"Sickening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... descended, he had felt the tearing of his shirt, the sharp, keen pain in his chest, the swimming of his senses. Yet even then he struck again with passionate anger, and his assailant went down amongst the chairs with a dull, sickening crash! ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to her the sickening details of his despicable plan, or whether he judged it sufficient for her to know only the foul beginnings of his treason without being initiated into its wretched consummation; whether it was due to any of these reasons or simply to plain indifference or ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and I knew it not, But jested with the heart that lov'd me well. The sickening echo of each foolish word I said to pain him ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... if they knew, and that is quite different. Besides, we meant to put all the things back in their proper places when we had done with them before anyone found out about it. But I must not anticipate (that means telling the end of the story before the beginning. I tell you this because it is so sickening to have words you don't know in a story, and to be told to look ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... gray furry object. It stopped. Then it came faster. It magnified. It was a huge beast. Carley had no control over mind, heart, voice, or muscle. Her legs gave way. She was sinking. A terrible panic, icy, sickening, rending, possessed her ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... everything takes a different hue, in the morning when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and after the months of sickening indecision Nancy experienced such a delightful sense of rest, such a freedom from suspense, that she actually laughed aloud as she said to herself: "Oh, I guess perhaps it's not going to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... too, and gave the credit to Tim, who in turn made sure that his cousin had lain down to sleep. So no one spoke, and the rustling was heard again, followed now sharply by a quick movement, a horrible yell, a rushing sound, and then the sickening thud of a heavy blow. Before the boys could quite grasp what it meant, there was a sharp rattling, as if a big stick was being rapidly moved in the chimney, then another yell, a fresh rattling as of another great stick against the stone sides ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... blew off. Her face turned white with a sickening dread, and her breath began to come in frightened sobs. On and on they went, and, as the scenes of a lifetime will be crowded into a moment in the memory of a drowning man, so a thousand things came flashing into Lloyd's mind. She ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... great a lady, she had sat on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried up the blood-stained baskets of long-pig. And now behold her, out of that past of violence and sickening feasts, step forth, in her age, a quiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you might find at home (mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a score of country houses. Only Vaekehu's mittens were of dye, not of silk; and they had been paid for, not in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heart-sickening attempts to rally under this last blow communicated a dispiriting influence to the company, the greater part of whom, with the view of raising their spirits, attached themselves with extra cordiality to the cold brandy and water, the first perceptible effects ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... dreadful abyss, which providentially received him unhurt, and a friendly wave drove him on shore; where, however, he remained some minutes in a lifeless stupor, owing to the rapidity of his descent from the brain-sickening precipice. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that rival rose Yet fragrant in a heart remembering His former talks with Edith, on him breathed Far purelier in his rushings to and fro, After his books, to flush his blood with air, Then to his books again. My lady's cousin, Half-sickening of his pension'd afternoon, Drove in upon the student once or twice, Ran a Malayan muck against the times, Had golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... anteroom and the sickening, stinking corridor, the Englishman and Nekhludoff, accompanied by the inspector, entered the first cell, where those sentenced to hard labour were confined. The beds took up the middle of the cell and the prisoners were all in bed. There were about 70 of them. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... moment a frightful tremor shook the earth. The station building gave sickening creaks; then ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... her proud heart, to sit there, face to face with him, and have him tendering her false oath at the altar again and again for her acceptance, and pressing it upon her like the dregs of a sickening cup she could not own her loathing of or turn away from'. How shame, remorse, and passion raged within her, when, upright and majestic in her beauty before him, she knew that in her spirit she was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... That sickening grip in the chest which is a real, physical pain, though the hurt be given to the soul of a man, slowed Dade's steps to a lagging advance towards the tableau the two made on the steps. So had the senorita sent him dizzy with desire (and with hope to brighten it) in the two weeks and more ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... odor; and soon all agreed that he was right. As the door had given way a little, the passage had gradually become filled with a sickening vapor. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... appalling. That frightful, sickening smell that strikes one in the face like something tangible. Ugh! I immediately grew dizzy and faint and had a mad desire to run. I think if I hadn't been a non-com with a certain small amount of responsibility to live up to, I ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... other a pocket-handkerchief soaked with chloroform. Laverick, quick and resourceful, feeling his left arm sink helpless, struck at the man with his right and sent him staggering against the wall. The handkerchief, with its load of sickening odor, fell to the pavement. The man was obviously worsted. Laverick sprang at him. They were almost unobserved, for the crowd was all intent upon the accident in the roadway. With wonderful skill, his assailant eluded his attempt to close, and tore at his coat. Laverick struck at him again ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... A sickening crushing sound, with a sort of muffled snap, spoke of a broken jaw-bone; and with no word or cry, the Chinaman fell. As the trap descended with a bang, I heard the thud of his body on ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... everything. The splendid establishment we are to set up, the great income we are to have. I heard papa tell Richard that half his fortune should go to me on my wedding-day. It was sickening to hear how much they made of Money, and how little they thought of Love. What ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... electrical ships were seriously damaged, and one, close beside the flagship, changed color, withered and collapsed, with the same sickening phenomena that had made our hearts shudder when the first disaster of this kind occurred during our brief battle ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... sickening work, though there's a grand sort of feeling of carrying your life in your hand. They say the Sepoy regiments have behaved shamefully. There is no sign of anything like funk among our fellows that I have seen. Sergeant Winburn has ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... earshot. Bell found his jaws clenched. There is a certain racial taint widespread in Brazil which leads to an intolerable arrogance when there is the slightest opportunity for its exercise. Ribiera had the taint, and Bell felt a sickening wrath at the terrified submission ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... came beating up to my throat and then, just as I thought I should choke, it slid down to my boots, sickening me. I didn't say a word. I sat there, my foot in my ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... pit by a hydraulic crane, and, at the very moment when Abe lost his balance, it had reached the point beneath which he was sitting. There was an agonised cry from the vesselmen on their platform, a hissing splash with great gouts of liquid fire flying in all directions, a sickening smell, and then, a few minutes later, a clergyman, hastily summoned from the adjoining church, was reciting the burial service over the calcined ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... glanced at the display of Hot Rod and its taut-cable, and realized with a sickening sense of unreality that no jet action on Hot Rod could have caused it to lead the station in this northerly direction; and that instead it was placidly trailing behind. It was now farther south of the Space Lab than ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... her. It was too dreadful to be true; and she chid herself for always seeing the possible dark side of future events, and told herself that she must change in this respect. With all her might she strove to reason away the sickening fear at her heart, saying how utterly beyond belief it was that Menie could be going to die—Menie, who had always been so well and so merry. She was growing too fast, that was all; and when the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... hypocrite. He says out what he means, and he usually means something nasty. Tchaikovsky, on the contrary, taking advantage of the peculiar medium in which he works, tells the most awful, the most sickening, the most immoral stories; and if he had printed them in type he would have been knouted and exiled to ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... idea," declared Susan Atwell. "I sit near her, so I'll be the first one to hold out the olive branch. But if you hear something drop on the floor with a dull, sickening thud, you'll know that my particular variety ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his offences, if a lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the wife he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other a dog-wolf—to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the other; and each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his own immaculate standard—of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... as bad a plight as I was. Cunningham, indeed, was far worse, for, unlike ours, his hands were soft and tender, and when, after the oars had been laid in, he stretched out his hands, palms upwards, and showed them to me, they presented a positively sickening sight. But when I murmured my regret and commiseration he only smiled and expressed the conviction that they would be all right again in a week, for he was one of the pluckiest men I ever met, grit all through, straight as a die, and with ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... back into barbarism. The ladies hated both the cause and the consequence, they had a revulsion from the object, of the above contention. But call it not a contention: there is nobility in that. This was a compromise, a degrading union, with very sickening results. Whether they came of an excess of the sprinkling, could not well be guessed. The drenching at least ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sickening horror overwhelmed me. Almah had spoken these words and stood looking at me with a face of woe. This, then, was that daily task from which she was wont to return in such sadness—an abhorrent task to her, and one to which familiarity had never reconciled her. What was she doing ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... had the curious idea of putting his ear to the ground said it was as though the earth were being smitten great blows with a Titan's hammer. After the first few shells had plunged screaming amid clouds of earth and dust into the German trenches, a dense pall of smoke hung over the German lines. The sickening fumes of lyddite blew back into the British trenches. In some places the troops were smothered in earth and dust or even spattered with blood from the hideous fragments of human bodies that went hurtling through the air. At one point the upper half of a German officer, his cap ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... released all holds and fallen upon the coal at the bottom of the shaft. His cries and shrieks of anguish were terrible, and I was reminded of the starving rats which had squealed up that same shaft during the first months of the voyage. The thing was sickening. I prefer that men be killed cleanly ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... of it is an accumulation of hearsay evidence. Its chief object was to depict Ralegh as a man whom nobody need regret; to sneer away his lustre and dignity. With this sordid view the trivial episode of the malingering scene at Salisbury is described with sickening minuteness. Few writers of authority have ventured to applaud the treatise. An exception is Mr. Spedding, who could not well let judgment pass against his idol without a word of defence for one of the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... dignified acceptance of a treatment he had not merited, and a steady resolve not to waver in his readiness to serve his country, nor to cease asking an opportunity to do so. Many years later, at a time of still more sickening suspense, he wrote: "I am in truth half dead, but what man can do shall be done,—I am not made to despair;" and now, according to a not improbable story, he closed an application for employment with the words, "If your Lordships should be pleased to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... fully felt at first—that remained to torment me at a future day. And soon after our return came printed in large type in all the newspapers, "Declaration of War between France and Germany." Mine was among the hearts which panted and beat with sickening terror in England while the dogs of war were fastened ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... great part of its adherents, a new culture, a new literature, a new art, a new attitude toward sex relations and religion and individual freedom, a new conception of life as a whole. In face of this fact it is sickening to see individuals, whom one knows to be atheists, defending Socialism as the will of God and the fulfilment of Christianity; and other individuals, whom one knows to be free-lovers, going out of their way to defend the home and family against the inroads ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... sickening," thought Trent as he went not into the street and turned the corner toward the rue de Seine; "slaughter, slaughter, phew! ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... down on the straw). Ah, now that I've seen her, life seems more sickening than ever! It was only with her that I ever really lived! I've ruined my life for nothing! I've done for myself! (Lies down.) Where can I go? If mother earth would ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as he had said—there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared nothing, his unnatural appetite had known no truth. It was ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question or two, said, 'Certainly.' There being a window at each end of this room, back and front, it might have been ventilated; but it was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very sickening. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... or wearing apparel under their arms or thrown over their shoulders. The old men tottered along in the rear, giving words of comfort and cheer to the excited and frightened women and little ones. It was a sickening sight to see these helpless and inoffensive people hurrying away from the dangers of battle in the chilly morning of December, seeking some safe haunt in the backwoods, yet they bore it all ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... was a sound of strange creaking and groaning, as though some ponderous machinery were being set in motion. There was a sickening sensation, as though the very ground beneath his feet were giving way, and the next instant Raymond became aware that this indeed was the case. The great flagstone upon which he and his captor were standing was sinking, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... him rather hard that, merely because he had wanted the roan badly enough to—er—exercise a little diplomacy in order to get him, they should keep harping on the subject like that. And to have Coleman making medicine to get the roan into that contest was, to say the least, sickening. Andy's private belief was that a twelve-year-old girl could go round up the milk-cows on that horse. He had never known him to make a crooked move, and he had ridden beside him all one summer and had seen him in all places and under all possible conditions. He was a dandy cow-horse, and dead ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... through the smoke—you may be sure Mr. Pierce is in the thickest cloud, though over the smallest stew-pan,' a voice echoed, as if broken on the winds. 'All right!' I muttered, confronting on my way the still stronger odour of the sickening steam. My intention was to have a political discussion with the cook (Fourney by name) and say a thing or two to the General; for I had got a sort of cross-grained notion into my head that he was compounding a grand stew for the black pig with the horns. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... effect should be sulphurous is not clear. That a vast object from external regions should be sulphurous is in line with many data. This phenomenon is described in the Monthly Weather Review, July, 1881, as "a strange sulphurous vapor ... burning and sickening all who approached close ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... you," continued Summerhayes, "how I hated my brother: you've heard me curse him many a time. Well, the reason's all set down in these books. It worried him as he lay sickening for his death. To put it short, it was this: He was rich—I was poor. I was married—he was single. He had ships—I had none. So he gave me command of one of his tea-clippers, and I handed over to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... it—wondered what else I had got; turned up Saint Vitus's Dance—found, as I had expected, that I had that, too—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learned that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... infinitesimal calculus. As a matter of fact the average English boy of fifteen has only just looked at elementary algebra. But every one who knows anything of educational science knows, that by the simple expedient of throwing overboard all that non-educational, mind- sickening and complex rubbish about money and weights and measures, practice, interest, "rule of three," and all the rest of the solemn clap-trap invented by the masters of the old Academy for Young Gentlemen to fool the foolish ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... in the open! Three glorious days in the sunshine! "Far from the madding crowd!" Far from the rush and stir and whirl and hum of business! Far from the McNamara horror, and its sickening aftermath of jury bribing! ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of; — nor would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... out of Judd's vision. There was a sickening buzzing in his head ... he looked at Rudolph with undisguised ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... a mighty sweep; the air-ship gave a backward tilt, fluttered for a moment like a bird in a storm—then shot down with sickening swiftness! ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... trees that still held had descended to the ground. The wind had yet again increased. His own tree showed that. It no longer swayed or bent over and back. Instead, it remained practically stationary, curved in a rigid angle from the wind and merely vibrating. But the vibration was sickening. It was like that of a tuning-fork or the tongue of a jew's-harp. It was the rapidity of the vibration that made it so bad. Even though its roots held, it could not stand the strain for long. Something ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... making the girls drunk. They gave them red wine and then white, and the voices rose slightly with the maidens' cheek flushes. I watched, wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speech thickened and their eye-balls grew watery. It was sickening to see, because I knew what was going to happen. My friend eyed the group, and said:—"Maybe they're children of respectable people. I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... "Sickening, ain't it?" commented Bud, taking encouragement from Stratton's involuntary frown. "I been expectin' 'em ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... tough; tough and healthy. When half of them was sick and the other half sickening, this rogue kept his legs and doctored his fellows. But for him there'd ha' been more deaths than there was. Say fifteen pounds for him, Colonel. That's cheap enough. He's tough, I tell your honour—tough and strong, though ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Mrs. Haviland went on, mildly triumphant. "And no matter how brave or how independent a woman is, she doesn't like THAT." There came to the speaker suddenly, under her smooth flow of words, a sickening shock of realization: it was of Rachael and Clarence she was speaking, her nearest relatives; it was one of the bulwarks of her world that was threatened! Without her knowledge her tone became less sure and more sincere. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... if a shade too methodically at times, the racking torments of hunger and thirst, the dreary importunity of the rain, the loathsomeness of the all-invading mud, the sickening horror of the carrion smells, the pathetically ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... gratitude in her eyes; but the old gentleman only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively sickening to Denis. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honest, and the fortune which he had sent over when the clouds were gathering thick, had been well invested by them and produced an ample revenue. But what comfort could there be for their poor hearts thus agonised by doubts and sickening fears? ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... minute he felt a sickening swirling sensation and realized that he was in the whirlpool's ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... man on the front platform saw the boy fall, made a flying leap off the moving car, fell, but scrambled up and pulled the boy off the track. It was sickening; I thought ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... was slurping down my second bottle of coffee I happened to look out the viewport and see the Pilot's body and the darkening puddle around it and the coffee began to taste, well, not bad, but sickening. I don't think it was guilty conscience. Deathlanders outgrow those if they ever have them to start with; loners don't keep consciences—it takes cultures to give you those and make them work. Artistic inappropriateness is the closest I can come to describing what bothered ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... way," she said, with a sickening little laugh, "what was the man's name—your friend, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... it to Billy Louise to put in her blue plush treasure box. It would even have brought to life that first faith in him. She might have told him—one never can foresee the lengths to which a woman's confessional mood will carry her—about that corral hidden in the canyon, and of her sickening certainty that she had seen him ride stealthily away from it. If she had, he would have convinced her that she was mistaken, and that he had that afternoon been washing gold a good ten miles from there, until it was too dark ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... He hated Nappy and Pop and every one of the millions of people looking silently on around the world. But most of all, he hated Milt. It was a weird, sickening thing, that hatred. But only a mentally sickening thing. Physically, it seemed to make Frankie stronger, because when the bell rang and he got up and walked into a straight right, it ...
— Vital Ingredient • Gerald Vance
... there was time to recall the facts he feared that the negro had been taken. He had secured but a few yards' start in the race, and his pursuer was a white man, able to back speed with intelligence. Griswold had a sickening fit of despair when he contemplated the possibility of failure with the goal almost in sight; and the reaction, when he stumbled upon the negro skulking in the shadows of a lumber cargo, was sharp enough to make him faint ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... 21st, I found the air in the bushy fields and lanes under the woods loaded with the perfume of the witch-hazel,—a sweetish, sickening odor. With the blooming of this bush, Nature says, "Positively the last." It is a kind of birth in death, of spring in fall, that impresses one as a little uncanny. All trees and shrubs form their flower-buds in ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... after its ligaments have been destroyed in this manner, is loosened, and the bones are now freely movable. Their manipulation gives to the touch a sickening, grating sound—in other words, we have crepitus. This, of course, indicates that the articular cartilages have become greatly eroded by the inflammatory process, and so left what we may term 'raw' surfaces of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... ribbons in her clutches. She heard the swift oncoming of the motor boat and feared lest its waves might even yet wash the little form away that she held so insecurely. She refused to lift her eyes as the sound of the engine grew louder and she felt a sickening fear of the first waves that might reach her from ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... the battlefield. The horrors of that dreadful winter on the Crimean peninsula, which stared in the face not only the French and English armies but also the Russians themselves, a thousand miles from their homes, have never been fully told. They form one of the most sickening chapters ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... A sickening feeling suddenly overwhelmed Jasper, and he felt faint. He looked keenly into the faces of the men standing near, but their eyes were averted. Did they believe him to be guilty of such a foul deed? he asked himself. Something told ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... far-off, but close down—the sorcerer's moon, large and feverish. The colouring is intricate and delirious, as of "scarlet lilies." The influence of summer is like a poison in one's blood, with a sudden bewildered sickening of life and all things. In Galahad: a Mystery, the frost of Christmas night on the chapel stones acts as a strong narcotic: a sudden shrill ringing pierces through the numbness: a voice proclaims that the Grail has gone forth through the great ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... dispassionate student; the connecting link escaped him; from such a dual nature, it was impossible he should predict behaviour; and he asked himself if he had done well to plunge into a business of which the end could not be foreseen? and presently after, with a sickening decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to strike his father? For he had struck him - defied him twice over and before a cloud of witnesses - struck him a public buffet before crowds. Who had called him to judge his father in these precarious and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no news about myself, as I am merely slaving over the sickening work of preparing new editions. I wish I could get a touch of poor Lyell's feelings, that it was delightful to improve a sentence, like a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... silent and deserted. I was quite sure that Mr. Browne had had urgent reasons for retiring. I had indeed anticipated the measure: I hardly hoped to find him at the Fort, and had given him instructions on the subject of his removal, yet a sickening feeling came over me when I saw that he was really gone; not on my own account, for, with the bitter feelings of disappointment with which I was returning home, I could calmly have laid my head on that desert, never to raise it again. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... a day of calms and baffling airs, and a sickening swell rolled in from the south that made of the brigantine a staggering, squealing platform, hammering all the Viking spirit out of Little for a while and forcing him to run to cover like a very greenhorn. Barry visited him in his ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... his office, muttering angrily. Philip's heart sank. When Friday morning came he went into the window with a sickening sense of shame. His cheeks were burning. It was horrible to display himself to the passers-by, and though he told himself it was foolish to give way to such a feeling he turned his back to the street. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and that there remained a black and disfigured mass which the fire had not consumed. The previously prepared coating of mud was then made to furnish a clay covering for the body, so as to conceal the sickening spectacle from the view of the relatives and spectators. Sometimes, however, the furnace accomplished its work satisfactorily, and there was nothing to be seen at the end but greasy ashes and scraps of calcined bones. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... girl. But Catholics, who have always reservations and queer spots of secrecy, can manage these things better. And I dare say that two things made this easier—the death of Florence and the fact that Edward was obviously sickening. He appeared, indeed, to be very ill; his shoulders began to be bowed; there were pockets under his eyes; he ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... married, my dear? Isn't it sickening for you to be living in that club and me to be living at Brixton, when we might be living in our own home? I hate this beastly separation every night. Let's ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... have to listen to soul-sickening speeches from them that deny it freedom and justice—about its bein' a damosk rose, and a seraphine, when it knows it hain't: it knows, if it knows any thing, that it is ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... noise, and I was flung, hurled, from the battlement, down! down! down! Faster and faster I sank in a dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom. The light faded. Dampness and darkness were round about me. As before, for days and days I rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sank into thickening darkness,—and yet not darkness, but a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for marching. With great pomp, he recrossed the Monongahela just below the point where Turtle Creek enters from the east. Within a hillside ravine, but a hundred yards inland, the brilliant column fell into an ambuscade of Indians and French half-breeds, suffering that heart-sickening defeat which will ever live as one of the most tragic events ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... family cannot exist without children, I long to speed the moment from which the joys of family, where alone I am to find my life, shall date their beginning. At present I live a life all expectation and mystery, except for a sickening physical discomfort, which no doubt serves to prepare a woman for suffering of a different kind. I watch my symptoms; and in spite of the attentions and thoughtful care with which Louis' anxiety surrounds me, I am conscious ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... ascent, sometimes driven half mad by the booming of the dynamite, here threading an icy tunnel, there on the edge of a precipice, almost fainting in the heat, listening madly to the sound of water far below. Then, as you return through the sinister town of Torano with its sickening sights and smells, you come into the pandemonium of the workshops, where nothing has a being but the shriek of the rusty saws drenched with water, driven by machinery, cutting the marble into uniform slabs to line urinals or pave a closet. At last, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... must fail, for she loves the vice. He has one of the best brains of this day prolific in brains; a distressing capacity for affection, human to the core. At the age of forty-two, in the maturity of his mental powers, he carries with him a constant sickening sense of humiliation; a proud man, he lives in daily fear of exposure and shame. At the age of forty-two, in the maturity of his manhood, he meets the woman who conquers his heart, his imagination, who compels his faith ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... they were greeted with answering yells, and the sickening gossip of his misadventure at Laramie was forgotten when they saw his willing captive. The fierce old women swarmed around, yelling at Seet-se-be-a in no complimentary way, but the fury of possible mothers-in-law ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... treasures of monasteries, and the decorations of some of the proudest mansions of antiquity; and did we not turn our eyes and regard the infinitely superior works of Nature, alike bountifully spread before the poor and the rich man, the heart might feel an inward sickening at the question. In the state carved-oak bed-room is a finely carved walnut-wood German cabinet of the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... that I had ascended above the mouth, and was journeying rapidly toward the top of the tower. It had all happened with that sickening, surprising suddenness that ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... Arnott, each conscious of their own particular plans, were each apprehensive that the warning pointed at himself: Mr Gosport was offended at being included in the general appellation of sycophants; Mrs Harrel was provoked at being interrupted in her ramble; and Captain Aresby, sickening at the very sight of him, retreated the moment ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... caught the rope and began to pull. He had occasion now to bless the years of hard work that had made his body vigorous and his muscles hard and strong. Slowly he drew himself up out of the clinging ooze which closed behind him with a sickening, sucking sound. Once clear of the mud, it was an easy feat to go up the rope hand over hand and soon he was standing beside Charley at the foot of the tree where they were speedily joined ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Flung it—with naked arms, and streaming hair Floating like sea-weed on the tide of wind, Coal-black and lustreless—to feed the sea. But after each poor sacrifice, despair, Like the returning wave that bore it far, Rushed surging back upon her sickening heart; While evermore she moaned, low-voiced, between— Half-muttered and half-moaned: "Ye'll hae me yet; Ye'll ne'er be saired, till ye ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... upon the white face of the Princess and none could break the spell. They had expected it, yet the shock was overwhelming; they had feared it, yet the announcement stupefied them. She looked straight before her, afraid to meet the eyes of her subjects, knowing that sickening disapproval dwelt in them. Not a word was uttered for many seconds. Then old Caspar's tense muscles relaxed and his arms dropped limply from their crossed ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Knowing the sickening fate of industrial legislation in certain other states when tried before judges whose social vision is fifty years behind the times, the winners of this new bill began to wait tensely enough for its testing. So far, however, the Women's Nine-Hour law ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... went among the sufferers, and administered the medicine, giving at each injection about 1-64th of a grain. It was remarkable in its effects. Within a half hour the sickening feeling in the stomach disappeared, the eyes began to grow bright again, the pulse full, and the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... follow'd: thou canst rivers stay: The monstrous guard of Pluto's hall To thee gave way, Grim Cerberus, round whose Gorgon head A hundred snakes are hissing death, Whose triple jaws black venom shed, And sickening breath. Ixion too and Tityos smooth'd Their rugged brows: the urn stood dry One hour, while Danaus' maids were sooth'd With minstrelsy. Let Lyde hear those maidens' guilt, Their famous doom, the ceaseless drain Of outpour'd water, ever spilt, And all the ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... outpouring even to that universal, loving confidante, Aunt Catharine; and the final parting did not break down her self-restraint, though, as the last bend of her head was given, the last chimney of Northwold disappeared, her sensation of heartache almost amounted to sickening. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came for me, and the rest of the fight was the other way. I fought as I could, one-handed, for I couldn't even guard with my right; but it was no use. He soon had me going, and the last I remember of the fight was a sickening smash under the ear. I don't remember hitting the deck; but when I came to my senses I was laid out in the weather scuppers, and the skipper was down off the poop, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Inquisition ferreted out, but in ineradicable communities. It was because the incautious physician had mistaken him for a member of the brotherhood of Israel that he had ventured upon his now transparent jests. "Good God!" thought Da Costa, sickening as he remembered the auto-da-fe he had seen at Lisbon in his boyhood, when De la Asuncao, the Franciscan Jew monk, clothed in the Sanbenito, was solemnly burnt in the presence of the king, the queen, the court, and the mob. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... what Vaughan endured, for he as too proud to bare his soul. For two years he never looked at a gazette, or opened a newspaper, or heard a Ministerial announcement in the House of Commons, or listened to a conversation at his club, without the sickening apprehension that the next moment he would know that Arthur Grey was dead. Letters from Grey reached him from time to time, but their brave cheerfulness did nothing to soothe his apprehensions. For they were few and far between; ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of all when it frightens you, its first passion fading. For then, sickening of what is transient, it dies to put on permanence; as the creature dies—as I am dying, Prosper—into the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... with them that rest," seems almost like Handel's own voice in a moment of sad depression. It serves, at anyrate, to remind us that the all-conquering Mr. Handel was a complete man who had endured the sickening sense of the worthlessness of a struggle that he was bound to continue to the end. But these personal confessions are scarce. After all, in oratorio Handel's best music is that in which he seeks to attain the sublime. In his choruses he does attain it: he sweeps you away ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... on the sand blotting out her footprints. Then, too, I knew what the white rag was that I had thrown aside. It was my mother's mantilla which I knew, and yet did not know, because I always saw it set daintily upon her head. In a moment it had come home to me, and with the knowledge a keen and sickening dread. Why had this man followed my mother, and why did her mantilla lie thus upon ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... black ointment, as a protection for the skin and to prevent its cracking in the high wind. They were dressed in long sheepskin garments, worn out and filthy. The shaggy hair was so unwashed that it emitted a sickening odor. I ordered them not to come too ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... in the situation and sprang forward, clubbing his revolver. He brought it down on the German's head. There was a sickening thud. One blow was enough. The German's hands relaxed their grip on Frank's throat, ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... what I then felt. I had before experienced sensations of horror, and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I addressed myself added that Justine had already confessed her guilt. "That evidence," he observed, "was hardly required in so glaring a case, but I am glad of it, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Ugh! the sickening heat from the stove! the disgusting odor of musty papers! However, Amedee had nothing to complain of; they might have given him figures to balance for five hours at a time. He owed it to M. Courtet's kindness, that he was put at once into the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... living evolution that he knew was clogged by the dead bodies of comrades; the ominous silence of a breastwork; the awful inertia of some rigidly kneeling files beyond, which still kept their form but never would move again; the melting away of skirmish points; the sudden gaps here and there; the sickening incurving of what a moment before had been a straight line—all these he saw in all their fatal significance. But even at this moment, coming upon a hasty barricade of overset commissary wagons, he stopped to glance at a familiar ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... words were: 'Now, don't you stir out of this box, whatever you do. I shall be back before the end of the play. Be good and you will be happy. Is this zone torrid enough for the abandonment of great-coats, Bobs? No? Well, then, I should say you were sickening for something—mumps or measles ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... we quote from a medieval medical writer another case that carries the principle to its logical conclusion: A woman saw a Negro,—at that time a rarity in Europe. She immediately had a sickening suspicion that her child would be born with a black skin. To obviate the danger, she had a happy inspiration—she hastened home and washed her body all over with warm water. When the child appeared, his skin was found to be normally ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... hoped to strike an answering spark from him. But all that I was thinking and feeling then he had thought and felt long before. I am sure that he had already experienced, in imagination, every thrill, every keen joy, and every sudden sickening fear which the life might have in store for him. For this reason I forgave him for his rather bored manner of answering to my mood, and the more willingly because he was full of talk about a strange illusion which he had had at the restaurant. During a moment of silence, he had heard ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... she did not wish even to pretend to "live up to him" any longer. As Mr. Ingpen says, "it was love, not matrimony," for which Shelley yearned. "Marriage," Shelley had once written, echoing Godwin, "is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequired fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies." Having lived for years in a theory of "anti-matrimonialism," he now saw himself doomed to one of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... over the plot of a tragedy, which Browning had begun to think of: the subject, Narses. He said that I had bit him by my performance of Othello, and I told him I hoped I should make the blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for the miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts which I have endured in my profession, if, by its exercise, I had awakened a spirit of poetry whose influence would elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded drama. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... think of the unseen child with the love that she felt for all children—but that one! She struggled to overcome the sickening aversion that grew, instead of lessened, while the days dragged on. But always the helpless child represented nothing but passion, brutality, suffering, and disgrace. It was not a child, a piteous, pleading child—it was the essence of ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... his seraphic smile was a much bigger idiot than Ward, so I said, "Well, I can't see where the joke comes in, I think it is thundering rough luck," which remark I considered rather noble, for I did think that Ward had been scored off beautifully, only Dennison gibing at him was such a sickening sight that I thought I would put off the few words I meant having with him about Dainty Dick until we ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... was ended officially. But Baldy could not forget the sickening suspicion that had rested upon him. In her heart the Woman felt that he was the culprit; and even "Scotty" had not been absolutely certain of his innocence. There was only Ben ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... had always regarded as their simple friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's injurious act. Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left the sickening certainty that Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate. But why sickening? He wanted her to know that here too his conduct should ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a show at every window, in every door, on every corner of the street, in every company at which opportunity offers for an exhibition of herself. And believing and acting thus, she soon becomes good for nothing else; and when she comes to be a middle-aged woman she is that weakest, most sickening of all human things—a ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... preoccupation. And what had she to offer him now? She turned away from the glass because her tears blurred the image it presented; and if she looked forward to the first meeting with vehement eagerness, it was also with sickening dread. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... lanterns. The strange car held to its course; there was a blast of horns, a dazzling instant of intense illumination, then a crash as the inside mud-guards met. Merkle's car seemed to leap into the air; there was a report of an exploding tire; Lorelei felt a sickening sense of insecurity, and found herself hanging, bruised and breathless, across the back of the driving-seat. The automobile was bucking and bumping, as if the pavement had been turned into a corduroy road; then it came to a pause, half in ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and more stately than the most exquisite church spires or cathedral columns, there were now only scattered and blasted stumps, while the floor of the valley was strewn with the horrible debris. The scene was sickening, appalling. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... and bad conduct. A conspiracy was discovered, and seven of the ringleaders received three dozen lashes each, in presence of all the inmates of the jail. It was a punishment perhaps deserved and necessary, but sickening enough to witness. Richard's warder stood beside him, and while the cat was descending on one wretch's naked back, observed in a grim whisper: "Do you take warning, my man; for if you are reported again, the governor says you are to have a dose of ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... indignantly. Aristide composed his face into an expression of parental interest; but within him there was shivering and sickening upheaval. He saw it all, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... across the thickening reek a rusty draw was dropped; Thro portcullis sped a quickening Shadow past to where with sickening Feet, befixed by awe I stopped— There she laughed a laugh No devil's soul ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... joy is defamation, Of malice, envy, cruelty, and greed Each day supplies its sickening revelation, And makes imperative my spirit's need To sleep ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... it would," said Lawrence, looking at his cousin's pale face—all the paler for the stress of his winter's work. "Do, Reg; and for pity's sake, bring a root of some flower if you can find one; it is sickening to think of a child dying without ever having had such a thing in ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them—while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... upon Colesberg, and fearfully lacerated his ribs and haunches with her horrid teeth and claws; the worst wound was on his haunch, which exhibited a sickening, yawning gash, more than twelve inches long, almost laying bare the very bone. I was very cool and steady, and did not feel in the least degree nervous, having fortunately great confidence in my own shooting; but I must confess, when the whole ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... from one to the other without the necessity of going out of doors. A piece of clear ice, like glass, was set into the roof of each to answer for a window. They were all filled with a stench so sickening that Bob soon made an excuse to go outside and lend a hand in unpacking and helping Akonuk and Matuk make their own snow ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... complaint, my lad. He is sickening from the terrible depression. It is more than human nature can stand to see one's fellow-creatures breaking down day by day. There are limits to endurance, and sooner or later every one must break down—except doctors and deputy ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... forget. But that was not the worst. Had he met Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead; but the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... made for one another. When this man spoke of his life, spent in roaming about the country, of his very perfect health, and of his hatred of houses, the very atmosphere of any indoor place producing a suffocating and sickening effect on him, I envied him as I envy birds their wings and as I can never envy men who live in mansions. His was the wild, the real life, and it seemed to me that there was ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson |
