"Abhorrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I was sorry even then. As the world judges she was in error, he within his rights. He loved her—in his way. She was his property. That is the view he holds of life—of human feelings and hearts—property. It's not his fault—so was he born. To me it is a view that has always been abhorrent—so was I born! Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the story. Your mother fled from his house that night; for twelve years she lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort, until in 1899 her husband—you ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... immortality youthfully. When you get among the streets of Quebec, the mediaeval, precipitous, narrow, winding, and perplexed streets, you begin to realise her charm. She almost incurs the charge of quaintness (abhorrent quality!); but even quaintness becomes attractive in this country. You are in a foreign land, for the people have an alien tongue, short stature, the quick, decided, cinematographic quality of movement, and ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... into the situation her mother had imagined and encouraged. She blushed at the collision with it, and became a very allegory of innocence confronted with abhorrent evil. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Congress permitting them to receive slaves from the other States, which, by dividing that evil, would lessen its danger. 2. The administration of justice in our forms, principles, and language, with all of which they are unacquainted, and are the more abhorrent, because of the enormous expense, greatly exaggerated by the corruption of bankrupt and greedy lawyers, who have gone there from the United States and engrossed the practice. 3. The call on them by the land commissioners ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... entertaining angels unawares? London! Grizel had more than sufficient money to take two there, and once in London, a wonder such as himself was bound to do wondrous things. Now that he thought of it, to become a minister was abhorrent to him; to preach would be rather nice, oh, what things he should say (he began to make them up, and they were so grand that he almost wept), but to be good after the sermon was over, always to be good ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... word of this change, so abhorrent to all the notions of poor Augustine Caxton, had been breathed to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate and slept and worked at the Great Book, occasionally wondering why he had not heard of the advent of the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manifestations of vice are first proscribed, and then their proscription is made a stepping-stone to demolish others. For instance—we attack gambling with cards, the worst manifestation of the gambling principle; we make it abhorrent to the moral sense of the world; we so confound it, and justly too, with robbery, that future generations shall grow up in that faith, and all the efforts of interested sophistry never be able henceforward to separate them ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... matter." "But term it as you will," replied Peter, "I do not see any other way in which you can be so useful, both in private to your friends and to the public, and by which you can make your own condition happier." "Happier?" answered Raphael, "is that to be compassed in a way so abhorrent to my genius? Now I live as I will, to which I believe, few courtiers can pretend; and there are so many that court the favour of great men, that there will be no great loss if they are not troubled either with me or with others of my temper." ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... dispute, and he brazens it out in a very unblushing manner. I am more particularly struck with the meanness here exhibited, from having just been reading Lord Chatham's correspondence, in which his noble and lofty character, so abhorrent of everything like trickery, shabbiness, and underhand dealing, shines forth with peculiar lustre. It is animating and refreshing to turn to the contemplation of this really great and noble mind, even more remarkable I think for dignity ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Christian men, to protest against such notions, standing near the throne, polluting the ear of majesty! 'That God and nature put into our hands!' I know not what idea that lord may entertain of God and nature; but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife—to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating—literally, my lords, eating—the mangled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sale of Christians to Pagan masters was abhorrent to the later empire of the Barbarian Invasions, not because slavery in itself was condemned, but because it was a sort of treason to civilization to force men away from Civilization ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... feeble flagellation from FLYNN. Then Prince ARTHUR suddenly, unexpectedly, dashes in. Empty benches fill up; stagnant pool stirred to profoundest depths: ARTHUR professes to be tolerant of Irish Members, but declares himself abhorrent of connivance of Right Hon. Gentleman above Gangway. Talks at Mr. G., who begins visibly to bristle before our very eyes as he sits attentive on Front Bench. ARTHUR in fine fighting trim; Ministerial ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... the road ascended a little, and joined the highway, which kept along a level, consisting mostly of land lately redeemed from the peat-moss. It went straight for two miles, fenced from the fields in many parts by low stone walls without mortar, abhorrent to the eye of Cosmo; in other parts by walls of earth, called dykes, which delighted his very soul. These were covered with grass for the vagrant cow, sprinkled with loveliest little wild flowers for the poet-peasant, burrowed ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... magic circle of their acquaintance—some specimens of whom came up every day for ridicule. They had big feet and false teeth; they ate mush and molasses; they wore ready-made ties; they said: "Do you wish that I should do it?" Their grandfathers had been butchers and pedlars and other abhorrent things. Montague tried his best to like the Wallings, because of what they were doing for Alice; but after he had sat at their lunch-table and listened to a conversation such as this, he found himself in need of ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in the abhorrent chains of slavery. The power to emancipate them is clear. It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes in Congress. It lies with the free states. Their duty is before them: in the fear of God, and not of man ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it may truly be said to be in many respects repulsive. There are usually odours in such a camp which are repellent to the nose, dishes that are disgusting to the taste, sights that are disagreeable to the eyes, sounds that are abhorrent to the ear, and habits that are ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... them en bloc? What else but deepest aversion and mistrust could a religion inspire which is professed and taught by a people who practise spoliation, murder, and other descriptions of wickedness abhorrent even to a savage mind? The aborigines would daily behold their own land and possessions enjoyed by usurpers and "would be teachers," who subjected them besides to slavery and abject misery. Could the religion of such teachers ever find favour ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... place in the insanity of James Rutlidge To destroy innocence, to kill virtue, to murder a soul—these are commonplaces in the insane philosophy of his kind. But to kill—to take a life deliberately—the thought was abhorrent to him. He was not educated to the thought of taking life—he was trained to consider its perversion. The heroes in his fiction did not kill men—they betrayed women. The heroines in his stories did not desire ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... monkeys are little men; I was a thing; but the Paraguayans are Christians, and that is the lowest degree of all. The priests they see on the other side of the river are Yankilwana (neither man nor woman); and a Yankilwana, in his distinctive garb, could never tread this Indian soil. So abhorrent to them is the name of Christian, that the missionaries have been compelled to use another word to describe their converts, and they are called "Followers of Jesus." All the members of some large expeditions have been massacred ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... be judged by results, affect my actual performances. But I am, nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... believed tha the whole duty of man consisted in loving the army regulations, and in keeping their commandments. The best part of all virtue was to observe them to the letter; the most abhorrent form of vice, to violate or ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... Part in Fat Conservation. Although at present there is butter and lard on the market, the need for conserving it is important, just as in the case of meat. WASTE OF ANY KIND SHOULD BE ABHORRENT TO ALL OF US AT THIS TIME. There probably has been a greater waste of fat than of any other commodity, but it is encouraging to note that this waste has been decreased by conservation. The amount of fat in city garbage has gone ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... literary, literal, and scientific mind purposeless fiction is abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined; the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works suitable for man, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... usage commonly enjoyed by prisoners of war; but although Zumalacarregui had been compelled, by the necessities of his position, to many acts of severity and apparent cruelty, his nature was in reality humane, and the shedding of human blood abhorrent to him. It was, therefore, with some difficulty that he resolved upon a course, the adoption of which he felt to be indispensable to the advancement of the cause ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... man at first laughs at my request, being greatly surprised by the importance which I attribute to the abhorrent creature, the Darboun; but at last he consents, not without a suspicion at the back of his mind that I am going to make myself a wonderful flannel-lined waist-coat with the soft, velvety skins of the Moles, something ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... account of their separate origin the process of union was slow. The source of most of their trouble in their infancy was the grasping policy of Massachusetts. Next to heretics in the bosom of the commonwealth heretic neighbors were especially abhorrent. When in 1640 the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven addressed a joint letter to the general court of Massachusetts, and the citizens of Aquidneck ventured to join in it, Massachusetts arrogantly excluded the representation of Aquidneck from ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... affright even the minister of vengeance that feeds them; that he would let them loose, in famine, fever, plagues, and death, upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit, order, peace, religion, and virtue are alien and abhorrent. It was expected that he would at last have thought of active and effectual war; that he would no longer amuse the British lion in the chase of mice and rats; that he would no longer employ the whole naval power of Great Britain, once the terror of the world, to prey upon ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the mysterious veil of night O'er head and ears is drawn; The loathsome birth men fain would slay; But soon, full grown, she waxes bold, And though not fairer to behold, With brazen front insults the day: The more abhorrent to the sight, The more she courts ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... perhaps not be making otherwise. The pikes in the European carp-pond are keeping us from being carps by making us feel their teeth on both sides. They also are forcing us to an exertion which without them we might not make, and to a union among us Germans, which is abhorrent to us at heart. By nature we are rather tending away, the one from the other. But the Franco-Russian press within which we are squeezed compels us to hold together, and by pressure our cohesive force is greatly increased. This will bring ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... all-merciful and all-wise Being, who sometimes leaves proud men to themselves, to the lawless, headlong driving of their arrogant passions, to show them, in the due turn of events, what a vicious self-aggrandizing, abhorrent and despicable monster in human shape such a noble creature, when turned from the divine purpose of his creation, may become. To such contemplations, and to the repose of a mind and conscience at peace with itself, did the once, nay, ever-renowned hero ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... abhorrent to him, but on the question of slavery his sympathies were rather with the South, for I find among his papers ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... is in my being had assured me of the plenitude of the universe. Yes, devotion, not to individuals but to the social ideal of brotherhood, sustains me still. Oh, what a magnificent example is to be found in Jesus and in the poor. That righteous aristocrat, showing by His abhorrent task the infinite obligation of altruistic duty, and teaching, above all, that no return of gratitude should be demanded. . . . To my experience of men and things I owe this tranquillity of expecting nothing from any one. ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... as it possibly can be, is the very circumstance that gives me a right to speak and offer my testimony against ideas which I think wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case. The views of modern philosophers, attacking the sanctity of Christian marriage, are to me perfectly abhorrent. Deprive marriage of its mystical, sacramental, penitential character, and it ceases to be the bulwark of a well-ordered society. I must again call upon St. John Chrysostom to speak for me. He says: 'Marriage is one of the most surprising mysteries, by reason of the sublime character which ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... exceptions, and the present case is without doubt one.—Suppose there was no law of society to restrain you from murdering your own father, what think you? If either of you should please to take it into your head to perpetrate such a villainous act, so abhorrent to the will of the society, would you not be restrained? And is the Liberty of your Country of less importance than the life of your father! But what is most astonishing is, that some two or three persons of very little consequence in themselves, have Dared openly to ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... despair. It was as though the soil had been left imperfect and rough after some cataclysm; it reminded me of those bad lands in the west of America, where the desert has no form, and where the crumbling and ashy look of things is more abhorrent than their mere desolation. As soon march through ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Abolitionist. He regarded slavery as a gigantic system of complicated evils, at war with all the known laws of civilized society; inimical to the fundamental principles of political economy; destructive to republican institutions; hateful in the sight of God, and ever abhorrent to all honest men. He hated slavery. He hated truckling, obsequious, cringing hypocrites. He put his feelings into vigorous English, and keyed his deeds and actions to the sublime notes of charity that filled his heart ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... moulded easily by circumstances into any form; and, in her, circumstances had shaped her gradually into a much worse form than nature had originally given her. To defraud, to cheat, to wrong, had at one time been most abhorrent to her nature. She had taken no active part in her father's dealings with old Sir John Hastings, and had she known all that he had said and sworn, would have shrunk with horror from the deceit. But during her father's short life, she had been ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Lettice, spite of present disadvantages, which she was sure she should like very much. Not so the general. He was a perfect fool of the eye, as military men are too apt to be. Whatever was awkward or ill-dressed, was perfectly abhorrent to him; and he took a dislike to "the creature" the moment he cast his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... wife to peril his rheumatics by coming in to Bexley about it. They must stay to luncheon; and while Mr. Froggatt went off to answer his note, they were made much of over the fire, in the way that had of late become so abhorrent to Bernard, with difficulty avoiding a pre-luncheon or nooning of cake and wine within an hour of the meal of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greatly grieved about these idle ceremonies. He lamented that men should degrade themselves by the use of them, and that they should encourage habits, that were abhorrent of the truth. His feelings were so strong upon this subject, that he felt himself called upon to bear his testimony against them. Accordingly he never submitted to them himself, and those, who received his religious doctrines, followed ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... table which was covered with the spoils of churches, and at their heads sat the wild, long-haired chieftain, who was a few years later driven away by his own followers for his excesses, the whole scene was all that was abhorrent to a pure, devout, and faithful nature, most full of terror to a woman. Yet, there, in her strength, stood the peasant maiden, her heart full of trust and pity, her looks full of the power that is given by fearlessness of ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the novelist's; yet, apart from a preference for the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris, there is not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men are brilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent to Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the great classic painters. He ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... thought good enough, as any toilet is considered sufficiently attractive for home use. A singular impression has grown up that formal politeness and the saying of gracious and complimentary things betray the toady and the hypocrite, both if whom are abhorrent to Americans. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... given a proof of very noble devotion in rushing back for an old man into that black water. Ough! He shuddered. He had given himself up—por Dios! He hinted that, at his age, he could not have cared much for life; but then, drowning in the sea was a death abhorrent to an old Christian. You died brutally—without absolution, and unable, even, to think of your sins. He had had his mouth filled with horrid, bitter sand, too. Tfui! He gave me a thousand thanks. But these English were wonderful in their way.... Ah! ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... being good to servants! and it don't take more'n half an eye to see that the servants love their white people. For slavery itself, I ain't quarrelling for it, and neither was Colonel Anderson. He said it was abhorrent in the sight of God and man. He said the old House of Burgesses used to try to stop the bringing in of negroes, and that the Colony was always appealing to the king against the traffic. He said that in 1778, two years after Virginia declared her Independence, she passed the statute ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... you for years, sire." Her voice was low but clear—the voice of a woman to whom coquetry was abhorrent. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shortly after she had appeared in Alceste! (She sang in concert occasionally until 1870 or later.) Thereafter she divided her time principally between Baden and Paris and became the great friend of Turgeniev. His very delightful letters to her have been published. Idleness was abhorrent to this fine woman and in her middle and old age she gave lessons, while singers, composers, and conductors alike came to her for help and advice. She died in 1910 at the age of 89. Her less celebrated brother, Manuel Garcia (less celebrated as a singer; as a teacher he is given the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... on the part of our troops may lead, step by step, to delays, to impatience, and exasperation, and in the end to a general war and carnage—a result in the case of these particular Indians, utterly abhorrent to the generous sympathies of the whole American people. Every possible kindness compatible with the necessity of removal must therefore be shown by the troops; and if in the ranks a despicable individual should be found capable of inflicting a wanton injury or insult on any Cherokee ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... smoking, the naturalization of a few foreign words and of several strange diseases, and, as an odd addition, the introduction of sponge-cake, still everywhere used as a favorite viand. As for Christianity, the very name of Christ became execrated, and was employed as the most abhorrent word that could be spoken in Japan. The Christian faith was believed to be absolutely extirpated, and yet it seems to have smouldered unseen during the centuries. As late as 1829 seven persons suspected of being Christians were crucified in Ozaka. Yet ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of the corsairs had in them something distinctive in that they were propelled by oars, and were in consequence, to a certain extent, independent of the weather. Like the sailors of all ages, to the Sea-wolves gales and storms of all sorts and descriptions were abhorrent; and in consequence they had a well-marked piracy season, which, as we shall see, covered the spring and summer, while they carefully avoided the inclement months of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... said to me the other day that it had taken her a long time to appreciate Chesterton's sociology. "You see, I was brought up to think that it was quite right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not a brother; he is a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... "These problems have been solved in the past in four ways. By reducing the weaker race to slavery, or by expulsion, or by extermination, or by the amalgamation of the races. Slavery is out of the question—that is settled. Equally repugnant is expulsion or extermination. Amalgamation is abhorrent." Therefore, the problem will not be solved by any historical precedents. The two races must live here in the same sections, equal before the law, with mutual rights, and all rights must ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... account of the homicide. Thus murder cases are almost always weaker than others, since the chief witness has been removed by death; while at the same time the nature of the punishment leads the jury unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof than in cases where the consequences are less abhorrent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. Moreover, homicide cases as a rule are better defended than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the result. These considerations apply to all trials for homicide, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... without representation is abhorrent to every principle of natural or civil liberty. It was this injustice that drove our fathers into ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... his brow suddenly upon the Mexican herder, "remember, now—in three days!" He continued the sentence by a comprehensive sweep of the hand from that spot out through the western pass, favored each of the three Chihuahuanos with an abhorrent scowl, and rode slowly away ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... was a thrust with a double-edged sword. He was what we now call, an exquisite, in person, and one to whom the idea of chewing tobacco was abhorrent, whilst he was actually and distressingly troubled with the infirmity hinted at. For a moment, the suavity of his manner was destroyed, and he forgot the respect due to ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... soon began to entertain all these thoughts and to dally with the idea of changing my religion, abhorrent as that idea was. At first I had been comforted by the thought that I was in love with both girls in orthodox Moslem style. But reflecting that I could never have both, that they would never come to me, that I must go ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... everything that made up the greatness and littleness of the France of the end of last century, everything which will make up the greatness and littleness of France, the glories and weaknesses which the world must love, to the end of time; all these things were abhorrent to Alfieri; and Alfieri, when once he disliked a person or a thing, justly or unjustly, could only increase but never diminish his dislike. Let us look at this matter, which is instructive to all persons whose nobility of character runs to ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and practice in China point to a simple monotheism. There was a Divine Ruler of the universe, abiding on high, beyond the ken of man. This Power was not regarded as the Creator of the human race, but as a Supreme Being to whom wickedness was abhorrent and virtuous conduct a source of joy, and who dealt out rewards and punishments with unerring justice, claiming neither love nor reverence from mankind. If a man did his duty towards his neighbour, he might pass his whole time on earth oblivious of the fact that such a Power was in existence; unless ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the amphitheatre. Wherever they went they erected these huge places for entertaining themselves with the spectacle of suffering. There never was an amphitheatre at Marseilles, for Marseilles was Greek and not Roman, and to the Greek such spectacles were abhorrent. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... better than he the capacity of the crowd to feed on pure fun, and no one could discriminate more clearly than he the fitness, temper, and mental appetite of the constituents of his evening assemblies. The prosiness of an ordinary Mechanics' Institute lecture was to him simply abhorrent; the learned platitudes of a professed lecturer were to him, to use one of his own phrases, "worse than poison." To make people laugh was to be his primary endeavour. If in so making them laugh he could also cause them ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Catholics. Anjou was suspect to both. The action of the Spanish government, however, at this critical juncture did much to restore the credit of the prince with all to whom the Spanish tyranny and the memory of Alva were abhorrent. Cardinal Granvelle, after fifteen years of semi-exile in Italy, had lately been summoned to Madrid to become chief adviser to the king. Granvelle spared no pains to impress upon Philip the necessity of getting rid of Orange as the chief obstacle to the pacification of the Netherlands, and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... once giving up the task of attending either of the sisters, when his eyes falling on the uncomplaining but melancholy features of his poor friend, he exclaimed, "No; for thy sake, gallant Butzou, I will brave every scene, however abhorrent to my heart." ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... friends in England," and to not afford a pretext for the "rebellious course" of their fellow-colonists in Virginia and the West Indies, who claimed the same independence of Parliament that the Government of Massachusetts claimed, but upon the ground which was abhorrent to the Congregational Puritans of Massachusetts—namely, that of loyalty ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... absurd for any person to get so gloriously hot and dirty while setting out plants, when that person objected to having a flower in the same room. For Peter could not understand that a cut flower is a dead or, at best, a dying thing, and therefore to considerate people is just so much abhorrent carrion; and denied it would be really quite as rational to decorate your person or your dinner table with the severed heads of chickens as with those ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... forces which is operative is indicated by the phrase that an international agreement on an economic and financial basis might be of value to China herself. The mere suggestion that such a thing is possible is abhorrent to many, especially to radicals. There seems to be something sinister in it. So it is worth explaining how and why it might be so. In the first place, it would obviously terminate the particularistic grabbing for "leased" territory, concessions and spheres of ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... battles at school; I learnt to ride, and came to have confidence in myself, and though I had no particular fancy for the army my father's heart was so set on it that I offered no objection. That the sound of a gun was abhorrent to me I knew, for the first time my father put a gun in my hand and I fired it, I fainted, and nothing would persuade me to try again. Still I thought that this was the result of nervousness as to firing it myself, and that I should ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... king. He succeeded in making him a brave soldier and a very good general; but Louis had no enthusiasm for the profession of arms. He hated bloodshed, and above all he hated sack and pillage. He had no genius, and crooked ways of any kind were abhorrent to him. When a very young man he fell passionately in love with a lady, whom he called his Sophie. But his brother and the world thought the real name of the object of his affection was Emilie de Beauharnais, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... is honest, kind, generous,—it will serve the future, and is not unprofitable at present. It is different from that pursued by those who would, through the instrumentality of bad laws, enforce ignorance. Nay, to her there is something abhorrent in using the Word of God as an excuse for the existence of slavery. Her system is practicable, enlightening first, and then enforcing that which gives encouragement to the inert faculties of our nature. Punishments were scarcely known upon her plantation; the lash ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... cement, but a wedge. The Government did not hesitate to protect the doubtful right of property of a Virginian in Anthony Burns by the exercise of coercion, and the loyalty of Massachusetts was such that her own militia could be used to enforce an obligation abhorrent, and, as there is reason to believe, made purposely abhorrent, to her dearest convictions and most venerable traditions; and yet the same Government tampers with armed treason, and lets I dare not wait upon I would, when it is a question of protecting the acknowledged ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... only members of the then established government, but the decided friends of the king. The aristocrats were then already banished, or wanderers from fear, or concealed and silent from cowardice; and the jacobins —I need not, after what I have already related, mention how utterly abhorrent to her must be that fiend-like set. The aristocrats, however, as you well observe, and as she has herself told me, hold the constitutionalists in greater horror than the Convention itself. This, however, is a violence against ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... to the Roman Church into which he had been baptized as a child, and gradually withdrew from literary activity. Long before his death in 1842, he had renounced his earlier life as wicked and abhorrent, and had given himself over entirely to the Church. But his career with its constant wanderings, its lack of permanency of occupation, of family ties, and of a real home, his inability to grow old, his inner unreality, his excessive ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... essays in The Spectator (Nos. 58-61; May, 1711), Addison had earlier, of course, been at pains to distinguish between "true wit" and "false wit." Particularly abhorrent to him was the rebus. The first part of The Merry-Thought alone contains seven rebuses from "Drinking-Glasses, at a private Club of Gentlemen" (pp. 12-13), as well as several examples of other kinds of "wit" which Addison ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... comfort, and calm preparation for the change to which he was hastening;—instead of this, that a son, who had always professed respect and affection for his father, should thrust the most painful thorn of all into the side of a sinking, broken down, dying man, is so abhorrent from every feeling, not only of a truly noble and generous spirit, but of mere ordinary humanity,—is so utterly "unprincipled," "unfilial," and "unnatural,"—that though in such a case we might hope, after a life of sincere Christian penitence, the stain might have been removed from his ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... all circumstances, since the attainment of the goal depends upon the participation of all Mohammedans in the holy war, will those who refuse to join in the general uprising be punished for conduct so abhorrent? Answer—Yes. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... current rumor that this and other aggressions were to be enforced by arms. The idea was abhorrent to the people. A committee, to whom was referred the subject of the rumored introduction of troops, reported to the meeting a resolve to the effect that whoever had urged this measure was "a tyrant in his heart, a traitor and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... right of suffrage, and was an indirect but most effective answer to those who subsequently attempted to use Mr. Lincoln's name in support of policies which his intimate friends instinctively knew would be abhorrent to his unerring ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... in these Magi, too, a type of the inmost meaning of heathen religions? These faiths have in them points of contact with Christianity. Besides their falsehoods and abhorrent dark cruelties and lustfulnesses, they enshrine confessions of wants which the King in the cradle alone can supply. Modern unbelieving teachers tell us that Christianity and they are alike products of man's own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... use the decorous phrase of the text-book, "They multiply by fission." Your amoeba or vorticella, as the case may be, splits in two. Then there are two amoebae or vorticellae. In this way the necessity of the family, that middle-class institution so abhorrent to the artistic mind, is avoided. In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, which should appeal to the scholastic mind, and the simple protozoon has none of that fitful fever ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... minutes proved even more distressing than Ivan, anticipating them, had feared. The young lady was of a temperament both emotional and dramatic. And her behavior, to a man to whom scenes were abhorrent, proved trying in the extreme. In the end, after the amount of protestation and rather affected timidity which she evidently thought proper, Ivan's offer was accepted; and the expression of her gratitude that followed, caused Ivan to terminate ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... difficult to condense into so few lines more facts and conditions abhorrent to the Christian conception of the sanctity of love than is done in this passage. Can anyone deny that in a modern Christian country Laban's breach of contract with Jacob, his fraudulent substitution of the wrong daughter, and Jacob's meek acceptance of two wives in eight ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... elder brother has cared secretly all these years, not permitting the knowledge of his existence to get abroad, lest the unfortunate man should be removed forcibly, and sent to what is the only asylum for him now that his guardian is dead—the abhorrent Terre aux Lepreux.—George W. Cable, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... her husband in an aggrieved tone, "it is incomprehensible that you should have such a total disregard for the delicacy of my constitution,—especially when you know that the very odor of the stable is abhorrent to my olfactory senses. Atalanta has quarters provided for her at the Vernon Livery, and one of the grooms has orders to bring the carriage to the door at two o'clock ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... like this when we have halted at Arbagh, scattered those dogs, and had a good meal. For we must fight first," he cried fiercely. "Gil," he said, sinking his voice, "I was never meant for a soldier— this blood-shedding is abhorrent to me. I shrink from using my sword; but since I have heard the horrors these wretches are perpetrating— slaying English ladies, murdering sweet innocent children, my nerves thrill as I grasp my blade, and I feel as if ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... allurement of a cinematograph theatre and the prospect of light refreshment. As Cyprian was not yet eighteen she hoped he might not have reached that stage in masculine development when parcel-carrying is looked on as a thing abhorrent. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... extremely anxious that the United States should give a guaranty that its character in this respect should not be changed. They urged that to see slavery recognized upon soil once owned by Mexico would be so abhorrent to that government as it would be to the United States to see the Spanish Inquisition established upon it. Mr. Nicholas F. Trist, the American commissioner, gave a reply which a free Republic reads ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... smoked like an Indian summer ere I entered the Neversink, so abhorrent was this sumptuary law that I altogether abandoned the luxury rather than enslave it to a time and a place. Herein did I not right, Ancient and Honourable Old Guard of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... in no uncertain voice—two practices which I hold to be almost equally condemnable. In the first place, no playwright who understands the evolution of the modern theatre can nowadays use in his stage-directions the abhorrent jargon of the early nineteenth century. When one comes across a manuscript bespattered with such cabalistic signs as "R.2.E.," "R.C.," "L.C.," "L.U.E.," and so forth, one sees at a glance that the writer has neither studied dramatic literature ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... of Ghosts and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors to ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Mohammedan and there on the profession of Faith Islamitan, proclaiming the Unity, they shrieked "Woe!" and "Ruin!" and besought succour of the Patriarchs of the Monasteries. Then fell they to calling upon John and Mary and the Cross abhorrent and stayed their hands from slaughter, whilst King Afridun went up to consult King Hardub of Greece, for the two Kings stood one at the head of each wing, right and left. Now there was with them also a famous cavalier, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... length a couple of burly gendarmes tore him away and, grasping his arms, hurried him—pale, dishevelled, and in that strange, half-conscious condition into which a man sinks when he sees before him only the dark, terrible figure of death, the phantom which is so abhorrent to all our natures—from the building. But on the threshold the party came face to face with Murazov, and in Chichikov's heart the circumstance revived a ray of hope. Wresting himself with almost supernatural strength from the grasp ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... could be pleased with seeing a tiger caress its keeper, if the cruel means by which the fiercest of beasts is taught all the servility of a fawning spaniel, did not recur every instant to my mind; and it is not much less abhorrent to my nature, to see a venerable lion jumping over a stick, than it would be to behold a hoary philosopher forced by some cruel tyrant to spend his days in whipping a top, or playing with a rattle. Every thing to me loses its charm when it is put out of the station ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... things, or any of them, I should have been an execrable and detestable villain, and I should have merited the scorn of every man and woman in the universe: but, even then, even if I had been guilty of all these horrible and unnatural deeds, it would, even under these abhorrent circumstances, have been base in the extreme in the doubled-faced, black-hearted villains of the Courier, the dull Post and the mock Times to attack me in the way they have repeatedly done ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... by means of a mortgage upon it. But my father had instilled into me a perfect horror of anything that savoured of getting into debt, while the mere idea of selling any portion of the property which he had accumulated, almost acre by acre, was absolutely abhorrent to me; therefore, although I had the greatest respect for the judgment of my friends, and fully believed in the financial soundness of their advice, I determined that only in the last resort would I avail ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... it is only in conscious retrospection that I ever definitely traced its damnable approach to form. At the time, it was to me only a seething, dimly phosphorescent cloud of fungous loathsomeness, enveloping and dissolving to an abhorrent plasticity the one object on which all my attention was focussed. That object was my uncle—the venerable Elihu Whipple—who with blackening and decaying features leered and gibbered at me, and reached out dripping ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to the deck, and, as on the other ship, he breathed deeply to rid his lungs and nostrils of the abhorrent stench. The ensign in charge ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... et in mentem venit responsuro mihi, vel raro, vel nunquam, inter nos intercedisse Latinam linguam, organum rescribendi, loquendive. Epistolae tuae, Plinianis elegantiis (supra quod TREMULO deceat) refertae, tam a verbis Plinianis adeo abhorrent, ut ne vocem quamquam (Romanam scilicet) habere videaris, quam "ad canem," ut aiunt, "rejectare possis." Forsan desuetudo Latinissandi ad vernaculam linguam usitandam, plusquam opus sit, coegit. Per adagia quaedam nota, et in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and day, "whether they were needed, or whether they were not," to the delight and admiration of the Irish staff. For pure extravagance, for pure pagan delight in extravagance, the Irishman and woman are hard to beat. The very warmth and generosity of their nature makes it abhorrent to them to stint in any direction, which is one reason, out of many, for the prevailing poverty of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... kept us in the mud of Earth forever, if it could. Reason took us out to the wider universe. Instinct tells me that those out there are my people. Reason tells me that you—" he looked at Bregg, "—who are abhorrent to me, who would make my skin creep if I touched you, you who go by reason—that you are my real people. Instinct made a hell of Earth for millennia—I say we ought to leave it behind us there in the mud and not let it make a hell of the stars. ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor, nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him, he started up as if to plant himself in ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... greater share of the blessings resulting from that social nature, and those rational powers, with which indulgent Heaven has endow'd us, than they could in the state of nature: But there is a degree of subordination, which will for ever be abhorrent to the generous mind; when it is extended to the very borders, if not within the bounds of slavery: A subordination, which is so far from conducing "to the welfare and happiness of the whole", that ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... God, being justice and truth, must judge and condemn them: What else can I do?(771) The ethical necessity of the doom of the people is clear to the Prophet from a very early stage of his ministry,(772) and throughout, though his heart struggles against it. But, if possible, even more abhorrent to God than these sins against domestic and civic piety in themselves, is the fact that they are committed in the very face of His Love and despite all its pleading. With Jeremiah as with Hosea the sin against love is the most hopeless and unpardonable, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the publication of his book "Oceana," after his visit ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... hominum, a quorum consortio abhorrent, praesentia amovenda, nec sermonibus ingratis obtudendi; si quis insaniam ab insania sic curari aestimet, et proterve utitur, magis quam aeger insanit. Crato ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... these two friends of his, let me remind you that a man is known by the company he keeps, and these two were Graeme's sole companions for many a day—those first dark days in the sunny little isle, when all human companionship would have been abhorrent to him. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... think I care about handsome men," said Claire, seeing before her a clean-shaven face which could lay no claims to beauty, but in comparison with which the Major's coarse good looks were abhorrent ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... story. He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairngorms for eyes. To the human observer he is decidedly well-looking; but to the ladies of his race he seems abhorrent. A thorough elaborate gentleman, of the plume and sword-knot order, he was born with a nice sense of gallantry to women. He took at their hands the most outrageous treatment; I have heard him bleating like a sheep, I have seen him streaming blood, and his ear tattered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blindly admired, and hence endeavoured (though for lack of the material they have failed) to imitate him in this one department, his colour. The result has been melancholy enough; an inferior, flimsy, and flashy style has been engendered, utterly abhorrent from any sound and true principle of colouring. Even in Rubens, there is this tendency to the flimsy, to the light glitter, rather than to the substantial glory of the art: but it is much disguised under his daring hand, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the knife, indeed," Sir Edmund Mortimer said; "and yet, abhorrent as is this wholesale murder of the garrison, I cannot but own that it is a politic step, on the part of Glendower. The news will spread throughout Wales, and if so strong a place as New Radnor could not ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... you, my boy," said Paganel: "One day a missionary was reproving a cannibal for the horrible custom, so abhorrent to God's laws, of eating human flesh! 'And beside,' said he, 'it must be so nasty!' 'Oh, father,' said the savage, looking greedily at the missionary, 'say that God forbids it! That is a reason for what you tell us. But don't say it is nasty! If you ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action. Don't rail! Leave off.... I don't know how it is, but there are moments when you are abhorrent to me...." ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Hundred Thirty, he organized "The Free School Society," to fight the division of the school funds among sectarian schools. The idea that any form of religion should be taught at public expense was abhorrent to him. He was denounced as an infidel and an enemy of society, but his purity of life and unselfish devotion to what he knew was right were his shield and defense. The fight was kept up from Eighteen Hundred Thirty to Eighteen Hundred ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... jowl with asciutta and Tuscan tablewine, as any osteria will convince you. To one man the oil is a delight: he will soak himself in it till his thought swims viscid in his pate. To another it is abhorrent: straightway he calls for his German vinegar and drowns the native flavour in floods as bitter as polemics. Your wine too! Overweak for water, says one, who consumes a stout fiaschone and spends a stertorous afternoon ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... perhaps the greatest oddity on the face of the earth; but of a heart sound, and benevolent beyond the generality of mankind. Violently passionate, and in his passions vulgar, rude, boisterous, and so abhorrent of hypocrisy, that he laboured to make himself appear as bad as possible. He was a native of Ireland; and it has often been said of him that in eccentricity and benevolence he was a full match for any man ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... of Zola himself, and my admiration of his epic greatness? About his material there is no disputing among people of our Puritanic tradition. It is simply abhorrent, but when you have once granted him his material for his own use, it is idle and foolish to deny his power. Every literary theory of mine was contrary to him when I took up 'L'Assommoir,' though unconsciously I had always been as much of a realist as I could, but the book possessed me with the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... human creature could be more abhorrent, more incredibly odious of aspect, than Amos Brierwood as he sat there, his red, brutish face redder still with a malign pleasure, his malicious eyes gloating over the rolls of money which he drew from a pocket-book stolen from some waylaid traveler, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... States officials for violation of the fugitive slave law, and both times fined heavily. He believed there could be no virtue in a slave-owner; such a man was accursed of God, and should be accursed of men. His daughter had to a degree imbibed his sentiments, and the idea of slavery was abhorrent to her; but her heart was so gentle, she could hate no one. Calhoun's helplessness appealed to her sympathies, and she forgot he was one of Morgan's raiders. Although young, only eighteen, she ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... had learned that love is stronger than oneself; that the mouth can say Yes when the heart within is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign to come to him? No, by God! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or No! It was ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the shadow of her ample back, Eleanor was making gestures intended to convey the fact that sitting up any longer was abhorrent to her. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... be said of his ancestry and family connections. Contempt for lowly beginnings, abhorrent as it is to any honest mind, would to Lincoln's mind have probably been inconceivable, but he lacked that interest in ancestry which is generally marked in his countrymen, and from talk of his nearer progenitors he seems to have shrunk with a ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... may recur to the idea and apply it. Nearly every State in the world demands from youth a couple of years' service in the army. There they are trained to defend their country—even, if necessary, to slay their own countrymen. There is much that is abhorrent to the imagination in the idea of war, and I am altogether with that noble body of men who are trying, by means of arbitration treaties, to solve national differences by reason rather than by force. But we all recognize something noble in the spirit of the nation where the ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... procession in the moonlight night to Tibbie's new home, between lines of hoarse and eager onlookers. An attempt was made by an itinerant musician to head the company with his fiddle; but instrumental music, even in the streets, was abhorrent to sound Auld Lichts, and the minister had spoken privately to Willie Todd on the subject. As a consequence, Peter was driven from the ranks. The last thing I saw that night, as we filed, bare-headed and solemn, into the newly-married couple's ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... brutality of any kind. He considered capital punishment as barbarous. He was not opposed to it because he regarded it as inaffective as a punishment or a deterrent of crime, but simply because taking life, and especially human life, was abhorrent to him. Hence his "hatred" of wars, armies, soldiers, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson |
