"Revulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... low window smearing their importance; she felt somehow that it did not now matter very much whether she and Stephen, in the interests of science, saw that man fall from his balloon, or, in the interests of art, heard Herr von Kraaffe sing his Polish songs; she experienced, too, almost a revulsion in favour of tinned milk. After meditatively tearing up her note to Messrs. Rose and Thorn, she lowered the bureau lid and left ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Septimus Barmby from Nesta. She strolled beside Louise de Seilles, to breathe sweet-sweet in the dear friend's ear and tell her she loved her. The presence of the German had, without rousing animosity, damped the young Frenchwoman, even to a revulsion when her feelings had been touched by hearing praise of her France, and wounded by the subjects of the praise. She bore the national scar, which is barely skin-clothing of a gash that will not heal since her country was overthrown and dismembered. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wounded with their original sharpness; and the sole of the foot was in time provided with a merciful callosity. Then, too, there was developed an appetite which was voracious for all that was best. Who shall tell the revulsion on reaching home, which I should never have known had I lived a life of idleness! Ellen was fond of hearing me read, and with a little care I was able to select what would bear reading—dramas, for example. She liked the reading for the reading's sake, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... and changed her attitude on seeing him, but she did not turn or move from her place. It was not a moment in which she could feign anything, or manifest any strong revulsion of feeling: the passionate movement of her last speech was still too strong within her. What she felt beside was a dull despairing sense that her interview with Deronda was at an end: a curtain had fallen. But he, naturally, was urged into self-possession and effort by susceptibility ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... artist, with a sudden revulsion of feeling in favour of the journalist. "I should ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... meeting prepared for a renewal of amity, but in these first few moments each was so disagreeably impressed by the look and language of the other that a revulsion of feeling undid all the more hopeful effects of their long severance. On entering, Amy had meant to offer her hand, but the unexpected meanness of Reardon's aspect shocked and restrained her. All but every woman ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... beside him, a revulsion of feeling driving him to frantic efforts. The piercing beauty that had enthralled him has become a thing of terror. The soft, pulpy, growing things that crushed beneath his feet were a menace in their lust ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... it was there!" she gasped. "I had forgotten all about it. I thought it had been destroyed with all the rest. Why is it left to torment me now, now, now?" she cried, angrily. Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, she murmured, brokenly: "Oh, Boy, Boy, is there no escaping you? No forgetting you just when I ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... undulation to the horse's flying leap. And so, with that thick cable of platted hair flapping and surging down her back, she vanished from the scene. She was a phantom of delight, when first she gleamed upon my sight; but the revulsion of feeling was one of the quickest and fullest I ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... she have looked on another bed, unoccupied, untouched, and been told how he, its usual occupant, was at that moment lying in the middle of a chill marsh, under the sombre canopy of cypresses—it would have caused a revulsion in her feelings, sudden, painful, and powerful as ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... concert to suppress every aspiration among their subjects for political liberty. Yet, when Alexander founded the alliance, he meant all that he said. But conspiracies among his own subjects, and popular uprisings throughout Europe, all tended to create in him a revulsion of feeling. From an ardent apostle of liberal ideas, such as he was during all the earlier part of his reign, he was transformed into a violent absolutist, and spent all his later years in aiding the despotic rulers of Spain, Italy, and Germany to crush every ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... to the whole table, that if he went on in that way, she never would think of him otherwise than as a friend, though as that she must always regard him. At this terrible threat the young gentleman became calm, and the young lady, overcome by the revulsion of feeling, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... certainly not a conscious reaching out towards Rome: except on a Roman Catholic theory which might explain all our unrests by that dim desire. It knew little of Europe, it knew nothing of Ireland, to which any merely Roman Catholic revulsion would obviously have turned. In the first instance, I think, the more it is studied, the more it would appear that it was a movement of mere religion as such. It was not so much a taste for Catholic dogma, but simply a hunger for dogma. For dogma means the serious satisfaction of the mind. Dogma ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... found his father-in-law, and told, with the pleasantest, most plausible air, the story of Ida's clandestine marriage, slurring over every detail that reflected on himself, and making very light of Ida's revulsion of feeling, which he represented as a girlish whim, rather than a woman's bitter anger against the husband who had allowed her to marry him under a delusion as to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... again." His hand in arranging the reboso touched hers. It lingered, and she stared up at him, helplessly, her eyes wide, her lips parted. She reminded him of a rabbit caught in a trap, and he had a sudden and violent revulsion of feeling. He rose and offered his arm. "I should be a brute if I kept you talking out here. Slip off and go to bed. I shall start the guests, for I am ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... midst of their deliberations about the future, Lucretius reverently said that he accepted the omen, and gave his vote in accordance with it, and his example was followed by all the rest. The people now showed a strange revulsion of feeling, for they encouraged one another to begin the work of rebuilding, not on any regular plan, but just as each man happened to find a convenient place for his work. Consequently they quickly rebuilt the city, for within a year it is said ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... were sullen, angry looks among the villagers as they went about their preparations. There seemed to be a revulsion of feeling in favor of the plan of resistance of Raymond, the butcher, and there were scowls for Paul, who ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... cold tumors, and has been by some greatly esteemed in cutaneous diseases. It has likewise sometimes been employed as a repellent. Sydenham assures us, that among all the substances which occasion a derivation or revulsion from the head, none operate more powerfully than garlic applied to the soles of the feet: hence he was led to make use of it in the confluent small-pox about the eighth day, after the face began to swell; the ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... the strain on her nerves, but Louise felt the oddest desire to laugh. The elegant Martin cut such a very droll figure as a hero. Then her eye fell on Demming's eager face, and a sudden revulsion of feeling, a sudden keen realization of the tragedy that Martin had averted, brought the tears back to her eyes. Her beautiful head dropped. "Why do you go—now?" ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... terror-stricken. She had expected to walk forth in freedom in a few moments. The revulsion was terrible. Her mother appeared like one shaken with an ague fit. Laura insane! And about to be locked up with madmen! She had never contemplated this. Mr. Graham said he should move at once for a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... make princely the mind of his prince," ignore such conditions of life for the multitude of humble, hard-working folk. We were spending two months in Dresden that winter, given over to much reading of "The History of Art" and after such an experience I would invariably suffer a moral revulsion against this feverish search after culture. It was doubtless in such moods that I founded my admiration for Albrecht Durer, taking his wonderful pictures, however, in the most unorthodox manner, merely as human documents. I was chiefly appealed to by his ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... but one real alternative to this philosophy. It is not atheism—which is seldom more than a revulsion from superstition—because the adherents of absolute atheism are so few, if any, and its intellectual position is too precarious ever to be a menace. An atheist, if such there be, is an orphan, a waif wandering the midnight ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... around the smithy. His first attention, after he had directed the bystanders to detain Waverley, but to abstain from injuring him, was turned to the body of Mucklewrath, over which his wife, in a revulsion of feeling, was weeping, howling, and tearing her elf-locks in a state little short of distraction. On raising up the smith, the first discovery was that he was alive; and the next that he was likely to live ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... applying the child to the breast on every occasion of its crying, without investigating the cause of its complaint, and, under the belief that it wants food, putting the nipple into its crying mouth, until the infant turns in revulsion and petulance from what it should accept with eagerness and joy. At such times, a few teaspoonfuls of water, slightly chilled, will often instantly pacify a crying and restless child, who has turned in loathing ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... into France caused, says De Thou, a strange revulsion in all minds. "During the lifetime of Charles IX., none had seemed more worthy of the throne than Henry, and everybody desired to have him for master. But scarcely had he arrived when disgust set in to the extent of auguring very ill of his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a revulsion of feeling. Marguerite's was essentially a buoyant and active nature, a keen brain which worked and schemed and planned, rather than one ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Blanche and Aubrey agreed that they thought people would have been much happier, but, in fact, the joy was oppressive from very newness. Ethel roamed about, she could not sit still without feeling giddy, in the strangeness of the revulsion. Her father sat, as if a word would break the blest illusion; and Harry stood before each of them in turn, as if about to speak, but turned his address into a sudden caress, or blow on the shoulder, and tried to laugh. Little Gertrude, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... receiver on the hook. She was gone—but it was her voice he had heard—hers—and she was alive. The play of emotion upon him robbed him for the moment of coherent thought, and came and swept over him in a mighty surge and engulfed him; and now in the sudden revulsion from despair and the bitterest of agony his mind was dazed and numbed. It seemed as though he were obeying some subconscious power, as he turned and left the room; as though some influence outside of, and extraneous to, himself gave him a spurious self-mastery, a self-command, a mask of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... As the sun was rising the soldiers of the third legion, called the Gallic, that wintered in Syria but was now by chance in the party of Vespasian, suddenly according to custom saluted the Sun God. The followers of Vitellius, suspecting that Mucianus had arrived, underwent a revulsion of feeling, and panic-stricken at the shout took to flight. (Another instance of how the smallest things can produce great alarm in men who are completely tired out). They retired within the wall, from which they stretched ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... A sudden revulsion broke the horrid spell of which he was the slave; like one awaking from a nightmare, conscience-stricken, he uttered a trembling groan of agony, and with one hand upon his breast, the other clutched upon ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... recoil from our amusement at the ghastly drollery of the two delvers with a shock of horror. That the unconscious Hamlet should stumble on this grave of all others, that it should be here that he should pause to muse humorously on death and decay,—all this prepares us for the revulsion of passion in the next scene, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... a gloomy meal. There was discord in every heart, and a foreshadowing of trouble which no one dared to speak about. For some time after his father had left the table, Ralph sat moodily thinking of Lina's changed manner. A revulsion came over him as he thought of his singular encounter with her that morning, and with the quick anger of youth, he allowed her to rise from the table and leave the room without ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... to be jumped, when the berlin made, to his astonished eyes, an effort to recover its balance like a live thing. It seemed to spring sideways from the brink of the precipice. It not only seemed, it did spring; and O'Toole, drawing rein, in the great revulsion of his feelings, saw, as he rocked unsteadily in his saddle, the carriage tearing safe and unhurt down the very ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... of the details of that story the postmaster at Sunkhaze had told him. This was the same man who had coolly stolen wife and property from his own brother and then had jeered at him, probably with that same expression puckering about his evil, gray eyes. In the sudden revulsion of his feelings Parker wondered if he really had been tempted by the bait held out to him. At least, he had been weighing the chances. He remembered cases where other men who had stopped to weigh advantages had ended in becoming disloyal. He promptly forgot with ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... history from that of any other of the colonies founded by Sulla. Because of her stubborn defence, and her partisanship for Marius, her walls were razed and her citizens murdered in numbers almost beyond belief. Yet at a later time, Sulla with a revulsion of kindness quite characteristic of him, rebuilt the town, enlarged it, and was most generous in every way. The sentiment which attached to the famous antiquity and renown of Praeneste was too strong to allow it to lie in ruins. Further, ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... a sudden revulsion. Surely in the history of human events, there was ample proof that God, or the invisible Power we call by that name, did care? Crime was, and is, always followed by punishment, sooner or later. Who ordained,—who ordains ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... scarce a visible heave of the bosom, she laid the letter on his knees, the change had become so complete, that it seemed as if ANOTHER stood in her place. In very young and sensitive persons, especially female (though I have seen it even in our hard sex), a great and sudden shock or revulsion of feeling reveals itself thus in the almost preternatural alteration of the countenance. It is not a mere paleness-a skin-deep loss of colour: it is as if the whole bloom of youth had rushed away; hollows never ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... jest of everything; but while they were waiting for a boat, Julian took up a bunch of charms that were attached to Ideala's watch-chain and began to examine them coolly, and the unwonted familiarity startled her. With a sudden revulsion of feeling she turned to Lorrimer. She was annoyed by the slight indignity, and also a little frightened. Whatever Lorrimer may have thought of her before, he understood her look now, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... private enterprises were arrested, and thousands of laborers were deprived of employment and reduced to want. Universal distress prevailed among the commercial, manufacturing, and mechanical classes. This revulsion was felt the more severely in the United States because similar causes had produced the like deplorable effects throughout the commercial nations of Europe. All were experiencing sad reverses at ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... attention had been long fixed on the great political revulsion which had brought the wandering tribes of the Wolga and the Don into the heart of France, and whose minds had been incessantly occupied for many months previous to the time of which we speak, (as the minds of almost all Englishmen had been), with wishes for the success, and admiration of the exploits, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... great epoch are those who have understood new currents in the mores. The great reformers of the sixteenth century, the great leaders of modern revolutions, were, as we can easily see, produced out of a protest or revulsion which had long been forming under and within the existing system. The leaders are such because they voice the convictions which have become established and because they propose measures which will realize interests of which the society has become conscious. A hero is not needed. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... them. To Gloria, King seemed stiff and preoccupied; she herself had red spots in her cheeks and was nervously tense. The abrupt approach of Brodie with his repulsive face—at a moment when the world swirled away from her underfoot and a divine madness was in her blood—the reaction and revulsion—all this and the resultant conflict of emotions had worn her out. She was sure of nothing in all the world—for once was not in the least certain of herself—when she drew her hand out of King's and hastened to her guests in the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... The sudden revulsion of feeling such a vision was calculated to occasion in a man elate with joy, may be conceived! For some time after the death of his former foe, he had been visited by not unfrequent twinges of conscience; but of late, borne along ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Geddie's revulsion had been a mild one—no more than a swim in a summer sea after so inglorious an object as a drifting bottle. And now he was himself again. Upon his desk, ready for the post, was a letter to his government tendering his resignation as consul, to ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... boys sat before their camp fire that night, after making their plan, they were far from feeling gloomy. Another revulsion had come. Safe, for the moment, after their recent run for life, it seemed to them that they were safe for all time. They were rested, they had eaten good food in plenty, and the fire was long since but a dim red blur on the horizon. Ashes, picked up by wandering puffs of ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... convicted of the brutal murder of his sweetheart—a murder prompted by jealous rage—at first faces the death penalty, calm, and, to all outward appearances, indifferent to his fate. As he nears the electric chair he is overcome by a revulsion of feeling. He is left dazed, stupefied, stunned. The entire scene in the death-chamber—the witnesses, the spectators, the preparations for execution—become unreal to him. The thought flashes through his brain that a terrible mistake is being made. Why is he being strapped to the chair? ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... late afternoon, she had forced this quiet upon herself; but it could not go on indefinitely. Already the tug and wrench upon her nerves was slackening, and Miss Gannion's words brought the swift revulsion. The older woman shrank before the storm of passionate sorrow. Then she braced herself to bear it, for she realized that it was the flood which must inevitably follow the breaking down of the dykes that ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... me! You know how busy I am; I wish I had thought of it a little sooner, for only this afternoon I sent all the money I had to the bank, otherwise I would pay you at once." It is impossible to describe the revulsion of feeling caused by this unexpected statement. I knew not what to do. Fortunately for me my pan boiled up, and I had a good reason for rushing with it from the room. Glad indeed I was to get away, and keep out of sight until after the doctor had returned to his house, ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... un-American, it loses him money, or it is inefficient. A few years ago he was more honest, when he said he would run his business as he wished and would allow no man to tell him what to do. His instinct of leadership, reinforced powerfully by his innate instinctive revulsion to the confinement of the closed shop, gave the true stimulus. His opposition is psychological, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... self-detesting as she had been violent in her outbreak. It seemed to her that there was nothing, nothing she would not do to make amends to Lawrence for what she had said. She wanted to tell him what it had been that prompted her, but she dared not lest in revulsion at her viciousness he turn on her and ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... with responsive emotion. There was something prophetic in this opportune visit. The matter was not only in his own thoughts, but in the air; it was the spontaneous revulsion of white men against the rule of an inferior race. These were the very men, above all others in the town, to join him in a movement ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Doors opened, here to the bath and dressing chambers, there to the oratory, yonder to the apartments of Sabran. She looked across to the last, and a shudder passed over her; a sense of sickness and revulsion ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... first glance Ruby obtained caused him to leap nearly over the forge; the second created such a revulsion of feeling that he let the ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Scarcely had the attractive objects of the general admiration vanished when the praises which had been kept within due bounds in their presence, were redoubled. The two girls told me that they experienced an indescribable revulsion of feeling at the moment; they thought that everything the nuns had made them believe was false; they renounced religion there and then, and made up their minds to throw themselves into the pleasures of society. "We afterwards had to reconstruct our lives ourselves, embrace ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... not in the power of wine or brandy to elevate the spirits of those who held the higher places at the banquet. They experienced the chilling revulsion of spirits which often takes place, when men are called upon to take a desperate resolution, after having placed themselves in circumstances where it is alike difficult to advance or to recede. The precipice looked deeper ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... times my agony of mind was far more dreadful that any degree of physical suffering could have been, and death seemed to have a fascination for me that I could not resist. Yet when I found myself up to my neck in water, a sudden revulsion of feeling would come over me, and instead of drowning myself I would indulge in a swim or a ride on a turtle's back by way of diverting ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... salutation Tom and Charlie, I need hardly say, were speechless. One in utter despair, the other in utter rage and astonishment. In both the revulsion of feeling caused by the interruption was almost stupefying, and they stood for a moment staring at the intruders in ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... modified and moulded. You did not know me when I was a boy—I was hideous. It seemed to me impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful and desirable, men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us without a revulsion of feeling? Could they really desire us? That is why I could not bear to give women money, nor a present of any kind—no, not even a flower. If I did all my pleasure was gone; I could not help thinking it was for ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... with its tree and shrub filled yard could be seen more plainly, Kate suddenly was filled with the strongest possessive feeling she ever had known. It was home. It was her home. Her place was there, even as Adam had said. She felt a sudden revulsion against herself that she had stayed away seven years; she should have taken her chances and at least gone to see her mother. She leaned from the buggy and watched for the first glimpse of the tall, gaunt, dark woman, who had brought their big ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... was in a fairly happy frame of mind. It is true that he could have been happier, but a revulsion from a great state of suspense had come to him. When he had been so boldly accused in the presence of the Governor General, cold fear had struck at his heart, despite his courage and cunning. He knew that the seeds of suspicion ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... volcanic eruptions preceded or accompanied, as they generally are, by earthquake shocks. Few agents have been so destructive in their effects; and to the real dangers which follow such terrestrial convulsions are to be added the feelings of uncertainty and revulsion which arise from the fact that the earth upon which we tread, and which we have been accustomed to regard as the emblem of stability, may become at any moment the agent of our destruction. It is, therefore, not surprising that the ancient Greeks, who, as well as the Romans, ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... other's faces with blank astonishment. Everything had been so strangely true, and so strangely false, up to this moment, that they could not comprehend this failure at the last moment. It was the strangest, saddest jest! It brought Middleton up with such a sudden revulsion that he grew dizzy, and the room swam round him and the cabinet dazzled before his eyes. It had been magnified to a palace; it had dwindled down to Liliputian size; and yet, up till now, it had seemed to contain in its diminutiveness ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... A revulsion of feeling instantly followed. All the love of former years—all the tender passages of our boyhood—rushed through my brain in an instant. I flew to him and raised him from the earth. At sight of his pale face, beautiful in death, of his long bright locks dabbled in warm ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... I care, anyway?" Revulsion seized Ford harshly. "I guess I can stand it if she can. She came here and married me—it isn't my funeral any more than it is hers. If she wants to be so darned mysterious about it, she can go plumb—to—New York!" There were a few decent traits ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city's surplus lust. Come to me any one who wills—thou shalt meet no denial, therein is my service. But for a second of this sensuality in haste—thou shalt pay in money, revulsion, disease and ignominy.' And that is all. There is not a single phase of human life where the basic main truth should shine with such a monstrous, hideous, stark clearness, without any shade of human prevarication ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy. It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and morning made a resistant pain:—she could only perceive that this would be joy when she had recovered her power of feeling it. Her immediate consciousness was ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ship kept steadily on, passing the dangerous reef of rocks, until she was actually in the waters of the bay. But stranger than all, swimming beneath her bows was the golden head and laughing face of the Indian girl, even as he had seen it the day before. A strange revulsion of feeling overtook him. Believing that she was luring the ship to its destruction, he ran out on the beach and strove to hail the vessel and warn it of its impending doom. But he could not speak—no sound came from his lips. And now his attention was absorbed by the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... in quick revulsion from the hope he had expressed. "The past is full of the pain and shame of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... riot in public, but approved it in private; and continued to act in concert with it, only with cunning, not violence. It caused no honest revulsion of feeling, except in the disgusted public, and they had no power ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... water on a sentimental serenader could not have produced a greater revulsion of feeling than did this unlooked-for return of my collector. Nineteen dollars and fifty cents, instead of about two hundred dollars, were all he had been able to gather up; there was no promise of success in the future on any different scale. I received the ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... I have nothing to reproach myself with," said Pierrette, with a painful revulsion of her heart at the sudden change from unexpected praise to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... went to my heart to see how the eager look sank away, and he was like a worn-down man of fifty. Poor fellow, I found he had ridden two hundred miles, with the hope that I had brought him news that his innocence was proved, and the revulsion was almost more than he could bear. You see, he had no notion that we thought him dead, and so he took the entire absence of any effort to trace him as acquiescence in his guilt; and when he found out how it was, he laid me under the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... act of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moral casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurned psalm and prophet and apostle, Christ and parable ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... the birth of the younger Catharine, Isabella Heathcliff escaped from her husband to the South of England. He made no attempt to follow her, and in her new home she gave birth to a son, Linton—the fruit of timidity and hatred, fear and revulsion—"from the first she reported him to be an ailing, peevish creature." Meanwhile little Catharine grew up the very light of her home, an exquisite creature with her father's gentle, constant nature inspired by a spark of her mother's fire and lightened by a gleam of her wayward caprice. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the cutter, and tied the horse to an old fence-post. Then he and Barney followed the woman into the house. Barney looked at the old blue plaid shawl with utter disgust and revulsion. He had always felt a loathing for the woman, and her being a distant relative on his father's ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Eben was asleep. To have to talk to him while her strained mood was so full of rebellion would be hard; to have to submit to his autumnal kiss, would make that mood blaze into revulsion. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... an utter contempt for man. They may despise the men of affairs for muddling Europe into the most terrible war in history, in the very midst of the greatest civilization of which there is any record. They may experience a secret but profound revulsion from the men wallowing in blood and filth for months on end, living only to kill. The fact that the poor men can't help it does not alter the case. The women can't help it either. Women have grown very fastidious. The sensual women and ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... war; although it is also true that many changes are made which are not improvements, and that reversion to an earlier type, the abandonment of a once fancied improvement, is no unprecedented incident in recent naval architecture and naval ordnance. The revulsion from the monitor, the turreted ship pure and simple, to the broadside battery analogous to that carried by the old ships of Farragut and Nelson, is one of the most singular and interesting changes in men's thoughts that the writer has met, either in his experience or in his professional ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... one coming in here and opening all our cupboards, and spying out cobwebs, and giving a little shriek at the discovery of a new loaf in our larder. She found out that one of her model cottagers had been eating new bread. She said it gave her quite a revulsion of feeling. And then when we went home she showed me her account-books and her medicine-chest. It ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... consent of the prelates, earls, barons, and commonalty of the realm according as hath been hitherto accustomed." It would seem from the tenor of this remarkable enactment that much of the sudden revulsion of popular feeling had been owing to the assumption of all legislative action by the baronage alone. The same policy was seen in a reissue in the form of a royal Ordinance of some of the most beneficial provisions of the Ordinances which had been formally repealed. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Sitting down, I covered my face with my hands as if to hide it more effectually than it could be hidden by night and the forest shadows. What horrible thing, what calamity that frightened my soul to think of, had fallen on me? The revulsion of feeling, the unspeakable horror, the remorse, was more than I could bear. I started up with a cry of anguish, and would have slain myself to escape at that moment; but Nature is not always and utterly cruel, and on this occasion she came to my aid. Consciousness forsook ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... air, not at you," Ruthven Smith excused himself, more or less convinced. Annesley clutched the banisters in the sudden weakness of a great revulsion from panic to relief. She might have known that he would somehow rescue her, even from her ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... 1100 and 1650, which had been neglected for a century or more. The Castle of Otranto, which was "an attempt to blend the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels" is an early symptom of this revulsion to the past; and it exercised a charm on Scott as well as on Mrs. Radcliffe and her school. The Castle of Otranto is significant, not because of its intrinsic merit, but because of its power in shaping the destiny ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... thing. Eager as man is to find his woman virgin, woman cares little about the similar thing in man. Only the very young, pure, inexperienced girl feels an instinctive revulsion from the real rou, but other women, according to Rochebrune, love a man in proportion to the number of other women who love or have loved him. This is difficult to understand, but it is a fact that a man has an easy task with women ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... disgust and an instantaneous revulsion of feeling. What! Should I call in the aid of all those elaborate appliances to dispatch a poor trembling devil like this? I would have none of them. The concussor was good enough for him. Nay, it was ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... don't mix up in no quarrel 'twixt a man and his woman." And—"'Tain't our affair. When he comes he'll come a-poppin'." Such were the hasty comments. I felt a peculiar heat, a revulsion of shame and indignation, which made the present seem much more important than the past. And there was the recollection of her, crying, and still the accents of her last appeals ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... he remained true, however, to the promises made in March and to their legitimate consequences; and that proof must be given of the return of the Viennese to their old sentiments of loyalty before he could again appear among them. A certain revulsion of feeling in the Emperor's favour now became manifest in the capital, and emboldened the Ministers to take the first step necessary towards obtaining his return, namely the dissolution of the Students' Legion. They could count with some confidence on the support of the wealthier part of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... shrinking at the picture that this man's attitude and tone conjured up. There are times when anticipations of pleasure seem to be rendered more alluring by reason of description. It is also so with expectancy of pain. Words may paint that picture in crimson colours so that our revulsion is intensified ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... its strange surprises. Through my whole ride and the indulgence in these thoughts I was conscious of a great inner revulsion against all I had intimated and even honestly felt while talking with the inspector. Perhaps this is what this wise old official expected. He had let me talk, and the inevitable reaction followed. I could now see only Mr. Grey's goodness and claims ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... Don, with a look of revulsion, which he tried to conceal. "Look here," he said; "if you will take a message for me to my mother, in Jamaica Street, you shall ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... A great revulsion in popular sentiment occurred when the true details of the strike movement were made known. The respectable element of the old union had scored a great victory, and work was resumed with many undesirable employes ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... laid from the pavement to the cart, and to time their efforts they shouted or chanted noisily—much to Keith's joy and the disgust of his mother. On such occasions the air of the lane was apt to take on a special pungency, and as he sniffed it, he would have a sensation of mixed pleasure and revulsion. At other times when the carts stopped in front of the warehouse below the distillery, odours of an exclusively enjoyable character would tickle his nostrils—odours that later he might encounter in their own ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... quick revulsion from annoyance and disgust to a very lively flash of fright, Palla involuntarily slackened her pace and widened the distance between ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... but inwardly so full of shortcomings? These plans filled her mind now as she went by her son's side through the mossy paths where, even in the height of summer, it was always a little cold. She could not speak of them, feeling a horror of herself, an ashamed sense that to betray the revulsion of her thoughts to her boy would be to put her down from her position in his respect for ever. Between these mutual reluctances to betray what was really in them the two went along very silently, as if they were counting their steps, their heads a little bowed down, the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... The revulsion was too much for the poor mother's heart. She sank to the floor. He lifted her in his arms and carried her out, and for the rest of that day my Aunt Ann, that "hard and unsympathizing woman," passed from one strange fainting-fit into another, until we were in almost ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of increasing his anger, as the detective had naturally expected, it appeared to have the contrary effect, for every vestige of passion immediately disappeared from his face, leaving only its natural disfigurement to plead against him. He approached them, and Ransom, at least, was conscious of a revulsion of feeling in his favor, there was such restraint and yet such undoubted power in ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... courtesying. Lord Grosville said, heartily, "Upon my word, Kitty, you ought to go on the stage!" and she smiled upon him, too, in a flutter of feeling, forgetting his scolding and her own impertinence, before dinner. The revulsion, indeed, throughout the company—with two exceptions—was complete. For the rest of the evening Kitty basked in sunshine and flattery. She met it with a joyous gentleness, and the little figure, still bedraped in white, became the centre of the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spring and flowers and pure bright skies. May! He dared to whisper it, and he tingled from head to heel. His heart fondled it: May! May! May! and, with inexpressible vague, sweet longing, May! once more. Then her hair! then her voice! then the rosy softness of her hand! then, with hideous revulsion, from her perfections to himself! The gulf of shame! His boots were an epic of despair, his necktie was a tragedy. Then back to her with all the graces of the heavens upon her! Then back to himself again, and the deep damnation ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... is, rocking just as if the baby wasn't lost," Maria thought, with the bitterest revulsion and sarcasm. When she opened the door she immediately smelled tea, the odor of broiling beefsteak and fried potatoes. "Eating just as if the baby wasn't lost," she thought. She rushed into the parlor, and there was Ida swaying back and forth in her rocking-chair, and there were three ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the revulsion of ideas we have all undergone. Poor Miss Morley left plenty of farewells for you. You can't think haw pleased she was ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... words to the cook as to a public-house at Stevenage. She had told him not to be an old fool, and that he would lose his money, but she had thought of the public-house. There had been a mutinous feeling. Matthew helped his master out of the carriage, and then came a revulsion. That "froth of a beer-barrel," as Matthew had dared to call her, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... detail, had told Finn nothing, save that his quarry in this strange hunting was man. But the Wolfhound's eyes could not mislead him, and in the instant of his suddenly arrested spring—the spring which it had taken every particle of strength in his great body to check—he had known, with a sudden revulsion of feeling which positively stopped the beating of his heart, that this man the pack had trailed was none other than the Man of all the world for him; the man whose person was as sacred as his will to Finn; the Master, whose loss had been the beginning ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... long time upon the roof, wondering at the grotesque changes of the day. I recalled my mental states from the midnight prayer to the foolish card-playing. I had a violent revulsion of feeling. I remember I flung away the cigar with a certain wasteful symbolism. My folly came to me with glaring exaggeration. I seemed a traitor to my wife and to my kind; I was filled with remorse. I resolved to leave this strange undisciplined dreamer of great ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... with you,' said Mr. Kendal; and as he was anxious for her to make the attempt, she moved away, though in perplexity, and in the revulsion of feeling, with a sort of disgust towards the boy who had deceived her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was only for a moment. Some impulse moved him to look down. Under his heels the white stars on their blue field were being ground into the mire. A sudden revulsion of feeling swept over him, a sense of horror at his own conduct. His arms fell to his sides. His face paled till the blood splashes on it stood out startlingly distinct. He moved slowly and carefully backward till the folds of the banner were no longer under his feet. He ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... blame. The public however continued to think that the gentlemen who had been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till a Jacobite plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling. [545] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unable to think save of the truth that was driven so cruelly into my mind. The first realising of things that cannot be undone brings to a young man a fierce impotent resentment; that was in my heart, and with it a sudden revulsion from what I had desired, as intemperate as the desire, as cruel, it may be, as the thing which gave it birth. Nell's laughter died away, and she was silent. Presently I felt a hand rest on my hands as though seeking to convey sympathy in ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... scarcely so said when I repented my candour, for I observed in the face of Mr. Stanton a sudden revulsion of feeling, an utter incredulity of the accusation I had thus hazarded, and for the first time a doubt of my own innocence. The fascination exercised by Margrave was universal; nor was it to be wondered at: for besides the charm of his joyous presence, he seemed so singularly free ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was really and truly no reason, so far, to believe that he had deserted her. The heart of the unhappy woman bounded in her bosom, under the first ray of hope that had warmed it for four days past. Under that sudden revulsion of feeling, her weakened frame shook from head to foot. Her face flushed deep for a moment—then turned deadly pale again. Blanche, anxiously watching her, saw the serious necessity for giving some ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... better things. She now rebelled at the thought of facing this sweet, truthful-eyed girl with a lie on her own lips. Marian's threat to expose her fault had awakened her to a bitter knowledge of her cousin's unbounded malice. She experienced a belated revulsion of feeling toward Judith Stearns. Jane Allen's explanation of the gown incident, scornfully repeated to Elsie by Marian, now stood for ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... infinite, changed (as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a dreadful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable and in the light of which whatever happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... come before the public eye), animates also the smallest communities in the realm. The great passion-stirring process, Hens versus Crows, lasted for some seven months. Over and over again the hedge was examined. Now the elder thought he had the best of it, only to be damped by a revulsion of feeling in favour of the housekeeper. The finding of the Session was adverse to the lady. The fact that she had practically called the elder a son of Belial could not be got over. The minister, holding the scales of justice, was forced, in ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... of her terror, she experienced so great a revulsion from despair to joy that a faintness came upon her, and she almost swooned. She saw who the intruder was. For when he stepped into the recess he turned towards her, and the dim light struck upon him and showed her the contour of his face. It was her ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... left him, had mastered his grief, if not his affection; and, compelled to look forward on that perilous road over which madness and revulsion were hurrying him, he had seen, from the very first glance, his father exposed to the royal obstinacy, since Athos had himself been the first to oppose any resistance to the royal will. At this moment, from a very natural sequence of feeling, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... She was cool, cool as Drummond, although she knew her heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. There was Kitty Carr, in a revulsion of feeling, her hands pressed tightly to her head again, as if it were bursting. She was swaying as ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... regrets the excessive importance attached to a possible future state: he looks upon this as a psychical stimulant, a day dream, whose revulsion and reaction disorder waking life. The condition may appear humble and prosaic to those exalted by the fumes of Fancy, by a spiritual dram-drinking, which, like the physical, is the pursuit of an ideal happiness. But he is too wise to ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... with a long breath, jumping up again and half pulling her after him in a revulsion of relief, "come on deck and let's walk—and talk—or," he laughed excitedly, "I don't know what ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... The very tall young man whose excitement came on so soon, appears to have his head glued to the table in the pantry, and cannot be detached from—it. A violent revulsion has taken place in the spirits of Mrs Perch, who is low on account of Mr Perch, and tells cook that she fears he is not so much attached to his home, as he used to be, when they were only nine in family. Mr Towlinson has a singing in his ears and a large ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... revulsion from his own nature, which was flawed with this sentimentalism, this jejune expectancy. At nightfall, rising wearily from his chair, he wondered how he was to ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman |
