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Abhorrence   Listen
noun
Abhorrence  n.  Extreme hatred or detestation; the feeling of utter dislike.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abhorrence" Quotes from Famous Books



... trembled exceedingly. "My angel!" cried the man who held me, "you cannot surely be alarmed,-do you not know me?-I shall hold myself in eternal abhorrence, if ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... superficial and antipathetic observer of unfamiliar types; and being badly impressed by the forbidding staircase, he had determined on the landing to sound his man before trusting him. In the rank undergrowth of his prejudices there was no more luxuriant weed than an innate abhorrence of London and all Londoners, which neither the cause of his visit nor the murky mien of Mullins was calculated to abate. The library of books in solid bindings, many of them legal tomes, was the first reassuring feature; another was the large desk, made business-like with ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... with a smile, but she turned away with a gesture of abhorrence which had no effect upon him save that it deepened the smile ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... situated near Pasupanath. The doctrine of Sakya Singha differs most essentially from that of Gautama. The Bhotiyas, following the former, worship all the spirits, that by the Burmas are called Nat, a practice which is held in abhorrence by the Rahans of Ava. They also consider the Buddhs as emanations from a supreme deity, view many of their Lamas as incarnations of a Buddh, and accordingly worship them as living Gods, although they do not consider them as equal to Sakya, who is the Lama of Lassa. There is among ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... defined to be a prostitution of the mind or body to ape the more or less obvious defects of others, because by so doing we shall secure the suffrages of those we associate with. To affect a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a large number of persons, or to hold it in abhorrence because another set of persons very little, if at all, better informed cry it down to distinguish themselves from the former, is in either case equal vulgarity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common. 'Tis ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... Christ,' that truth abiding in us, and with us, for ever, will make us truthful. In a heart so occupied and filled there is no room for the make-believes which are but too apt to creep into religious experience. Such a soul will recoil with an instinct of abhorrence from all that savours of ostentation, and will feel that its truest treasure cannot be shown. It is our duty not to hide God's righteousness within our hearts, but it is equally our duty to hide His word there. We have to seek to make manifest the 'savour ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... war with one or other of his neighbours. The Partridges of Clover-field asserted that he sucked their eggs and stole their young ones; the Rabbits of the Warren held Old Weasel and all his family in the deepest abhorrence, and accused them of the greatest cruelties; but no one complained of them more bitterly than Dame Partlett of the Farm, who accused the whole tribe of being born enemies of her race, and said, that were it not that Old Weasel himself was dreadfully afraid of her neighbour and friend, young ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown

... in a voice of sudden passion, terribly resonant after the dull, hard accents of his questioning. 'You look upon me with abhorrence, and, perhaps, with fear. Hearken to my vindication. He whom I have slain was the man I held in dearest friendship. I believed him true to the heart's core. Yesterday—was it but yesterday?—O blessed Christ!—it seems to me ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... having often before been abused and deceived by such false and slanderous stories by the Portuguese. Their king, they said, was extremely sorry for the former murder of our people, and would never consent to any such thing in future, holding the Portuguese and Spaniards in utter abhorrence ever since, and having a much better opinion of us and our nation than these our enemies wished them to entertain. I gave them hearty thanks for their good opinion, assuring them that they should always find a great difference between our honour, and the dishonourable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... on mere political questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in his political discourses that he rises to the highest ranks. In his speeches against Verres, Catiline, and Antony, he kindles in his countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence of tyranny and corruption. Indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... of youth to be courageous.—The "sneak" and the "coward" are the abhorrence of youth. It is youth which climbs "the imminent deadly breach" and faces the deadly hail of battle, which defies the tyranny of custom and the hatred of the world. One may have compassion for age, which is naturally timid and sees fears in ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... she is well assured, Her people will in due abhorrence hold The perpetrators of this damned deed. On the three Cantons, therefore, she relies, That they in nowise lend the murderers aid; But rather, that they loyally assist, To give them up to the avenger's hand, Remembering the love and grace which ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... me: I was on my way to Rockhold to join in the family reunion, and to show the old homestead to my wife; but I cannot take her there now. I cannot introduce her to the new Mrs. Rockharrt—the new Mrs. Rockharrt!" he repeated, in a tone and with a gesture of disgust and abhorrence. "I shall turn back, and take my wife to our new home; and when I go to Rockhold, I shall ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... repeating all she had told her to her friends, would add that Trudi Hasdorf had terribly eingepackt—dreadful word, descriptive of the faded state immediately preceding wrinkles, and held in just abhorrence by every self-respecting woman. Of what earthly use was it to be cleverer and more amusing than other people if at the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... or, to put "ELISHA'S" orthography to a second test by a crucial and censorious public. Whatever may be the result of all this indifference to the sanctity of private character and correct spelling, PUNCHINELLO wishes to put upon record his total disapproval and abhorrence ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... manner as almost to ensure the return of representatives devoted to the Court. All parts of the kingdom emulously sent up the most extravagant assurances of the love which they bore to their sovereign, and of the abhorrence with which they regarded those who questioned the divine origin or the boundless extent of his power. It is scarcely necessary to say that, in this hot competition of bigots and staves, the University ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was the next to be lifted into prominence by the power of the Gospel, and thrust into publicity by the courage of his convictions. The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. His love for the truth of the Gospel filled him with abhorrence of Roman errors; his pity for souls carried him into the fight for their freedom. He testified boldly against Papal idolatry, prayer to saints, and the confessional. For this he was sentenced to suffer in the flames. His martyrdom took place ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... Caroline had so seldom met the Viscount during the season, that she was not yet enabled to conquer her agitation whenever she beheld him. She ever dreaded his addressing her; ever felt that somewhat lurked in his insinuating voice, that would in the end lead to evil; besides which, her abhorrence towards him whenever Percy's tale flashed across her mind, which it never failed to do when he appeared, always prevented her retaining her calmness undisturbed. Lord St. Eval had left England with the impression that Alphingham was his favoured rival, and his imagination ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... quite accidentally, he was present at Woodrow Wilson's inauguration as president of Princeton University. The professor appealed to the editor,—why, one can only conjecture. Perhaps it was a common abhorrence of machine politics, a passion for phrase turning, for there is a similarity in the methods of the two which separates them from the rank and file of ordinary politicians. Harvey scrutinized Wilson more carefully, making a political ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... been held up in abhorrence as a vice; but it is rather a passion strongly implanted by nature, and abhorrent from the dreadful effects produced by its overpowering influence, than a vice per se. Life itself is a lottery, and the best part of our life ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... to have ever been capable of such a judgment. And that assumption is just as impossible as the other. According to Mr. Feis, Shakspere detested such a creed and such conduct as Hamlet's, and made him die by poison in order to show his abhorrence of them—this, when we know Hamlet to have died by the poisoned foil in the earlier play. On that view, Cordelia died by hanging in order to show Shakspere's conviction that she was a malefactor; ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... flourishing a quart pot and with divers of the riotous company at his heels. No honest, sun-burned rustics these, but pallid, narrow-eyed folk whose half-furtive, half-hectoring air gave me a sense of evil streets, of dark alleys and dens where iniquity lurked, and my alarm and abhorrence waxed acute, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... dramatist composedly answered, "an hour of naked candor is at hand. Life is a masquerade where Death, it would appear, is master of the ceremonies. Now he sounds his whistle; and we who went about the world so long as harlequins must unmask, and for all time put aside our abhorrence of the disheveled. For in sober verity, this is Death who comes, Olivia,—though I had thought that at his advent one would ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... "Pre-Raphaelite": and also recognized as such, with indignation, by the public, caused the youthfully didactic society to be regarded with various degrees of contempt, passing into anger (as of offended personal dignity), and embittered farther, among certain classes of persons, even into a kind of instinctive abhorrence. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... The lack of bodies for dissection is sometimes attributed to religious scruples, but they have very little to do with it, as at all times men have refused to allow the bodies of their friends to be treated as anatomical material. This is the natural feeling of abhorrence and not at all religious. It is only when there are many unclaimed bodies of strangers and the poor, as happens in large cities, that there can be ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... might be said of the social hospitalities which raised our visitor's surprise. For example, many people are now asked to dinner who really need a dinner, and not merely those who revolt from the notion of dinner with loathing, and go to it with abhorrence. At the tables of our highest social leaders one now meets on a perfect equality persons of interesting minds and uncommon gifts who would once have been excluded because they were hungry, or were ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... had were those spent in his company. Day after day she felt that complete ecstasy when he took her in his huge arms, and kissed her with his heavy, sensual lips. But the ecstasy was extraordinarily mingled with loathing, and her physical attraction was allied with physical abhorrence. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues, and the re-establishment of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... abhorrence of all that was entailed, he persisted in it because he knew that he was sparing life by losing it, that if he agreed to compromise, the blood that had been shed on a hundred fields would have been shed ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... becoming a necessary of life; insomuch, that a dish of tea in the morning or evening cannot be digested without this stimulant. Even those who do not believe these abominations, still read them with complaisance to their auditors, and instead of the abhorrence and indignation which should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that some may believe them, though they do not themselves. It seems to escape them, that it is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... And she thought it only too likely, though observation gave her no actual assurance of this, that the girl still thought of Hubert Eldon in a way to render it doubly hard for any other man to make an impression upon her. It was dangerous, she knew, to express her abhorrence of Hubert too persistently; yet, on the other hand, she was convinced that Adela had been so deeply shocked by the revelations of Hubert's wickedness that her moral nature would be in arms against her lingering inclination. ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... act together and they were soon a formidable force. This force was regarded by many as a menace, and the sense of menace was greatly increased by the fact that these immigrants professed a religious faith which the Puritan tradition of the States in which they generally settled held in peculiar abhorrence. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... to protect the name of the child's mother from the courts, and she was baffled by the situation. The lawyer, who was so flippant about the things the Church held so sacred, was like a priest in his abhorrence of any tampering with ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... with his desires, and went from thence to Paris, where his mother, Henrietta Maria, had already taken shelter, and, after a short stay with her, travelled to the Hague. Soon after the king was beheaded, the Scots, who regarded that foul act with great abhorrence, invited Charles to come into their kingdom, provided he accepted certain hard conditions, which left the government of all civil business in the hands of Parliament, and the regulation of all religious matters in charge of the Presbyterians. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... would have puzzled even the erudite. His favourite poet was Cowper, whose moral sentiments greatly soothed him. He spoke of Byron like some contemporary who, whilst admitting his lordship's genius, felt an abhorrence of his life. He judged literature solely from the moral point of view, and was incapable of understanding any other. Of fiction he had read very little indeed, for it was not regarded with favour by his parents. Scott was hardly ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... heard enough to understand the purport of the declaration, and his recollection of Hugo's heresy and all the prejudice that he had formed against Hugo and the abhorrence of Hugo's offence to the strict militarist brought a rush of anger to his brain as he leaped up and drawing his sword, struck at Hugo with the flat of it. He aimed for Hugo's back, but a bullet had hit Hugo in the calf of his leg and, his knees giving under him, he received the blow ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... and abhorrence that Mrs Betty Higden smoothed out of her strong face as she ended this diversion, showed how ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state of Slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition. It was then that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages: 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... own fulfilment! That the very act which considerate observers, and even himself, for a time, imagined to have utterly precluded the execution of Wiatte's menaces, should be that inevitably leading to it! That the execution should be assigned to him who, abounding in abhorrence, and in the act of self-defence, was the slayer ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... people," cried James, "I do very that the Young Men's Mission is one of the finest and most worthy institutions in this city to and to express the abhorrence I feel for those villains who make use of the credit the Mission has won for their own infamous purposes." He went on to explain how the Mission was being robbed, and wound up dramatically with the words: "And this man, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... Pharisees, Luke xvi. 15, the more you please yourselves and the world, the further you are from pleasing God. The very beginning of pleasing God is when a soul falls in displeasure at itself, and abhorrence of his own loathsomeness, therefore it is said, The humble and contrite spirit I will look unto, and dwell with him, and such sacrifices do please God, Isa. lxvi. 2, Psal. li. 17. For the truth is, God never begins to be pleasant and lovely to a soul till it begins to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... all moderation and decency.... The cry spread like a general infection, and I have been told that not even a petty novel for boarding-school misses now ventures to aspire to favour unless it contains some expression of dislike or abhorrence to the new philosophy." Some of the attacks were scurrilous and all of them proceeded on the common assumption of the defenders of authority in all ages and nations, that the man who would innovate ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... and the rugged country in which they lived, with their courage and fortitude, their love of freedom, their patriotism, their abhorrence of lies, their self-respect allied with pride, their temperance and frugality, forming a noble material for empire and dominion when the time came for the old monarchies to fall into their hands,—the last and greatest of all the races that had ruled the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... M85 Abhorrence of alien blood. M86 Citizenship only conferred as the highest honour. M87 Qualification dependent on ancestry ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm

... who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet the soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that, even could I have established in the bosom of one who stole such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty that he was prevailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to Him as before. In a word, though I might have made him a more upright and honourable man, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... His Christ was not primarily the bleeding, the scourged, the crucified, but rather a benigner and lovelier Phoebus Apollo, the bringer of clearness and light, the dispeller of the unwholesome mists and barbaric gloom that yet brood over the human soul. Like Goethe, he cherished a veritable abhorrence of the mystic symbolism of the mediaeval church; and was rather inclined to minimize the significance of Christ's death and passion. He had undeniably imparted into his Christianity a great deal of sunny Hellenic paganism—a fact which in his familiar correspondence ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... Nicholas Bernard, Meric Casaubon, nor with any of the men of letters who were churchmen, do we find Milton in correspondence. The interest of religion was more powerful than the interest of knowledge; and the author of Eikonoklastes must have been held in special abhorrence by the loyal clergy. The general sentiment of this party is expressed in Hacket's tirade, for which the reader is referred to his Life of ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... very numerous. Many of them cried out, "They thought what madam's silk gown would end in;" others spoke sarcastically of her learning. Not a single female was present but found some means of expressing her abhorrence of poor Jenny, who bore all very patiently, except the malice of one woman, who reflected upon her person, and tossing up her nose, said, "The man must have a good stomach who would give silk gowns for such sort of trumpery!" Jenny replied to this with a bitterness which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... abhorrence of high French heels as strong as I can. You cannot wear them in my studios. I will not permit them, for to wear them indicates that you will never learn to dance, and there is no use in wasting your time in trying. ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... which the commons were every day assuming, they issued orders for demolishing all images, altars, crucifixes. The zealous Sir Robert Harley, to whom the execution of these orders was committed, removed all crosses even out of streets and markets; and, from his abhorrence of that superstitious figure, would not any where allow one piece of wood or stone to lie over another at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... handkerchief away, take the horrid thing away. I believe my soul somebody has touched it after it was ironed. Do take it away," and the poor victim of concentrated, double extract of human extravagance, almost fainted and fell back upon her lounge, in a fit of abhorrence at the idea of her mouchoir being touched, tossed, or opened, after it entered her camphorated drawers ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... man of a character which ever was my abhorrence should fall to my lot!—But, depending on my own strength; having no reason to apprehend danger from headstrong and disgraceful impulses; I too little perhaps cast up my eyes to the Supreme Director: in whom, mistrusting myself, I ought to have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... this noble Englishman, has often served to deepen my abhorrence of WAR, which too frequently sets those to cutting each other's throats, who were ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... the bank sent one of their body to negotiate with Amos—to offer him a large sum of money, and a guarantee from further molestation, if he would confess, restore the property, and give up his accomplices, if any there were. It was in vain that he protested his innocence, and avowed his abhorrence of the crime. The banker rallied him on his assumed composure, and threatened him with consequences; until the locksmith, who had been unaccustomed to dialogues founded on the presumption that he was a villain, ordered his tormentor out of his shop, with ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... victuals, and cramped with the colic of Whiggery, she set her strong shoulder to the wheel of fortune, and so kept it till the hill was behind her. Some nations (which owe their existence to her) have forgotten these things conveniently; an Englishman hates to speak of them, through his unjust abhorrence of self-praise; and so does a Frenchman, by ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... accordance with his orders. The water being too hot for him to get into the bath at once, he took down from the shelf his copy of Suetonius. He wished to read how Seneca had died. He opened the book at random. 'But dwarfs,' he read, 'he held in abhorrence as being lusus naturae and of evil omen.' He winced as though he had been struck. This same Augustus, he remembered, had exhibited in the amphitheatre a young man called Lucius, of good family, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... Michel's ruin. Behind all her nervous shrinking and her heart's doubt, the memory of the face of the stranger she had seen last night with Sir Andrew Melvill tortured her. She could not find the time and place where she had seen the eyes that, in the palace, had filled her with mislike and abhorrence as they looked upon the Queen. Again and again in her fitful sleep had she dreamt of him, and a sense of foreboding was heavy upon her—she seemed to hear the footfall of coming disaster. The anxiety of her soul lent an unnatural brightness to her eyes; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... this, and tell Hosea also from me, Bai, that I am sure when he beholds the woe wrought by the magic arts of one of your race on the house of Pharaoh, to which he vowed fealty, and with it on this city and the whole country, he will tear himself with abhorrence from his kindred. They have fled like cowards, after dealing the sorest blows, robbing of their dearest possessions those among whom they dwelt in peace, whose protection they enjoyed, and who for long years have given them ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a reception given to the Cabinet by Mrs. Atterbury that the rumor of this accredited function came to Jack's ears. "All Richmond" was among the guests. Olympia, in spite of her abhorrence of the cause, couldn't resist a glow of sympathetic admiration of the women who, in dress, in speech, in tact, in all the artifices which make feminine diplomacy so potent an agency in statecraft, bent ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... were very apprehensive of its being forced from them; and particularly the man who seemed most interested in it, whose very flesh crept on his bones, for fear of being punished by us, as Captain Cook had expressed his great abhorrence of this unnatural act. They used every method to conceal the head, by shifting it from one to another; and by signs endeavouring to convince us, that there was no such thing amongst them, though we had seen it but a few minutes before. They then took ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... took seems to have been suggested by a letter from Arbuthnot. "I make it my last request," wrote his beloved physician, now sinking fast under the diseases that brought him to the grave, "that you continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice, which you seem so naturally endued with, but still with a due regard to your own safety; and study more to reform than to chastise, though the one often cannot be effected without the other." ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... took the casket, and with it directions for use, which he did not detail. He then spoke to Haroun about Louis Grayle, who had inspired him with a mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence, of pity and terror. And Haroun answered thus, repeating the words ascribed to him, so far as I can trust, in regard to them—as to all else in this marvellous narrative—to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinary matters, and strained to the utmost extent of its power, by the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "No; depend upon it, Harry, I have acted rightly, though I bitterly regret now having gone to the party, and so exposed myself to all this. I have always looked upon duelling with the greatest abhorrence; to run the risk of committing murder (for I can call it by no milder name), when at the very moment in which the crime is consummated you may fall yourself, and thus even the forlorn hope of living to repent be cut off from you, appears to me little short of madness. On one point ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... actions worthy to be compared with these? Do you see what fruits virtue yields? These are the things we your friends ask of you, these become you, for these you are designed by nature; but all that other kind of conduct we must reject with abhorrence, 'cast it away on a mountain, or throw it into the roaring sea.'"[490] For as a clever doctor would prefer to cure the illness of his patient by sleep and diet rather than by castor or scammony, so a kind friend and good father or teacher delight to use praise rather than blame to correct the character. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... the Greek, or to the Greek United Church, although their worship and religious conceptions are strongly tinged with reminiscences of Slavic paganism. Neither is a conquest, in the military sense, possible. Public opinion in Europe has learned to look with abhorrence on such violent measures, not to speak of the mutual jealousies of Austria, Russia and Germany. The question is rather one of peaceful colonization, of the introduction of Germans in large numbers, and the gradual adoption of Western improvements. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... Whether this language was the result of a previously studied lesson I know not, but it was ill-calculated to raise my failing spirits. "My child, my beloved child!" exclaimed the weeping mother, "fear not, God is merciful and will accept your sincere abhorrence of your fault. I have this day offered in your name a fine wax taper to your patroness, St. Anne, who will, no doubt, intercede for you." "No, no!" replied the unhappy girl, "there is no longer any hope for me; and the torments I now suffer are but the preludes to those which I am doomed ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... abhorrence of suave ambiguities and formal inanities, found vent in most vigorous and unmistakeable language; dogmatic obiter dicta came from his mouth or his pen like so many cudgel-thwacks. His nature was tense and intense, very excitable ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... next come to see me, I will give you an account of the cruel customs of the mystery lodge of the Mandans; with the hope that it will increase your abhorrence of cruelty and bloodshed, render you more than ever thankful for the blessings of peace, and more anxious to extend them all over the earth. The hardest of all lessons now, to a red man, is, as I have before intimated, to forgive his enemies; but when, through Divine mercy, his knowledge ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... a whip-lash. 'A clergyman such as you, Mr Sampson, can inspire naught in their childish minds but fear and abhorrence,' and then she pulled the bell cord so violently that not only Denham but my ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... contemporary writers from whom we draw our materials for the portrait of Cleon, the historian Thucydides and the comic poet Aristophanes, were both violently prejudiced against him. Aristophanes hated him as the representative of the new democracy, which was an object of abhorrence to the great comic genius; and Thucydides, a born aristocrat, of strong oligarchical sympathies, looked with cold scorn and aversion on the coarse mechanic, [Footnote: Cleon was a tanner by trade.] who presumed to ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... and dry and there were still crowds about Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circle and Piccadilly itself. As he walked, he looked into the faces of the women who passed him by, struggling against his old abhorrence as against one of the sickly offshoots of an over-eclectic epicureanism. They typified not vice but weakness, the unhappy result of man's inevitable revolt against unnatural laws. Yet even then the mingled purity and priggishness encouraged ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... report now lay before the eyes of a far different reader—one who was animated by feelings far more intense, since it was the daughter of the accused herself. That daughter also was one who hitherto had lived in an atmosphere of innocence, purity, and love, one who shrank in abhorrence from all that was base or vile; and this was the one before whose eyes was now placed the horrible record that had been made up before the world against her ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... fresh provocation, and an additional motive for revenge. His eldest son, the Duc de Chartres,[4] was now a boy of sixteen, and he had proposed to the king to give him Madame Royale in marriage; an idea which the queen, who held his character in deserved abhorrence, had rejected with very decided marks of displeasure. He was also stimulated by views of personal ambition. The history of England had been recently studied by many persons in France besides the king and queen; and there were ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... never forget that there are two Irelands,' and as John Bright said, 'There are more loyal men and women in Ireland than the whole population of men and women in Wales.' Yet Mr. Gladstone is so very considerate of Wales. Ireland can point to fully one-third of the entire population, who view with abhorrence the very name of Home Rule, and are pledged to resist it to the last. These people have been and are the friends of England, and England can be proud of them as having flourished under her rule. They have been and are the English garrison in Ireland, and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... being shooting in this place, the dogs, upon the report of the gun, made towards them. Their shooting them or hanging them would have been merciful, but they buried them alive; and what words can express the abhorrence of such barbarity to such innocent creatures following the dictates of nature? To prevent a possibility of their scratching a way out, they covered them down with black thorns; over these they laid a sufficient quantity of earth and ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... place he speaks with becoming abhorrence of a "godless author," who has burlesqued a psalm. This author was supposed to be Pope, who published a reward for any one that would produce the coiner of the accusation, but never denied it; and was afterwards the perpetual ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... abstinence, which he kept religiously for several years, was very detrimental to his health. His naturally delicate frame sank under the coarse diet, as soon as the accustomed stimulants were withdrawn, and his stomach getting gradually weakened, he at last began to feel a sort of abhorrence for his daily food. He now took to eating fruit, which still more debilitated his digestive organs, so that finally there took place a process of slow starvation. When fainting at the side of his friend Artis, he had ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetishism among all peoples; namely, that they ascribed intentional and conscious life to a host of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the fears, the adoration, the guardianship of, or abhorrence for some given species of stones, plants, animals, some strange forms or unusual natural object. The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts of talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... rest, I have conscientiously trained myself to sleep two hours later on the morning of the holy day than I ever allowed myself to do on business days. But having inherited, besides a New England conscience, a New England abhorrence of waste, I regularly sit up two hours later on Saturday nights than on any others; and the night preceding this particular Sabbath was no exception to the rule, as the reader may imagine from the foregoing recital. At about 5.30 A. M., however, I became conscious that ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton

... making this tropical empire a nation of whites with a slave labouring class. The greatest difficulty on the Amazons is with the Indians. The general inflexibility of character of the race, and their abhorrence of the restraints of civilised life, make them very intractable subjects. Some of them, however, who have learned to read and write, and whose dislike to live in towns has been overcome by some cause acting early ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream. And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam, Of cork; or of the supple osier twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: —In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin. Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their narrow cells, and choke the crannies fast With pollen, or that gum specific which Out-binds or birdlime ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a shrewd, sharp-sighted girl, and already had her preference in favor of Michael Welsh, father's hired man. Walking, riding on horseback, and wasting time generally, Sally held in great abhorrence. "All she wished to say to Mike on week days, she could tell him milking time." On Sundays, however, it was different, and regularly each Sunday night found Mike and Sally snugly ensconced in the "great room," while under the windows occasionally might ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... my main theme, there was, transmuting all her orthodoxy (and making her accept some unorthodox among her fellow-worshippers) a deep and fervent adoration of life and fruitfulness, and an abhorrence ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... three months since the loyal women of Madison, Wis., desiring to express their equal interest in the preservation of the Union and Government, and their abhorrence of all who by word and deed encourage the unholy rebellion which has filled our land with mourning, organized the first Ladies' Union League in the country, and pledged themselves, during the continuance of the war, to such individual persistent effort and self-sacrifice ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... hours of the following day among the farmers with whom his salvage deal had brought him into contact. The wrecker's instinct was strong in him, and besides he regarded with abhorrence the tactics of Mr. Martin and welcomed an opportunity to beat that gentleman at his own game. He could easily outbid the Martin offer and still buy the farm at a low price. As a result of his inquiries he ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... follow his friend; and that was when he rushed headlong into the lake and disported himself for an hour at a time in its cool waters. Crusoe was, both by nature and training, a splendid water-dog. Grumps, on the contrary, held water in abhorrence, so he sat on the shores of the lake disconsolate when his friend was bathing, and waited till he came out. The only time when Grumps was thoroughly nonplussed, was when Dick Varley's whistle sounded faintly in the far distance. Then Crusoe would prick up his ears, and stretch ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... as the poor roughly say, is paid for it. Again, however simple-hearted and courteous he may be, he never gets very close home to the poor. Their life is not his life, nor their ways his ways. They do not understand his refinement, his delicacy about interference, his gentlemanly reticence, his abhorrence of gossip and scandal. They are accustomed to be ordered about, to rough words, to gossip over their neighbours. And so the District Visitor is "more in their way," as they tell her. She is profuse of questions, routing out a thousand little details that no parson would ever know. She has ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... satisfactory organization to watch the war-makers we shall never end war, any more than a country can end crime and robbery without a police. Specialist must watch specialist in either case. Mere expressions of a virtuous abhorrence of war will never end war until ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... begotten three sons, these only. The first was named Vortimer, the second Passent, and the third Vortiger. Hated was this king by all the barons of his realm, and of all his neighbours. His very kindred held him in abhorrence. He came to an evil end, for he died in his shame, and the pagans he befriended with him. "Sire," said Hengist to the king, "men hold thee in hatred by reason of me, and because of thy love they bear me malice also. I am thy father, and thou my son, since ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisition. Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star Chamber had been remodelled, and the High ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... chattels, carriage, &c. to be restored by him. In Italy they can't divorce. He insisted on her giving me up, and he would forgive every thing,—* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * But, in this country, the very courts hold such proofs in abhorrence, the Italians being as much more delicate in public than the English, as they ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... religion—either they succumbed to the tyranny of its powerful but corrupt ministers, or stood out in open rebellion against its disputed dogmas. In either case, that architecture which had formerly been regarded as the chief symbol of united faith, shared the neglect of one section or the abhorrence of the other. That strong sense of beauty, once the common possession of builders, sculptors, and people, was now between the upper and nether millstones of fate, being ground into the fine dust which has ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... compel thee To attempt this undertaking By so many risks attended. But I think you both are wrong, Since in this case, having heard that The affliction this man suffers Christian sorcery hath effected Through abhorrence of our gods, By that atheist sect detested, Neither of these feelings should Be your motive to attempt it. I then, who, for this time only Will believe these waves that tell me— These bright fountains—that the beauty Which so ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... when they make any pretence of sprucing up, probably find themselves quite as much enslaved by fashion as our very fastidious selves; a wide difference betaken ourselves and them, however, being, that while they cling tenaciously to some prehistoric style of garment, and regard innovations with abhorrence, fashion demands of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... utter contempt and abhorrence of her, he arranged with the connivance of his father to bring a concubine into his home. This lady came from a comparatively good family, and was induced to take this secondary position because of the large sum of money that was paid to her father for her. The misery of Pearl was only intensified ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... I am about to begin the most important undertaking of my life, I recall the sense of abhorrence with which I have at different times read the confessions of men famed for their prowess in the realm of love. These boastings have always shocked me, for I reverence love as the noblest of the passions, and it is impossible for me to conceive how one who has truly fallen victim to its benign influence ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... 165,) who says, "The Slave business, that violent outrage against the natural rights of man, which is always a crime and leads to all manner of wickedness, is exercised by the Colonists with a cruelty that merits the abhorrence of everyone, though I have been told that they pique themselves upon it; and not only is the capture of the Hottentots considered by them merely as a party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... from the pacific disposition of her rulers and their abhorrence of war of any kind, her border settlements suffered most severely. The whole extent of her frontier was desolated by the Indians, and irruptions were frequently made by them into the interior. The establishments, which had been made in the Conococheague valley, were altogether broken up and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... in my then frame of mind, I could have been induced to forgive the miserable creature: but I certainly had no desire to inflict any punishment upon him beyond what he would derive from my undisguised expressions of contempt and abhorrence. Not so his more immediate companions, however. Evans had no sooner confessed than, with a hoarse howl of fury, his self- constituted judges whipped out their sheath-knives, while in a paroxysm of terror ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... inform of the trifling faults of others and especially those who acted without any regard to honour, by disclosing what they had pretended to listen to in confidence. Several of the worst tempered "saints" she held in abhorrence; and I have heard her say, that such and such, she abominated. Many a trick did she play upon these, some of which were painful to them in their consequences, and a good number of them have never been traced to this day. Of all ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... it was for me to keep my head cool. Not only on this occasion, but on all others did I feel this; indeed, though the licence of the times allowed a great deal of hard drinking on shore, I held the vice in just abhorrence. In the navy especially, more men have been ruined body and soul by drunkenness than by any other way, and many a fine fellow who would have been an ornament to his profession have I seen completely lost to it and to his country by giving ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... divined even before these last miraculous days that she had looked upon love with abhorrence for almost half as many years as he had lived, an abhorrence rooted in a profound revulsion of body and mind and spirit. For nearly twenty years that revulsion had endured and eaten into the very depths of her being. . . . He had a sudden ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Pickwick was just on the point of inquiring, with great abhorrence of the man's cold-blooded villainy, how Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, who was counsel for the opposite party, dared to presume to tell Mr. Serjeant Snubbin, who was counsel for him, that it was a fine morning,—when he was interrupted by a general rising of the barristers, and a loud cry of 'Silence!' from ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... those times, hindered Christians from entering into the armies, and compelled those, who were converted in them, to leave them, nothing is more true, than that the belief, that it was unlawful for Christians to fight, occasioned an equal abhorrence of a military life. One of the first effects, which Christianity seems to have produced upon its first converts, when it was pure and unadulterated, and unmixed with the interpretations of political men, was a ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... name of Niesnion, which may be translated, "I don't know," "possibly," or "perhaps." He would take no such answer; but would say, in an emphatic tone, "try," "learn," or "set about it." Indeed, the abhorrence in which he held any mode of expression which was not dictated by the most perfect frankness was so great, that he could not endure the flattery and unmeaning civility of courtiers; and he never ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... fellow-countrymen and fellow-citizens of Witanbury, wish to express to you our utter abhorrence and sense of personal shame in the dastardly attack which was made on your house and property on March 25, 1915. As a small token of regard we desire to inform you that we have started a fund for compensating you for any material ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... I become a nursling soft and pure, An infant cradled on its mother's knee, Without a past, love-cherished and secure; Which if it saw this loathsome present Me, Would plunge its face into the pillowing breast, 65 And scream abhorrence hard to lull ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... but love and zealous duty to his once dear master had brought him there, that Timon was forced to confess that the world contained one honest man; yet, being in the shape and form of a man, he could not look upon his man's face without abhorrence, or hear words uttered from his man's lips without loathing; and this singly honest man was forced to depart, because he was a man, and because, with a heart more gentle and compassionate than is usual to man, he bore man's detested form ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the most singular conduct I have ever met with," said Mr Gosport; "he seems to hold mankind in abhorrence, yet he is never a moment alone, and at the same time that he intrudes himself into all parties, he associates with none: he is commonly a stern and silent observer of all that passes, or when he speaks, it is but to utter some sentence of rigid morality, or some ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... did she feel Guy's declaration that he would try to make her happy. Her proud spirit chafed most at this. He was going to treat her with patient forbearance, and try to conceal his abhorrence. Could she endure this? Up and down the room she paced, with angry vehemence, asking ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... primitive character of Roman beliefs in this field, the firm retention of the old animistic idea of the dead, the tendency to class the dead together as a mass and to believe in a collective rather than an individual immortality, and above all the abhorrence of the dead and the disinclination to dwell on their condition and to paint imaginary pictures of life beyond the grave. In view of these feelings it is not strange that we have great difficulty in finding any old Roman gods of the dead, aside from the dead who are themselves all gods. ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... this is the system which ministers of the Church of England are endeavouring to introduce into our country, with its idolatrous rites and dogmas, and which you and many excellent men like yourself look at with a lenient eye, instead of regarding it with the abhorrence it deserves." ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... has been held in abhorrence among all people and in all ages. Here was a foul plot to destroy at one swoop the President, the officers eligible to the succession, the Cabinet, the Lieutenant- General, and no doubt the loyal Governors of the States. That the scheme was successful ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy

... ought to be left to see clearly; not jaundiced, blinded, twisted all awry, by revenge, moral abhorrence, and the like. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... I am safe. Let calumny and abhorrence pursue me among men; I shall not be defrauded of my dues. The peace of virtue and the glory of obedience will ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... as far removed from superstition as from impiety; a voluptuary, who has not less abhorrence of debauchery than inclination for pleasure; a man who has never known want nor abundance. I occupy that station of life which is contemned by those who possess everything; envied by those who have nothing; and only relished by those who make their felicity consist ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... of the little Congregational church, or (as in those days the descendants of the Puritans, in order to manifest their abhorrence for popery, and all that in their judgment sounded papistical, loved to call their places for public worship) the "meeting-house," were tolerably well filled by an attentive congregation on Thanksgiving morning. We say only ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... might, the young woman could not altogether hide her feeling of abhorrence. And yet, she asked herself, why should this man's proposal arouse in her such antagonism and repugnance? He was a scholar, famed for his attainments in the world of the highest culture. As his wife, she would be admitted at once into the very inner circle of that life ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... shrieked to him, "My son, what hast thou done? what frantic thought Possessed thy mind, how wast thou thus distraught? Come forth, I do entreat thee, son, come forth." Haemon, for answer, with eyes flashing rage, Looked mute abhorrence, drew his two-edged sword, And would have struck his father; but the King Fled and escaped. Then on himself he turned His wrath, and without more, into his breast Drove to the hilt his sword, and conscious ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... First Lord of the Treasury. It is probable that his infirm health and his isolated position were his protection. The chiefs of the opposition did not fear him enough to hate him. The Whig junto was still their terror and their abhorrence. They continued to assail Montague and Orford, though with somewhat less ferocity than while Montague had the direction of the finances, and Orford of the marine. But the utmost spite of all the leading malecontents were concentrated on ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay



Words linked to "Abhorrence" :   detestation, disgust, abhor, hate, odium, abhorrent



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