse the pity of those from whom he would be forced to beg on the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... this book is interesting on account of the sorcerer's methods and the attractiveness of some of his characters and the repulsiveness of the rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he tries to think he thinks he sets forth the causes which led to Shelley's desertion of his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sculptor who holds that it is as truly art to represent distortion and repulsiveness as it is to represent beauty is as false to his high calling as would be the poet who should insist that doggerel and mere commonplace truisms expressed in rhyme are poetry. Compare, for example, two statues, Cecioni's "La Madre," in which a woman's utter lack of personal attraction is so ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... in above him. Especially did he devote himself to these plants; and under his care they had thriven beyond all former precedent, bursting into luxuriance of bloom, and most of them bearing beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three instances, had the sort of natural repulsiveness that the serpent has in its beauty, compelled against its will, as it were, to warn the beholder of an unrevealed danger. The young man had long ago, it must be added, demanded of his grandfather the documents included in the ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rotundity of life. Neither is he confounded in form with the numerous class of Monedoes, or of demons. He does not possess the power of metamorphosis, or of transforming himself into the shapes of animals. Unvaried in repulsiveness, he is ever an object of fear; but unlike every other kind or class of creation of the Indian mind, Pauguk never disguises himself, or affects the cunning of concealment—never effects to ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... possibility of its being merged in a central authority which did not exist. The country was without a centre. There was small chance of apoplexy where there was no head. The danger lay in the mutual repulsiveness of these atoms of sovereignty—in the centrifugal tendencies which were fast resolving a nebulous commonwealth into chaos. Disunion and dissension would soon bring about a more fatal centralization—that of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... story of seduction, madness, and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with; yet it is not every man's hand that they will suit. In the hands of common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity, who can subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose imagination, buoyant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... apparently; but the association of a woman's name with Alvan's, albeit the name of a veteran, roused the girl's curiosity, leading her to think his mental and magnetic powers must be of the very highest, considering his physical repulsiveness, for a woman of rank to yield him such extreme devotion. She commissioned her princely serving-man, who had followed and was never far away from her, to obtain precise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... feelings of strong attachment to their pastor personally, than by the power of the truths he preached, he became more reserved in his dealings with them, so that some thought there was a little coldness or repulsiveness in his manner. If there did appear anything of this nature to some, certainly it was no indication of diminished compassion; but, on the contrary, proceeded from a scrupulous anxiety to guard others against the deceitful feelings of their own souls. A ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... well-founded, perhaps not; we are inclined to believe that it is, for every page in this novel is crowded with details, often disgusting, which are generally left out in ordinary works. The hideous deformity, the rottenness and repulsiveness of the leper Hann is brought out in such vivid detail that we sicken and fain would turn aside in disgust. But go where one will, the ghastly, quivering, wretched picture is always before us in all its filth and splendid ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... fermentation, and comes out in ungenial qualities. Now and then, at a public watering-place, a man or woman appears no otherwise distinguished than by a remarkable talent for being disagreeable; and it is amusing to find, on inquiry, that this repulsiveness of demeanor is entirely on account of belonging ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... feelings. At the same time, it ought not to be forgotten that Racine composed most of his pieces when very young, and that this may possibly have influenced his choice. He seldom disgusts us, like Corneille and Voltaire, with the undisguised repulsiveness of unnecessary crimes; he has, however, often veiled much that in reality is harsh, base, and mean, beneath the forms of politeness and courtesy. I cannot allow the plans of his pieces to be, as the French critics insist, unexceptionable; those which he borrowed from ancient mythology ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... that must have occurred at Quetcham. But what engrossed her feeling, what filled her imagination now, was the panorama of her own immediate future that Klesmer's words seemed to have unfolded. The suggestion of Miss Arrowpoint as a patroness was only another detail added to its repulsiveness: Klesmer's proposal to help her seemed an additional irritation after the humiliating judgment he had passed on her capabilities. His words had really bitten into her self-confidence and turned it into the pain of a bleeding wound; and the idea of presenting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... beautiful arises from familiarity with the object, though even this could not long be maintained by a thinking person. For all that can be alleged in defence of such a supposition is, that familiarity deprives some objects which at first appeared ugly, of much of their repulsiveness, whence it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is the cause of beauty, as it would be to argue that because it is possible to acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of lusciousness in grapes. Nevertheless, there are some phenomena resulting from the tendency of ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... after all, she had been fortunate to fall into the hands of these strange people, who might not only protect her from harm, but even aid her in returning to Helium. That they were repulsive and uncanny she could not forget, but if they meant her no harm she could, at least, overlook their repulsiveness. Renewed hope aroused within her a spirit of greater cheerfulness, and it was almost blithely now that she moved at the side of her weird companion. She even caught herself humming a gay little tune that was then popular in Helium. The creature at her ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sallow face worked with anger, and for a moment his narrow eyes blazed upon Lecorbeau and seemed to read his very soul. Then, as he glanced across the marsh, his countenance changed. A fanatic zeal illumined it, taking away half its repulsiveness. ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the case—constitutes a certain protection against being struck by falling stars, or becoming involved in unsuccessful law cases. The persons in question can be recognized with certainty in the public ways by the unnatural pallor of their faces and by the general repulsiveness of their appearance, but as they soon take refuge in suicide, unless they have the fortune to be removed previously by accident, it is an infrequent matter that one is gratified by the sight. During their ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... burned low in its socket, and love of freedom grew cold. The indifference of his subjects to political issues tempted Henry along the path to tyranny, and despotic power developed in him features, the repulsiveness of which cannot be concealed by the most exquisite art, appealing to the most deep-rooted prejudice. He turned to his own profit the needs and the faults of his people, as well as their national spirit. He sought the greatness of England, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... alone, too jealous to endure a faithful counsellor, too easy-tempered and too indolent to care what oppressions were committed in his name, and without the sense of duty which would have gone far to make up for all his shortcomings. The peculiar repulsiveness of Constantius is not due to any flagrant personal vice, but to the combination of cold-blooded treachery with the utter want of any inner nobleness of character. Yet he was a pious emperor, too, in his own way. He loved the ecclesiastical game, and was ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin |
