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More "Execrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she cried, and quite against her will tears of wrath and of disappointment rose to her eyes. "What villainy! what odious, execrable treachery!" ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... He looked up at the moon, and took it into his confidence to reproach it. "'Twas your white face beglamored me," he told it aloud. "See, how execrable a beginning I've made, and, therefore, how excellent!" And he laughed, but ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... not be asked to assent to contradictory propositions. We must not be asked to believe that injustice, cruelty, and implacable revenge, are not execrable because the Bible tells us they were habitually manifested by the tribal god of the Israelites. The fables of man's fall and of the redemption are fraught with the grossest violation of our moral conscience, and will, in time, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... heresies and blasphemies.... The ministers did zealously preach unto the people the great danger of such things, and the guilt such lay under that held them, stirring the people up to labour to find such persons out and to execute death upon them, making persons so execrable in the eyes of the people, whom they intimated should hold such things, yea some of them naming some of us in their pulpits, that the people that had not seen us thought us to be worse by far in any respect then those barbarous Indians are in the country.... Whereupon we heard ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... churches of the 17th and 18th centuries, as at Chihuahua (Mexico), Tucson (Arizona), and other places. The least offensive features of the churches of this period were the towers, usually in pairs at the west end, some of them showing excellent proportions and good composition in spite of their execrable details. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... between two lengthy hilly ridges, thickly dotted with the giant forms of the baobab. Kididimo is exceedingly bleak in aspect. Even the faces of the Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... further proposed that dogs should be used to hunt them down. 'You will do well,' Amherst wrote to Bouquet, 'to try to inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad if your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.' And Major Henry Gladwyn, who, as we shall see, gallantly held Detroit through months ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... garrison to the Indians in lieu of the same number they had lost during the siege; and in all probability these miserable captives were put to death by those barbarians, with the most excruciating tortures, according to the execrable ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... what refreshment we chose—'Tea, and home-made bread and butter,' was my instant reply. 'Brown bread, if you please, and plenty of it.' I never enjoyed any luxury like it. I was positively ashamed of asking the waiter to refill the plate. After the execrable messes, and the hard ship-biscuit, imagine the luxury of a good slice of English ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... with 1,000 inhabitants, following a system of production and consumption in common, but not with full equality; carrying on both agriculture and other business. A principal feature here is an entirely new system of education. The author says that man has hitherto been the slave of an execrable trinity: positive religion, personal property and indissoluble wedlock. (Declaration ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... cold, and the snow lay deep upon the ground, my stay at Teheran was not unpleasant. The keen bracing air, brilliant sunshine, and cloudless blue sky somewhat made amends for the sorry lodging and execrable fare provided by mine host at the Hotel Prevot. I have seldom, in my travels, come across a French inn where, be the materials ever so poor, the landlord is not able to turn out a decent meal. I have fared well and sumptuously at New Caledonia, Saigon, and even Pekin, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... the jostling, snail-moving crowds; the illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying execrable posters of roosters. Hurrah! hurrah! A flash goes ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... judgment of general history ought not to be restricted to considerations of personal merit. Marcus Aurelius and his noble teachers have had no permanent influence on the world. Marcus Aurelius left behind him delightful books, an execrable son, and a decaying nation. Jesus remains an inexhaustible principle of moral regeneration for humanity. Philosophy does not suffice for the multitude. They must have sanctity. An Apollonius of Tyana, with his miraculous legend, is necessarily more ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... paved with the silver wrung from reluctant and indignant passengers. Smollett characterized the chambers as cold and comfortless, the beds as "paultry" (with "frowsy," a favourite word), the cookery as execrable, wine poison, attendance bad, publicans insolent, and bills extortion, concluding with the grand climax that there was not a drop of tolerable malt liquor to be had from London to Dover. Smollett finds a ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to Belford.— The suffering innocent arrested and confined, by the execrable woman, in a sham action. He curses himself, and all his plots and contrivances. Conjures him to fly to her, and clear him of this low, this dirty villany; to set her free without conditions; and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... In them the most abominable falsehoods were fearlessly charged upon men and women of all conditions and characters; not under fictitious names, nor by innuendo, but directly and with the real name of the party, while the execrable calumniator, protected by the licentious multitude, boldly defied both the power of the law and the avenging arm of the abused individual. Among that licentious people, nobody, not even the chief magistrate nor the very judges ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... priory of St. Pancras was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1537, Thomas Cromwell, that execrable vandal, not only abolishing the monks but destroying the buildings, which covered, with their gardens and fish ponds, forty acres. The ruins that remain give some idea of the extent of this wonderful ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... revengeful sentiment, and took part in all the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was, in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable tribunal, the Inquisition. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out, and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion; and there will be no such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the most execrable feature of slavery itself. Accept my thanks, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... (that was the Waldoborough), who had caused herself to be waited for, and who, I was assured, would give herself 'le plaisir de me voir dans un tout petit moment.' So saying, with a smile, she seated herself; and, discovering that I was an American, began to talk bad English to me. I may say execrable English; for it is a habit your Frenchwoman often has, to abandon her own facile and fluent vernacular, which she speaks so charmingly, in order to show off a wretched smattering she may have acquired of your language,—from politeness, possibly, but I rather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... rains had begun early in January, rendered the roads execrable, and the Savannah River became so swollen that it filled its many channels, overflowing the vast extent of rice-fields that lay on the east bank. This flood delayed our departure two weeks; for it swept away our pontoon-bridge at Savannah, and came near drowning John ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... is very certain, monsieur; I should think not, indeed; his accent is execrable;" and the good woman lifted her hands with a gesture ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... London, and less than twenty from that shallow and dangerous puddle to which our coasting men give the grandiose name of "German Ocean." And through the wide windows we had a view of the Thames; an enfilading view down the Lower Hope Reach. But the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff. Almost every man carries a supply of coarse snuff in a little sheepskin wallet or dried bladder; at short intervals he rubs a pinch of this villainous stuff all over his teeth and gums and deposits a second pinch ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to the circumstances of one of my most interesting and stirring experiences. It was about this time that some misbegotten mechanician invented the automatic magazine pistol, and thereby rendered possible a new and execrable type of criminal. It was not long before the appropriate criminal arrived. The scene of the first appearance was the suburb of Tottenham, where two Russian Poles attempted, and failed in, an idiotic street robbery. The attempt was made in broad ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... civilisation, for ten years ago there was not a pair of skates to be found throughout the length and breadth of Siberia. Thus passed our days, and the evenings were even longer and more wearisome. Once we visited the Opera, a new and beautifully-decorated house, but the performance was execrable, and "La Dame de Chez Maxim" unrecognisable in Russian dress. There were also other so-called places of amusement, which blazed with electric light from dusk till dawn, where refreshments were served at little wooden tables while painted harridans from Hamburg cackled suggestive ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... remarkable that, though long ago cut down by the brutal selfishness of the monks of St. Bernard (to whom the land appertained), that the ground might be enclosed into a vineyard for the miserable drones of an execrable superstition, the inhabitants of Clarens still point out the spot where its trees stood, calling it by the name which consecrated and survived them. Rousseau has not been particularly fortunate in the preservation of the "local habitations" he has ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of all I have? Must the tenderness I have shown towards you draw upon me death from your hands, and do you not think that the same God who hath seen me cherish and relieve you, will not bring upon you condign punishment for this execrable villainy ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the devilish ambition of certain powerful persons, that the holy see[373] should be held by hereditary succession. For they suffered none to be bishops but those who were of their own tribe and family. And for no short time had the execrable succession lasted, for fifteen generations (as I may call them)[374] had already passed in this wickedness. And to such a point had an evil and adulterous[375] generation[376] established for itself this distorted right, rather this unrighteousness worthy of ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... as a poet, approved of the sentiment; Dr. Steingass, who wrote execrable verses in English which neither rhymed nor scanned, though they were intended to do both, was no less satisfied; Mr. Ashbee, who looked at matters solely from a bibliographical point of view, dissented; and Mr. Arbuthnot sweetly changed the conversation ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the name of everything that is sacred and honourable, I demur to that plea, and I tell that honourable and learned gentleman that he would do well to look again into the law of nations, before he ventures to come to this House, to give the sanction of his authority to so dreadful and execrable a system. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... Panamas, blue-cotton trousers, light-colored stockings, cambric frills, were all here displayed; while upon shirt-fronts, wristbands, and neckties, upon every finger, even upon the very ears, they wore an assortment of rings, shirt-pins, brooches, and trinkets, of which the value only equaled the execrable taste. Women, children, and servants, in equally expensive dress, surrounded their husbands, fathers, or masters, who resembled the patriarchs of tribes in the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... me in this respect than my years of pruning. I have never heard such English, and behind this master language of a master mind, there was a man, a gentleman! I wrote Dr. Jowett a note one day, asking for an interview. It may have been the execrable handwriting that interested him; but I had a most polite note in return, stating the hour at which he would be glad to see me. I remember attempting in a very awkward, childish way to explain to him something of my ambition to make progress in my studies, and how poorly prepared I was and ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... may death me seize "Instant, and cold upon my couch outstretch'd, "My brother then may kiss me as I lie. "Yet still my wish double consent requires. "Grant I should yield, still might the deed to him "Seem execrable. Yet th' AEolian youth "A sister's nuptial couch ne'er dreaded. Why, "O, why! on this so dwell? Why thus recal "Examples to my view? Where am I borne? "Hence, flames obscene! hence far! a sister's love, "And that alone my brother shall enjoy. "But had his soul first burn'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... market and where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold: execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... special terror weighed upon his frown; 20 His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ground them with inexorable jaw: The luscious fat distilled upon his chin, Exuded from his nostrils and his eyes, 30 While still like hungry death he fed his maw; ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... had begun the study of Latin at the village school, my brother and I had learned the Lord's Prayer in Latin out of an old copy of the Vulgate, and gravely repeated it every night in an execrable pronunciation because it seemed to us more religious than ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... ecclesiastical order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, not only with respect to the leader but also with respect to doctrine, at the point of causing an execrable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be BOUGHT and SOLD, he has prostituted his prerogative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain execrable commerce, and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... scorn, and stupid fear, Displac'd each other with swift interchanges? If this were all assumed, as you believe, He must needs be a most consummate actor; And hath so vast a power to deceive me, 265 I never could be safe. And why assume The semblance of such execrable feelings? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Pennsylvania-Virginia state line, in 1773; his son, Joseph Doddridge, was the author of Notes on the Settlements and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1763-83, a valuable antiquarian work. The names of Greathouse and Baker became execrable through their connection with the massacre of Chief Logan's family, in 1774. Leffler and Biggs attained prominence in ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... is that I will have you flayed alive a little if you do not leave off that execrable habit of sleeping twenty ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... came. They, too, regarded them as vermin, and treated them according to the unrestrained edicts of the Reign of Terror, organized and administered by their late compatriots Sardanapalus, Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and their literary colleague, the execrable Marat, who, by the way, was expeditiously dispatched ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... own; but you know there is an execrable proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music didn't fill me with a passionate ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... impression of A Village Priest is that, in one respect, Mr. GRUNDY has done well to choose the historical name of the execrable "Abbe DUBOIS," and bestow it on the Cure, who is meant to be the interesting hero of what, without him, would have been a sufficiently strong melodrama. The very A B C of the practice of the confessional being that everything between Priest and Penitent (even when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Flanders, which has been so often the seat of the most destructive wars, after a respite of a few years, has appeared always as fruitful and as populous as ever. Even the Palatinate lifted up its head again after the execrable ravages of Louis the Fourteenth. The effects of the dreadful plague in London in 1666 were not perceptible fifteen or twenty years afterwards. The traces of the most destructive famines in China and Indostan ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... kittens, and tell her that George's brandy is just what smuggled spirits might be expected to be, execrable! The smack of it remains in my mouth, and I believe will keep me most horribly temperate for half a century. He (Burnet) was bit, but I caught the Brandiphobia.[36] [obliterations ...]—scratched out, well knowing that you never allow such things ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... we can do for her," said the Laureate. He tapped his box and without a moment's hesitation produced the most execrable distich in ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... commenced at Versailles: many persons, supposed accessaries to the design upon the king's life, were sent to the Bastile; the assassin himself was put to the torture, and the most excruciating torments were applied, with intention to extort a confession of the reasons that could induce him to so execrable an attempt upon his sovereign. Incisions were made into the muscular parts of his legs, arms, and thighs, into which boiling oil was poured. Every refinement on cruelty, that human invention could suggest, was practised without effect; nothing could overcome his obstinacy; and his silence was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... captivate the throng; 'To herd in cabinets and camps, among 'Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; 'Or chaunt of heraldry the drowsy song, 'How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide, 'Rolls to a thousand thrones its execrable tide. ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... been adopted in explanation of what is called by the Magi, the Evil Principle. Was there ever received into a human creed, a being so mean—almost so ridiculous—as the Christian Satan? A goatish figure and limbs, with grotesque features, formed to express the most execrable passions; a degree of power scarce inferior to that of the Deity; and a talent at the same time scarce equal to that of the stupidest of the lowest order! What is he, this being, who is at least the second arbiter of the human race, save an immortal spirit, with ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... associations, no doubt, but it is sadly out of repair. Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious subjects and execrable drawing always put me." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... upon that account defended by a garrison of Scots. Upon intelligence of this surrender, King David, overcome with fury, entered Northumberland, where, letting loose the rage of his soldiers, he permitted and encouraged them to commit all manner of inhumanities; which they performed in so execrable a manner as would scarce be credible, if it were not attested by almost the universal consent of writers: they ripped up women with child, drew out the infants, and tossed them upon the points of their lances: they murdered priests before ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... perceiving the nurse with his eldest son, then an infant in arms, straying at a little distance from the camp, suddenly sallied out and seized them. The use they made of their persons was in conformity to their usual execrable conduct. When Gaffori advanced to batter the walls, they held up the child directly over that part of the wall at which the guns were pointed. The Corsicans stopped: but Gaffori stood at their head, and ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... the sun in summer. I should always, my friend, mistrust him who would pretend to prefer evil to good. Now, in times past all went wrong with me, and every month found a fresh hole in my cassock and in my skin, a gold crown less in my poor purse; of that execrable time of small beer and see-saw, I regret absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing save our friendship; for within me I have a heart, and it is a miracle that heart has not been dried up by the wind of poverty which ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Beelzebub, Satan, Moloch, Abadon, Asmodai, Dagon, Apolyon, Belphegor, Mephistopheles, and all their compeers, and they were hurled headlong into a whirlpool which opened and closed in the centre of the court and which, both in aspect and in the execrable stench that arose from it, was a hundredfold more foul and horrid than anything I had ever seen. Before I could ask aught, quoth the Angel: "This is the gulf that reaches to another great world." "What, pray, is that world ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... have left him Robert Hall, instead of those execrable Typhons! But would that medicine have suited his case, or must grim Experience write sterner ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... genius,' but now! So another great writer came just in time to be judged by Richardson. A bishop asked him, 'Who is this Yorick,' who has, it seems, been countenanced by an 'ingenious dutchess.' Richardson briefly replies that the bishop cannot have looked into the books, 'execrable I cannot but call them.' Their only merit is that they are 'too gross to be inflaming.' The history of the mutual judgments upon each other of contemporary authors would be more ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... depreciate his own verses as compared with Lewis', some of which he recited to Ballantyne, in 1799, speaking of their author, says Lockhart, "with rapture." But however fine an ear for rhythm Lewis may have had, his verse is for the most part execrable; and his jaunty, jiggling anapaests and pragmatic manner are ludicrously out of keeping with the horrors of his tale, increasing the air of bathos which distinguishes ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... fear, much less to sink under the horror of this shocking situation, into which I have been seduced. Sir, your behaviour on this occasion is, in all respects, low and contemptible. For, ruffian as you are, you durst not harbour the thought of executing your execrable scheme, while you knew my brother was near enough to prevent or revenge the insult; so that you must not only be a treacherous villain, but also ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... my mediation is the invaders of any soil that is first dug up and then left for a long time to its own resources. We have, in the first rank, the couch grass, that execrable weed which three years of stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating. Next, in respect of number, come the centauries, grim looking one and all, bristling with prickles or starry halberds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury, the mountain ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the people derived from this execrable amusement, induced the candidates for office to gratify, them frequently with this spectacle. The exhibitions were no longer confined to funerals; they formed an integrant part of every election, and were found more powerful than merit in opening a way to office. The ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... only known where to fly, and where to take refuge! But, abusing my ignorance, that execrable woman had persuaded me, that, if I attempted to go out alone, I would be arrested. And I knew no one to whom I could apply for protection and advice. And then I began to learn that beauty, to a poor girl, is a fatal gift. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... was ane brigand ta'en with his haill family, who haunted a place in Angus. This mischievous man had ane execrable fashion to take all young men and children he could steal away quietly, or tak' away without knowledge, and eat them, and the younger they were, esteemed them the mair tender and delicious. For the whilk cause and damnable abuse, he with his wife and bairns were all burnt, except ane young ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... torrents. Our route was by Neuville St. Vaast, Vimy Ridge, Willerval, through the area we had been in for some months; now the ridge was miles behind the line. The roads leading up to the old enemy line were execrable. After getting about four miles behind the old line the villages were not so shattered and at Henin Lietard some houses were almost intact; the coal mines, however, had been ruined, and into some canals ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it was in vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as an ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... exceeded all they had yet encountered in the matter-of-fact Signori Inglesi. I saw one of them look quite relieved when, after quitting us, he had to listen to an excitable young Jewess endeavoring to express her raptures in the most execrable Italian. The physical effort it cost her was awful to witness, especially as she was wintering in Italy for her lungs. O, long-suffering stones of the Coliseum! which returned the most barbarous echo—the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... in me:—I'll ev'ry ill prevent, For which the rascal hither has been sent. As on they moved, a wood was in the way, Where robbers often waited for their prey; The villain whom the husband had employed, Sent forward those whose company annoyed, And would prevent his execrable plan; The last of horrid crimes.—disgrace to man! No sooner had the wretch his orders told, But Argia vanished—none could her behold; The beauteous belle was quickly lost to view: A cloud, the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... use white garments within the city, but at night or outside the city they use red garments either of wool or silk. They hate black as they do dung, and therefore they dislike the Japanese, who are fond of black. Pride they consider the most execrable vice, and one who acts proudly is chastised with the most ruthless correction. Wherefore no one thinks it lowering to wait at table or to work in the kitchen or fields. All work they call discipline, and thus they say that it is honorable to go on foot, to do any ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... the Christians perpetrated these abominable vices, and that other persons in France, who had also been connected with these feasts, should falsely state that the Christians were guilty of the very same execrable crimes? There was no collusion or connection whatever between these parties, and in making their statements, they could have no self-interested motive. They lived in different countries, they did not make their statements within twenty years of the same ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... a communication from Mr. JEREMY, written in the execrable English of which this calico-livered scoundrel is a consummate master, and informing me that, if I care to join the staff of the journal which Mr. J. directs, a princely salary shall be at my disposal. Mr. J. inquires what special branch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... dwelling in a body worn out and condemned to suffer. I am writing to you in the first moment of my grief. Astonishment, sorrow, indignation, scorn, all blended together, lacerate my soul. Let us get to the end, then, of this execrable Campaign; I will then write to you what is to become of me; and we will arrange the rest. Pity me;—ad make no noise about me; bad news go fast enough of themselves. Adieu, dear Marquis." [OEuvres de Frederic, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a few pages of harmonious prose, for, you must know, "a magician is nothing else but a great harmonist." Here are some eight lines of the magnificent Invocation. Let me, however, warn you, strictly between ourselves, that my translation is execrable. I am sorry to say ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and farther to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... shoulder and broke into a cold perspiration at beholding an execrable three-quarters length cut of my darling son superscribed ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... hue, like the lilies of the field, he perambulates during the hot season the wildest parts of South Italy, strangely unprejudiced, heedless of bugs and brigands—a real danger in 1828: did he not find the large place Rossano actually blocked by them?—sleeping in stables and execrable inns, viewing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating everybody about everything and, in general, "satisfying his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence in this ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... been as quicksighted as he was remarkable for the contrary, passion might at present very well have blinded him. He thanked Jones for offering to undertake the office, and said, "Go, go, prithee, try what canst do;" and then swore many execrable oaths that he would turn her out of doors unless she consented to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... across the continent and the oceans beyond, and in unnumbered cities and towns the letter-carriers came and went; but nothing they brought into Bienville or Royal Street bore tidings from that execrable editor in New York who in salaried ease sat "holding up" the manuscript once the impressionable Dora's, now the gentle Aline's. The holiday—"everything shut up"—had arrived. No carrier was abroad. Neither reason given ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... knows, I began to feel some remorse at winning of such an ignoramus, who knew so little of the game. He lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's promise. The most execrable repast that ever was begun being finished, all the crowd insensibly dispersed, except the little Swiss, who still kept near me, and the landlord, who placed himself on the other side of me. They both ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... me in a way that is not mine. You are weakening and chaining me. France looks for me and does not find me. Public opinion was excellent: now it is execrable. France is asking what has come to the Emperor's arm, this arm which she needs to master Europe. Why speak to me of goodness, abstract justice, and of natural laws? The first law is necessity: the first justice ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... feudal barons has found a most characteristic expression in the wording of the different charters which they compelled them to sign. Heinrich V. is made to sign in the charter granted to Speier in 1111, that he frees the burghers from "the horrible and execrable law of mortmain, through which the town has been sunk into deepest poverty" (von dem scheusslichen und nichtswurdigen Gesetze, welches gemein Budel genannt wird, Kallsen, i. 307). The coutume of Bayonne, written ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... called fabul. That Natures Common Course is subject to various interpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a subverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of the Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth century, became the twice execrable of Martin Luther; and was finally abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have excised two stanzas. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the greatest power is not able to confer even upon your God Himself the right to be unjust to the vilest of His creatures. A despot is not a God. A God who arrogates to Himself the right to do evil, is a tyrant; a tyrant is not a model for men. He ought to be an execrable object in their eyes. Is it not strange that, in order to justify Divinity, they made of Him the most unjust of beings? As soon as we complain of His conduct, they think to silence us by claiming ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... continued the young princes. "But is not this enough? Ah, brave Jason, turn back before it is too late. It would grieve us to the heart, if you and your nine and forty brave companions should be eaten up, at fifty mouthfuls, by this execrable dragon." ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the fact that "it was not done in a corner," and that those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. "That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour," forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England has been in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... must be admitted that Punch's dialect has not always pleased up there, where "the execrable attempts at broad Scotch which appear weekly in our old friend Punch" have before now been authoritatively denounced. Under the heading of "Probable Deduction" Punch had the following paragraph:—"A pertinacious Salvation ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... a severe but composed countenance, 'cease at length to insult the miserable with proposals more shocking than even these chains. If thy religion permit such acts as those, know that they are execrable and abominable to the soul of every Mohammedan; therefore, from this moment, let us break off all further intercourse and be strangers ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... halfway to Tehran, over the execrable road which leads from Resht. For the first forty miles the landscape was lovely from wooded slopes, green growth and clear running water. The post-houses are just as they were—ill-provided, and ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... that every person is learned—more or less acquainted with Greek and Latin. There is one thing, however, connected with them, which is a great drawback—the horrid jargon which they speak. However learned they may be in Greek and Latin, their English is execrable; and yet I'm told it is not so bad as it was. I was in company the other day with an Englishman who has resided here many years. We were talking about the country and its people. 'I should like both very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... published after his return from Europe. In the preface to the latter he said that no novel of modern times had ever been worse printed than was this story as it originally appeared. The manuscript, he admitted, was bad; but the proof-reading could only be described as execrable. Periods turned up in the middle of sentences, while the places where they should have been knew them not. Passages, in consequence, were rendered obscure, and even entire paragraphs became unintelligible. A careful ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... had order'd all things as it has best pleased Him; but I have in my time seen three of the most execrable persons that ever I knew in all manners of abominable living, and the most infamous to boot, who all dy'd a very regular death, and in all circumstances compos'd even to perfection. There are brave, and fortunate deaths. I have seen death cut the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... that encounter by those Indians, were, as their cruel captain, torn in pieces and burnt alive. Thus ends the history, the life, and miserable death of that infernal wretch Lolonois, who full of horrid, execrable, and enormous deeds, and debtor to so much innocent blood, died by cruel and butcherly hands, such as his own were in the course ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... to have discovered the "Popish Plot," was a man of the most execrable character. He was the son of an Anabaptist, took orders in the Church, and had been settled in a small living by the Duke of Norfolk. Indicted for perjury, he effected an escape in a marvellous manner. While a chaplain in the English navy he was convicted of practices ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... holding me by force, that either she might keep me back or go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her face. And yet refusing to return without me, I scarcely persuaded ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... success attended Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily, his long-shooting Englishman joined him, and when the English volunteers were ready to leave Naples and take the field at the siege of Gaeta, Colonel "Long Shot" was placed in command—a man of execrable temper, and totally unfitted in every way to command anything, let alone a body of half-drilled, high-spirited young Englishmen. About the same time Major S—— was placed under arrest, and accused of having kept irregular accounts of the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... Tilling and her sex, the suffragette, post-impressionist artist (who painted from the nude, both male and female), the socialist and the Germanophil, all incarnate in one frame. In spite of these execrable antecedents, it was quite in vain that Miss Mapp had tried to poison the collective mind of Tilling against this Creature. If she hated anybody, and she undoubtedly did, she hated Irene Coles. The bitterest part of it all was that if ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... got to the table we found Jimmy trying to explain to the General and the two Colonels in execrable French that he didn't know what it was all about. He ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... disagreeable even to myself; give me leave, therefore, to propose a way to clear the streets of these vermin, and to substitute as many honest industrious persons in their stead, who are now starving for want of bread, while these execrable villains live, though in rags and nastiness, yet ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that enthusiasm for the beaux arts, which shows its produce in execrable music, detestable pictures, abominable sculpture, and a droll something that I believe the French call POETRY. Dancing and cookery,—these are the arts the French excel in, I grant it; and excellent things they are; but oh, England! oh, Germany! you need not be jealous ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that. I will try to be civil; and you try it, too, for a novelty. The idea of a civil conscience! It is a good joke; an excellent joke. All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages! Yes; and always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant trifle or other—destruction catch the lot of them, I say! I would trade mine for the smallpox and seven kinds of consumption, and be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... down on the edge of a great slab of rock to watch the baggage over the nek. It was a typical South African nek. An execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped islets, and weave the monotony ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... undistinguishable. A violent thunder storm came, but brought no relief. Desperate, we thought we might at least see the ponds and the falls, and early one hazy morning started off with strong wagon, stout horses, and careful driver. The distance to the Lower Pond is seven miles—three excellent, and four so execrable that nearly all our party preferred walking to the jolting over rocks and stumps and ploughing through rich, deep forest mould, dignified by the name of driving. This is a new road, just opened, and the intention is, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the most execrable of all falsehoods," answered Trudaine. "If his mother could be traced and brought here, her testimony ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... whither; traveller once more revisiting London, with the same earthly passions which filled your heart when races now no more walked through yonder streets; outlaw from the school of all the nobler and diviner mystics; execrable Image of Life in Death and Death in Life, I warn you back from the cities and homes of healthful men; back to the ruins of departed empires; back to the deserts ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... is usually prodigiously careful of her little self: she regards men as her natural enemies. Poor innocent!—This absurdity is the fault of her education. They have made her believe that love is the most abominable, execrable, infernal thing in existence. They have taught her to lie and to dissimulate her most innocent emotions. But the time is not far distant when the natural impulses of her heart will break down the barriers that hypocrisy has placed around ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... man, who looked unhappy and ill at ease, had been leaning against the wall beside me. Seeing that he was as great a stranger as myself, I addressed some observation to him, to which he replied with great good-will, but in the most execrable French. ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... toiled and agonized up the execrable sandy steepness of the side-road; but in the twenty minutes since they had been there the tide had turned. Sylvia was amazed at the total shifting of values. Instead of four solitary workers, struggling wildly against overwhelming ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in an audible voice, "By virtue of the authority committed to me I call upon Nonnus of Panopolis, candidate for the bishopric of his native city, to demonstrate his fitness for the same by consigning to the flames with his own hands the forty-eight execrable books of heathen poetry composed by him in the days of his darkness and blindness, but now without doubt as detestable to him as to the universal body of the faithful." So saying, he made a sign ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... contrived to make use of the learning of others, and made it burn with the brilliancy of his powerful and original genius. Everybody read his various essays and tracts, and was filled with admiration. But his moral character was bad,—Was even execrable, and notoriously outrageous. He was kind-hearted and generous, made friends and used them. No woman, it is said, could resist his marvellous fascination,—all the more remarkable since his face was as ugly as that of Wilkes, and was marked ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Kauterskill Falls; and finally, the North Mountain, which looks down upon a graceful spur to the east, Kiskatom Round Top, and then sweeps away to the northwest. Beyond the North Mountain is a considerable depression, down which passes an execrable road, leading from East Jewett, within the mountain range, to Cairo, at its foot. Finally, we reach Windham High Peak,[1] and the fine road crossing the mountains from Catskill to Delhi, and passing through Windham ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which could not gain credit, but must vanish of itself at the first moment of examination, and of which only this can be said to make it probable, that it may be observed from her conduct, that the most execrable crimes are sometimes committed without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... full confidence in successfully attaining the end of their struggles. The swamp, the river, the alligator, the man-hunter, and worse than all, the blood-hound, had been met and successfully overcome or evaded; and after three long weeks of travel from the execrable and inhuman people, who had held them as prisoners of war, and treated them worse than dogs, they now found themselves ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... heareth the word of God, and keepeth it." He railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the Presbyterians, and against the present term, now in use, of "tender consciences." He ripped up Hugh Peters (calling him the execrable skellum—[A villain or scoundrel; the cant term for a thief.]—), his preaching and stirring up the maids of the city to bring in their bodkins and thimbles. Thence going out of White Hall, I met Captain Grove, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... papers to be sold amongst the groups. "He is gone," said one of them, "this imbecile king, this perjured monarch. She is gone, this wretched queen, who, to the lasciviousness of Messalina, unites the insatiable thirst of blood that devoured Medea. Execrable woman, evil genius of France, thou wast the leader, the soul of this conspiracy." The people repeating these words, circulated from street to street these odious accusations, which fomented their hate, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... gradually spread, more particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback. The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea. That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of Taylor, the water-poet—who deplored the introduction of carriages ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... less acquainted with Greek and Latin. There is one thing, however, connected with them, which is a great drawback—the horrid jargon which they speak. However learned they may be in Greek and Latin, their English is execrable; and yet I'm told it is not so bad as it was. I was in company, the other day, with an Englishman who has resided here many years. We were talking about the country and the people. "I should like both very well," ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... abounds in picture and incident and dramatic situations and touches; but it lacks true unity, and the reason simply is given by Stevenson himself—that the "ending shames, perhaps degrades, the beginning," as it is in the Ebb-Tide, with the cockney Huish, "execrable." "We have great pictures by genius of the—to the prosaic eye—invisible realities, as well as the outward form of the action." True, but the "invisible realities" form that from which true unity is derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... ancient one, and the plashing fall known as the "Chute de Lapaca," we turned round in the opposite direction, and passing the "Hotel de la Cascade" and a wooden hut, again turned to the left, down what, though an execrable road, led, nevertheless, to the object of our desires. At this turn the Pic d'Aspe reared above us on the right, succeeded by barren hills covered with loose stones, but as we proceeded, the famous central excursion—the Pimene (9193 ft.)—came in ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... longer. Then losing all hopes of hearing any confession from his mouth, they commanded a negro to run him through with a lance, which put an end to his life and a period to their cruel and inhuman tortures. After this execrable manner did many others of those miserable prisoners finish their days, the common sport and recreation of these Pirates being these and other ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... confer even upon your God Himself the right to be unjust to the vilest of His creatures. A despot is not a God. A God who arrogates to Himself the right to do evil, is a tyrant; a tyrant is not a model for men. He ought to be an execrable object in their eyes. Is it not strange that, in order to justify Divinity, they made of Him the most unjust of beings? As soon as we complain of His conduct, they think to silence us by claiming that God is the Master; which signifies that God, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... last century. The keeper of the "Wishing Gate-house" had several, and an old man who lived in a low hut near the mill (the remains of which still stand in the Waterloo-road) had two or three, and made money by them. At that time Bootle and Bootle Marshes were wild places, the roads execrable, and as for frogs (Bootle organs), the noise they made at night was wonderful. I recollect all the docks and streets from Bath-street downwards being sand-hills and salt-marshes. New Quay, of which Bath-street was a continuation, was a sort of haven, into which small vessels, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... orator could do justice to the scene which Moses depicts in one word: "Cain rose up against his brother?" Many descriptions of cruelty are to be found on every hand, but could any be painted as more atrocious and execrable than is the case here? "He rose up against his brother," Moses writes. It is as if he had said, Cain rose up against Abel, the only brother he had, with whom he had been brought up and with whom he had lived to that day. But not only the relationship Cain utterly ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the past ages, they would not meet a man of such a high and noble order as this, and that to lay at our door the blood of a man the like of whom might not be born for centuries was too impious and execrable a thing to be thought of. I'll warrant me, he made a rustling among them when he said that, and the Pope's commissary—old Romalino—then whispered and frowned; but Agnolo is a stiff old fellow when he once begins a thing,—he never minded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the mysterious X.Y.Z. who will—for so small a recompense as thirty postage-stamps—impart the secret of an elegant and pleasing employment, whereby seven-pound-ten a-week may be made by any individual, male or female;—under every flimsy disguise with which the swindler hides his execrable form, Captain Paget plied his cruel trade, and still contrived to find fresh dupes. Of course there were occasions when the pigeons were slow to flutter into the fascinating snare, and when the vulture had a bad time of it; and it was a common thing for the Captain to sink from the splendour ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the front, and we chose a tall Swahili because he grinned better than the others. "Although," as Fred remarked, "what the devil grinning has to do with cooking is more than anybody knows." The man, whose name was Juma, turned out to be an execrable cook, but as he never left off grinning under any circumstances (and it would have been impossible to imagine circumstances worse than those we warred with later on) we never had the heart to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... in his demands upon the states to pay his soldiers' wages. The soldiers of the different armies who now overran the country, indeed, vied with each other in extravagant insolence. "Their outrages are most execrable," wrote Marquis Havre; "they demand the most exquisite food, and drink Champagne and Burgundy by the bucketfull." Nevertheless, on the 4th of December, the Prince came to Ghent. He held constant and anxious conferences with the magistrates. He was closeted daily with John Casimir, whose vanity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable system,—without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it cannot save,—must have a flinty heart, and be qualified ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... the year 1648 the ill-fated Charles was brought a prisoner to Windsor, where he remained while preparations were made for the execrable tragedy soon afterwards enacted. After the slaughter of the martyr-monarch the castle became the prison of the Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Duke of Hamilton, and other royalists ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "in the dunnest smoke of hell." Not, however, that this is the policy of doubt and apprehension, the evading and repelling caution of men who suspect themselves to be wrong and dread being forced to meet the proof. For the subjects of this execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself secured them against knowing anything that could discompose their sense ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... to anchor," said our dirty Polish host to us in execrable English. "And we may be off on board," said Smith. "Not yet," he said; "they must put their cargo out first." I saw, however, that Smith was uneasy, and I made up my mind to go off to the vessel at once. When they should see an English portmanteau ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... letter-writer who is still so conspicuous a figure in the East. It is seldom if ever that the Babylonian, whoever he may be, betrays any ignorance of the art of reading and writing, and the endless variety of handwritings and the execrable character of many of them indicate pretty plainly that the aid of the professional letter-writer was rarely invoked. In a commercial community like that of Babylonia an ability to write was of necessity a matter of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... the hot season the wildest parts of South Italy, strangely unprejudiced, heedless of bugs and brigands—a real danger in 1828: did he not find the large place Rossano actually blocked by them?—sleeping in stables and execrable inns, viewing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating everybody about everything and, in general, "satisfying his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence in this book, a sentence ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... and took part in all the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was, in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable tribunal, the Inquisition. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... the duke, "this is more of Father le Doux's work, that execrable Benedictine! At least I know a treatment which will ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... pay!" he went on in his execrable accent. "Louis came on posthaste, as you know, and he hasn't turned up this morning yet. Ah, I always knew Tom was close, but I never dreamed you knew anything. When I used to see sitting near the door in his office ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... churches, the females being excluded from the sight of the males by means of lattices. Their bishops lead a life of great simplicity, as will be seen from the following account of a dinner given by the bishop of Salona to Mr. Dodwell:—"There was nothing to eat except rice and bad cheese; the wine was execrable, and so impregnated with resin, that it almost took the skin from our lips. Before sitting down to dinner, as well as afterwards, we had to perform the ceremony of the cheironiptron, or washing of the hands. We dined at a round ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... outrageously attacked by all the wits, first by Warburton, in his preface to Shakspeare, who declares that "he hardly thinks there ever appeared so execrable a heap of nonsense under the name of commentaries, as hath been lately given us on a certain satyric poet of the last age." It is odd enough, Warburton had himself contributed towards these very notes, but, for some ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... displeased with the clergyman, because in his sermon he had said nothing at all of politics. "I charged him to his face," says La Fayette, "with preaching only about Heaven!... But next Sunday," continues the keen young officer, "I heard him again, when his loud invectives against 'the execrable House of Hanover,' showed that he was ready and willing to take ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he deprived them by murdering the people upon whom he obtruded them, and thus paying off former crimes committed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... excite the people's rage against their governors, or sink them into a despondency of the public welfare." I readily admit this apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think any man capable of entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather to claim our pity than excite our indignation; he finds himself out of power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... god robbing, shabby, villainous, infamous, halter-sick vagabond! Does not everybody know that your father was a tatterdemalion, and your mother no better than she should be? that you murdered your brother and are guilty of other execrable crimes? You lewd, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... father and drive the veteran into temporary exile. It happens in this wise. The first aim of a baby—not yours, madam; yours is well known to be an exception, but of other and common babies—is to make itself as widely offensive as possible. The end, indeed, is execrable, but the method is masterly. The baby has an a priori intuition that the note of the domestic cat is repulsive to the ear of the human adult. Consequently, what does your baby do but betake itself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... habit, evidently borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff. Almost every man carries a supply of coarse snuff in a little sheepskin wallet or dried bladder; at short intervals he rubs a pinch of this villainous stuff all over his teeth and gums and deposits a second ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... laborers in their sphere—are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defense. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... that on a sudden you and your friends will come to my conclusion, that the present philosophy of the Schools and Universities of Europe, based on faith in witchcraft, magic, &c., is a system of execrable nonsense, by which quacks live on the faith of fools; but I desire a free and fair examination of my Aphorisms, and if a few are admitted to be true, merely as courteous concessions to arithmetic, my purpose will be effected, for men will thus be led to think; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... diamonds lifted audaciously, the same fixed smile of childish expectancy on her oval, painted face. Her dress had left vulgarity behind. It was too much a part of herself—in its way too genuine—to be merely laughable. It was like her execrable dancing, the expression of an exuberant, inexhaustible life. As she walked, with short impatient steps, she swayed the great ostrich-feather fan and twisted her rope of pearls between her slender fingers. The open stare that ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... began. As the slave-holders in the United States counted the curse on Ham a justification of negro slavery, so the curse on the Jews was counted a justification for hindering them from pursuing agriculture and handicrafts; for marking them out as execrable figures by a peculiar dress; for torturing them to make them part with their gains, or for more gratuitously spitting at them and pelting them; for taking it as certain that they killed and ate babies, poisoned the wells, and took pains to spread the plague; for putting it to them whether they ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... especially the bandage around Captain Barker's head, attracted some attention. More than one group turned to stare as the little man began in execrable Dutch to explain his wants to the drawer. The fellow, too, was more than ordinarily dense, and a tempestuous scene was plainly but a matter of a minute or so, when a tall ensign of the guard rose from a neighbouring table, and, lifting his hat, addressed the Englishmen in their own language. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had been as quicksighted as he was remarkable for the contrary, passion might at present very well have blinded him. He thanked Jones for offering to undertake the office, and said, "Go, go, prithee, try what canst do;" and then swore many execrable oaths that he would turn her out of doors unless she consented to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... warm spring mornings when vital energies flag, that Mr. and Mrs. Vincent toiled up the third flight of stairs; the halls filled with execrable odours of fried ham and cheap coffee; each busy with their own thoughts, possibly of green fields, apple-blossoms, spring violets, tables with damask and silver, cool, inviting rooms, and other equally tantalising suggestions. Faith, at the top, panting and pale as any lily, drew ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... cambric frills, were all here displayed; while upon shirt-fronts, wristbands, and neckties, upon every finger, even upon the very ears, they wore an assortment of rings, shirt-pins, brooches, and trinkets, of which the value only equaled the execrable taste. Women, children, and servants, in equally expensive dress, surrounded their husbands, fathers, or masters, who resembled the patriarchs of tribes in the midst of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... brought on by his own crimes. In his war against Jeroboam he had indulged in excessive cruelty; he ordered the corpses of the enemy to be mutilated, and permitted them to be buried only after putrefaction had set in. Such savagery was all the more execrable as it prevented many widows from entering into a second marriage. Mutilating the corpses had made identification impossible, and so it was left doubtful whether their husbands ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... and bristly grey hair, and when I hear your abominable chuckling and laughing, and your confused talk, I rather turn away from you with disgust, and am even inclined to believe that you possess some execrable power for attracting me to you." "O God! God! God!" whined the old dame, a prey to unspeakable pain, "what fiendish spirit of darkness has put such fearful thoughts into your head? O Tonino, my darling Tonino, the woman who took such tender loving care of you when a ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... most charming country-house YOU CAN IMAGINE: it is QUITE SHUT IN by trees, and so retired that, though only thirty miles from London, the post comes to us but once a week. The roads, it must be confessed, are execrable; it is winter now, and we are up to our knees in mud and snow. But oh, Eliza! how happy we are: with Thomas (he has had a sad attack of rheumatism, dear man!) and little Bobby, and our kind friend Dr. Bates, who comes so far to see us, I leave ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Social Revolution, it is no doubt, first of all, to give bread to everyone; to transform this execrable society, in which we can every day see capable workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer who will exploit them; women and children wandering shelterless at night; whole families reduced to dry bread; men, women, and children dying ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous existence here—no society, no life—and the cuisine—bah, execrable! But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo—the Month ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... that either she might keep me back or go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... nation as "prone to superstition, opposed to religion." [48] And as far as they made any distinction between Jews and Christians, it was for the latter that they reserved their choicest and most concentrated epithets of hatred and abuse. A "new," "pernicious," "detestable," "execrable," superstition is the only language with which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to notice it. Seneca,—though he must have heard the name of Christian during the reign of Claudius (when both they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, "because of their perpetual ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... to-day, and finding it all so fair, it seems hard to believe that the foundation of all its wealth and prosperity rested upon the most cruel, the most execrable, the most inhuman traffic that ever was plied by degraded men—the traffic in slaves. Yet in the old days the trade was far from being held either cruel inhuman—indeed, vessels often set sail for the Bight of Benin to swap rum for slaves, after their owners had invoked the blessing ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... idea of his ultimately resisting that which should be fair and honourable to Lady B. did not come within my view of his character—at least of his natural character; but I hear that, as you intimated, he has had execrable advisers. I hardly know a more painful object of consideration than a man of genius in such a situation; those of lower minds do not feel the degradation, and become like pigs, familiarised with the filthy elements in which they grovel; but it is impossible that ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "tumultuous waste of huge hill-tops," which no one takes the trouble to specify. Perhaps the least praiseworthy feature of Exmoor is its weather. To adapt a Cornish description of something quite different, "when it's bad, it's execrable; and when it's good, it's only middlin'." It has a disagreeable partiality for haze and drizzle. In such an untamed region "routes" are only an embarrassment. The regulation drive is from Minehead to Dulverton, and from Dulverton through Simonsbath to Lynton, which virtually circumscribes the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... These execrable wretches, who aimed at nothing less than the total overthrow of Venice, or at least of her government, looked towards the completion of their extravagant hopes with the greater confidence, since a new but necessary addition to the already existing taxes had ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... desired, do not so much demand the care of the legislature, as those who are yet untainted with this pernicious practice, and who may, perhaps, by the frequency of temptation, and the prevalence of example, be induced in time to taste these execrable liquors, and perish in their first essays of debauchery. For such is the quality of these spirits, that they are sometimes fatal to those who indiscreetly venture upon them without caution, and whose stomachs have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... of the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted, especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... will have you flayed alive a little if you do not leave off that execrable habit of sleeping twenty ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... American customs. They are not apt to learn, and great patience is required in teaching them. The virtues of order and cleanliness seem to be not only rare in them, but exceedingly difficult to graft upon them. Their cooking, especially, is generally execrable. But once properly trained, they make the best of servants. They are generally contented, almost always cheerful and good tempered, and have little of that irritating pertness and 'independence' so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... favour of printers that some authors do write an execrable hand. One sometimes receives a letter which requires about three readings before it can be understood. At the first time of reading the meaning is scarcely intelligible, at the second time some faint glimpse of the writer's object in ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, exhilarate, exigency, exodus, exonerate, exorbitant, exotic, expectorate, expeditious, explicable, explicit, expunge, extant, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of his followers. His arguments made no impression on the mind of Philip II. The King even showed some favour to the children of Tupac Amaru by putting them in the succession to the Marquisate of Oropesa. In the Inca pedigrees Toledo is called "el execrable regicidio." When he presented himself on his return from Peru the King angrily exclaimed: "Go away to your house; for I sent you to serve kings; and you went to ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... the same execrable barren prairie offering no clew by which to guide our way. As we drew near the hills an opening appeared, through which the Indians must have gone if they had passed that way at all. Slowly we began to ascend it. I felt the most dreary forebodings of ill success, when on looking round I could ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a more cruel thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's lifeless form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate furies that belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The blood of generations of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in her veins. The spirits of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired her with new fury. She was at this moment like a pantheress that has brought down ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in agony cannot examine himself—cannot survey the past with calmness or feel convinced of the greatness of his offenses. I thank God for that; but, Jack, although I have committed many a foul and execrable murder, for which I am full of remorse—although I feel how detestable has been my life—I tell you candidly that, although those crimes may appear to others more heavy than the simple one of theft, to me the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... audience, and these were principally civilized Indians of the Tagalo tribe, a fine-looking race. They were remarkably well behaved, and listened with much attention and apparent pleasure, to some most execrable music, elicited by scraping "the hair of the horse over the entrails of a cat," to wit: fiddling! which, ceasing at last, at a given signal, up rose the curtain, and with it Apollo took flight, and ascended to the clouds. The performance commenced, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... ther was no merites in the virgin, which procured her that honor, to be made the mother of Christ, and to be preferred before other women, but Gods only free mercy exalted her to that estate. Which wordes were counted most execrable in the face of the Clergie ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... catholic, which in all ages has been, and ever will be, close and native to the heart of man,—parental anguish from filial ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though coffined in bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I ought to have added the Merchant of Venice; but here too the same remarks apply. It was an old tale; and substitute any other danger than that of the pound of flesh ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... dearest friend.' He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (Life, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:—'A physician ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... beat him with staffs, thrust splinters of reeds into his eyes, and having dragged him into one of the suburbs, stoned him to death. The next person they seized was a Christian woman, called Quinta, whom they carried to one of their temples to pay divine worship to the idol. She loaded the execrable divinity with many reproaches, which so exasperated the people that they dragged her by the heels upon the pavement of sharp pebbles, cruelly scourged her, and put her to the same death. The rioters, by this time, were in ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Oppression of their Subjects; and would they be watchful to entail the Harmony and due Subordination betwixt the several Orders in their Government. Whereas for several Centuries past, they have been labouring to erect an Arbitrary Power; and the two last have taken large Steps towards this execrable End. ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... a market and where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold: execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... prosecution is carried on against the prisoner at the bar, in order to bring her to justice for a crime of so black a dye that I am not at all surprised at this vast concourse of people collected together to hear and to see the trial and catastrophe of so execrable an offender as she is supposed ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Kiel, was a small, dark-eyed, clean-shaven fellow, quick and energetic in his movements, having more the appearance of a Celt than of a Teuton. He seemed to be full of amiability, and assured the major in execrable English how very happy he was to be able to do a service to one who had shown kindness to their esteemed colleague and persecuted patriot, Von Baumser. Indeed both of the men showed great deference to the German, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... affected to the church, carried them to the official, or judge of the ecclesiastical court, who joined in the dark design. They showed them to the Archbishop, saying, It was out of their zeal, and that they were exceedingly sorry that one of their fraternity was an heretic, and as such execrable. They also brought me in, but more moderately, saying Father La Combe was almost always at my house, which was false. I could scarcely see him at all except at the confessional, and then for a very short time. Several other things equally false they liberally ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... of that cruel tyrant of St. Gildas, and of those execrable monks,—monks out of greed only, whom notwithstanding you call your children,—which still harass you, close the miserable history. Nobody could read or hear these things and not be moved to tears. What then must they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 12th February the States-General sent letters to all their ambassadors and foreign agents, informing them of this execrable plot to overthrow the Commonwealth and take the life of the Stadholder, set on foot by certain Arminian preachers and others of that faction, and this too in winter, when the ice and snow made hostile invasion practicable, and when the enemy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his eyes rested only on the camp-followers, the baggage trains, the mobs of cattle, the maimed and unfit men; when the fine show of the fighters was out of sight. Plainly if a curse of any real value was to be pronounced it must be by a prophet who saw much that was execrable, little that ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled into dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable tyranny over the parental tie, and that Lord Eldon whom an outraged father ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... of the partisans of slavery, or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the most execrable feature of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... disqualifications affected both voting and eligibility; but eligibility was restricted still farther. Ineligible were to be all atheistic persons, scoffers at Religion, unbelievers in the divine authority of the Bible, or other execrable heretics, all profaners of the Lord's Day, all habitual drunkards or swearers, and all who had married Roman Catholics or allowed their children to marry such. For the rest, all persons of the voting sex, over the age of twenty-one, and "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation," ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying execrable posters of roosters. Hurrah! hurrah! A flash ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... saw dancing in the vineyard, as he took his evening rest on the hillside. They have all fled back into the impenetrable shade whence they came; our minds are free; and if social equity is not a chimera, Marie Antoinette was the protagonist of the most barbarous and execrable ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... that most monstrous of crimes would go oftenest unpunished; since, of all culprits, murderers do most shun the eyes of men in their dark deeds, and so provide beforehand that direct testimony to their execrable crime there shall be none. Only herein I am advised to take a distinction that escaped the learned sergeant. I say that first of all it ought to be proved directly, and to the naked eye, that a man has been murdered; and then, if none saw the crime done, let circumstances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... David, "the man after God's own heart." The deists, struck by the absurdity of the comparison, proceeded to relate all the scandalous facts they could find recorded of David, and by clever distortions painted him as the most execrable of Kings, in a work entitled David or the Man after God's Own Heart, which formed the ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... any expectation at court learned to play at cards. Soon after the humour changed, and games of chance came into vogue—to the ruin of many considerable families: this was likewise very destructive to health, for besides the various violent passions it excited, whole nights were spent at this execrable amusement. The worst of all was that card-playing, which the court had taken from the army, soon spread from the court into the city, and from the city pervaded the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... to wish you may: for I have just made an acquaintance with one who knows a vast deal of his private history. The man is really a villain, my dear! an execrable one! if all be true that I have heard! And yet I am promised other particulars. I do assure you, my dear friend, that, had he a dozen lives, he might have forfeited them all, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... remembered his youth, when he translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse translations. "Nice man"—"civil man"—"clever man . . . has been everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, he had the supreme good fortune to meet Captain Bosvile for the first time for thirty years, and not being recognised, said, "I am the chap what certain folks calls the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the "Carman's Whistle" was composed by Bird, and the favourite tune of "Queen Elizabeth" may be found in the collection called "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book." One who has lately heard it played says, "that it has more air than the other execrable compositions in her Majesty's book, something resembling a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The Greve had then that sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, "a justice and a ladder," as they were called in that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... clothing and three or four books. Small business this for a Railroad, though it will do in stage transportation. Our passports were scrutinized—mine not very thoroughly—we (the green ones) obtained an execrable dinner for 37 1/2 cents, and changed some sovereigns for French silver at a shave which was not atrocious. Finally, we were ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... yet such ridiculous conjuration is commonly the cement of every conspiracy, how dark, how treacherous, how impious soever it may be: a certain sign that there are some remains of religion left in the human mind, even after every moral sentiment hath abandoned it; and that the most execrable ruffian finds means to quiet the suggestions of his conscience, by some reversionary hope of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus, we should create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Constitution either are, or affect ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... that the paper was contrived and adhered to for advancing some private interest against the unity and peace of the Church, and rather unfairly insinuated that Mr Spence was the more hardened therein by the late execrable murder of the Bishop of St. Andrews and the expectation of a Revolution to follow thereupon, and unanimously resolved that this unruly and unreasonable member be deposed. Mr Spence was quite prepared for this, and, "with some signs of ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the Colonies which could not be brot about by the Industry of years in reasoning on the necessity of it for the Common Safety. Since the memorable 19th of April one Event has brot another on, till Boston sees her Deliverance from those more than savage Troops upon which the execrable Tyrant so much relyed for the Completion of his horrid Conspiracys and America has furnishd her self with more than seventy Battalions for her Defence. The burning of Norfolk & the Hostilities committed in North Carolina have kindled the resentment of our Southern Brethren who once thought ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... intention I turned up at the Grange. I was coming here from a place west of the settlement, and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn't find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Any way, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... to be summoned, our astrologer addresses his first reproaches to the sun, stretching out his hands and using the strongest of invectives, after which, when he has worked himself into a towering rage against the orb of day, an execrable beating on the drums begins, accompanied by the howling of all the people present. The god of rain gets his share of insults, and is severely reprimanded for the casual way in which he carries on ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... sought traces of the hard-hearted husband, but in his departure, presumably sometime earlier, Congdon had made a clean sweep; there was nothing to afford a clue to his character beyond a four-in-hand tie whose colors struck Archie as execrable. Below in the snuggery fitted up for masculine use was a table, containing a humidor half filled with dried-up cigars, and an ill-smelling pipe—Archie hated pipes—and a box of cigarettes. A number of scientific magazines lay about and a forbidding array of books ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... free.' This prayer gone up, from out a cloud there broke A voice which thus in godlike accents spoke:— 'The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?' 'Yes,' the man replied. 'Well,' ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... no necessity for taking this trouble, as they might certainly have done their business without it, since the whole city was so deserted before night, that I believe not a soul remained in it, except those execrable villains, and others of the same stamp. It is possible some of them might have had other motives besides robbing, as one in particular being apprehended—they say he was a Moor, condemned to the galleys—confessed at the gallows that he had set fire to the King's ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... not flagitiously and foolishly advert to ancient animosities, nor with rash hand attempt to hurl the brand of discord between the nations." In the same connection he attacks Gallic philosophy and the equality of man, the latter of which he styles an "execrable delusion of hair-brained philosophy." Others might speak of "the Republic of letters;" with Dennie it was the Monarchy of letters. Several articles ran through the Port Folio of 1801 on the sentiment and style of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... East Indies had brought home sundry strange animals, which were exhibited at the Jolly Mariner at Portsmouth, and thus announced on a bill printed on execrable paper, brought out to Portchester by ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years and a half Wenceslas had produced a statue and a son. The child was a picture of beauty; the statue was execrable. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... advice is—act upon your own advice. Your beautiful gipsy is a magnificent creature with a mind and will of her own, the dignified unrestraint of a dryad and the deplorable diction of a wandering gipsy wench. She would be excellent as a picture, entertaining as a companion and execrable as a wife. This of course is merely the opinion of a Vereker which to another Vereker is of not the slightest consideration. None the less, being somewhat your senior in years, I would venture to point out what I have learned ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... but stayed all day at home in my study, and at my prayers, that this day's work might not so displease God as to bring prejudice to this poor afflicted nation."[8] Evelyn, in his Diary, writes, "I kept the day of this martyrdom as a fast, and would not be present at that execrable wickedness, receiving the sad account of it from my brother George and Mr. Owen, who came to visit me this afternoon, and recounted all the circumstances." Archbishop Usher came out to witness the scene from his house at Whitehall; but he fainted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... always right, when you axe concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... according to his deserts, he would have been hanged at least a dozen times." The duc d'Ayen was right: M. de la Vrilliere was a brazen-faced rogue; a complete thief, without dignity, character, or heart. His cupidity was boundless: the emanated from his office, and he carried on an execrable trade in them. If any person wished to get rid of a father, brother, or husband, they only had to apply to M. de la Vrilliere. He sold the king's signature to all who paid ready money for it. This man inspired me with an invincible horror and repugnance. For his part, as I was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... about himself. Desirous, therefore, to know what the Sage thought {thereof}: "Does it appear to you," said he, "that I have been too conceited? I have no empty confidence in my own capacity." Worried to death with the execrable volume, Aesop replied: "I greatly approve of your bestowing praise on yourself, for it will never be your lot ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... admitted that Punch's dialect has not always pleased up there, where "the execrable attempts at broad Scotch which appear weekly in our old friend Punch" have before now been authoritatively denounced. Under the heading of "Probable Deduction" Punch had the following paragraph:—"A pertinacious Salvation ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... morning was Thursday morning, and by Thursday night, at the very latest, we counted on being back in Brussels; but we were not destined to see Brussels again for nearly six weeks. We breakfasted frugally on good bread and execrable coffee at a half-wrecked little cafe where soldiers had slept; and at eleven o'clock, when we had bestowed Bulotte, the ancient nag, and the dogcart on an accommodating youth—giving them to him as a gracious gift, since neither he nor anyone else would buy the outfit at any price—we repaired ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and farther to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... brought this great criminal before you, and called upon your Lordships to punish him. This ruined country, its desolate fields and its undone inhabitants, all call aloud for British justice, all call for vengeance upon the head of this execrable criminal. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's promise. The most execrable repast that ever was begun being finished, all the crowd insensibly dispersed, except the little Swiss, who still kept near me, and the landlord, who placed himself on the other side of me. They both smoked like dragoons; and the Swiss ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and Marco Polo by heart, credulous, uncritical, not consciously dishonest, but unready to correct false impressions caused by his ignorance and gullibility. His notes, as may be seen from a reproduction of a page of his manuscripts (facing p. 38), were in an execrable hand. The forger of the Journal of the First Voyage was no puzzle expert, and made mistakes in deciphering scrawls. Thus, for example, the note Giaua min., i.e., Java minor, was read Guanahin, the same destined to masquerade ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... had begun early in January, rendered the roads execrable, and the Savannah River became so swollen that it filled its many channels, overflowing the vast extent of rice-fields that lay on the east bank. This flood delayed our departure two weeks; for it swept away our pontoon-bridge at Savannah, and came near drowning John ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... cannot tell but this latter might be the nature of the agreement between the Kenites and the Canaanites. He conceives also, that a justification of Jael's conduct might be found in the character of Sisera, pleading that we are not required to keep good faith, or to show lenity to those execrable persons who only avail themselves of our regard to these virtues, to violate them in their conduct to others, to falsify their promises, and carry blood and carnage wherever they go. Under this impression, he prays that Providence may never raise up among ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... at daybreak on January 11th, and, covered by the 'Royals,' took the Springfield road. It had been raining heavily, and the road, never good, soon became execrable. The column was followed by a long line of waggons carrying baggage, supplies, ammunition, pontoons, &c. On arriving at Pretorius' Farm, the brigade halted and pitched camp. The battalion found the outposts, which ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the house of a rich merchant in Bristol, who had refused to comply with their demand. The same species of villany was practised in different parts of the kingdom; so that the government was obliged to interpose, and offer a considerable reward for discovering the ruffians concerned in such execrable designs. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... foolish as to imagine that the man might still be keeping track of me, I put all thought of his actions away from me and kept up with Lillian's brisk pace, chatting with her gayly over our past experience in buying hats and the execrable creations ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c. (malevolent) 907. unadvisable &c. (inexpedient) 647; unprofitable &c. (useless) 645; incompetent &c. (unskillful) 699; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
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