"Abominable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boards while the country went to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible mates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy this abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in Knights' moves up and down Charing Cross Road. And now and again a suicide would come to hand with the pathetic inscription pinned to his chest: ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... candles. He might be useful to me, might really explain matters to the Captain-General, or might even, as a last resource, take a letter from me to the British Consul. But I should have to be alone with him. Nichols was an abominable scoundrel; bloodthirsty to the defenceless; a liar; craven before the ghost of a threat. No doubt O'Brien did not want to give him up. Perhaps he had papers. And no doubt, once he could find a trace of Seraphina's whereabouts, O'Brien would give me up. All I could do was to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... collected all his own (he might have said, 'and other people's too'), to go to New Orleans, where his pigs and corn, exchanged against goods, would enable him to settle with his family in Texas in a gallant style. Upon my inquiring what could be the cause of a certain abominable smell which pervaded the cabin, he apprised me that, in a small closet adjoining, he had secured a dozen of runaway negroes, for the apprehension of whom ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... distance, for the distinct purpose of earthing him wherever he was going, I by no means liked the office which a sort of fatality had forced upon me. But I was somewhat reconciled to it by a secret conviction that the abominable little demon had himself come out upon an equally discreditable expedition, which I soon detected from the infinite pains he took ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... glittered in the moonlight, and that the shadows lay black under the mill-wheel. There you have a moonlight night before your eyes, but I speak of the shimmering light, the twinkling stars, the distant sounds of a piano melting into the still and scented air, and the result is abominable. [A pause] The conviction is gradually forcing itself upon me that good literature is not a question of forms new or old, but of ideas that must pour freely from the author's heart, without his bothering his head about any forms whatsoever. [A knock is heard at the window nearest the table] ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... Bitts." They were about a foot apart, and between them, by a rusty chain, swung the forecastle lamp, burning day and night, and forever casting two long black shadows. Lower down, between the bitts, was a locker, or sailors' pantry, kept in abominable disorder, and sometimes requiring a vigorous cleaning ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... impertinent assumption on the other, than in the dominions of the Czar. Birth, place, power, are all duly honoured, and that sometimes to a degree which would astonish a British nobleman, accustomed all his life to high society. I remember once travelling in a canal boat, the most abominable of all conveyances, resembling Noah's ark in more particulars than its shape, that I was accosted, in the Northern States too, and near the borders, where equality and liberty reign paramount, by a long ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... sunny days emerges from an azure sea against an azure sky! That fragment of paradise fallen upon the shore of one of the most beautiful seas in the world is said to have been for about ten years a hell of fierce cruelties and abominable vices. Tiberius passed sentence upon himself, in the opinion of posterity, when he secluded himself in Capri. Ought we, without a further word, to transcribe this sentence? There are, to be sure, no decisive arguments to prove false the accounts about the horrors of Capri which the ancients, and ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... thinking over. Suppose that M. Vautrin is this Trompe-la-Mort, perhaps we might do better for ourselves with him. Still, on the other hand, if you ask him for money, it would put him on his guard, and he is just the man to clear out without paying, and that would be an abominable sell." ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... board of a fourteen-gun brig, and cruised in the Channel for six months; but, as I found that there was no chance of being a purser, and as I hated the confinement and discipline of a man-of-war, I cut and run as soon as I obtained my pay. Then I was shopman at a draper's, which was abominable, for if the customers would not buy the goods, I got all the blame; besides, I had to clean my master's boots and my mistress's shoes, and dine in the kitchen on scraps, with a slipshod, squinting ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... a humorous element in his two abominable bargains; but in the grim presence of his own past things looked differently. The terrible eyes of the high-born woman he had loved and betrayed long ago, when he was still called an honourable gentleman, were upon him now, and he feared her as he had ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... any political weight;—and none of the Ministers took up the gauntlet for him. On another occasion, Barrot, with his well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the speakers' tribune in the Assembly, words of indignation upon the "abominable machinations," which, according to him, went on in the immediate vicinity of the President. Finally, while the Ministry obtained from the National Assembly a widow's pension for the Duchess of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil list;—and, in Bonaparte, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... the Highland Regiments "Les Ecossais," but "Les Sans Culottes." The setting sun found us all covered with dust, rather tired and very hungry, and driving up, with some misgivings from what we had heard and from what we saw, to our Inn at Charleroi. "This is an abominable-looking house," said Donald. "Oh, jump out before we drive in and ask what we can get to eat." "Well, Donald, what success?" we all cried like young birds upon the return of the old one to the gaping, craving mouths in their nest. ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Politician! Heaven help him! He belongs to the most bloodthirsty section of revolutionary brigands. His creed is pillage, murder, and revenge; and he chooses to declare that it is I who, by rejecting his love, drove him to these foul extremities. May God forgive him that abominable lie! The evil we do, Monsieur, is within us; it does not come from circumstance. I, in the meanwhile, was a happy wife. My husband, M. de Lannoy, who was an officer in the army, idolised me. We ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... community of property; but I have never thought enough upon these questions to judge her mode of advocating them. The details of her book are sometimes mistaken; but that was to be expected, especially as she was often subjected to the abominable impositions of persons who deceived her purposely in the information which she received from them with the perfect trust of a guileless nature. I do entire justice to her truth, her benevolence, and her fearlessness; and these are to me the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Prince, to provide remedy in the premises; nothing so much coveting as the increase of the Commonwealth of this his Realm, with also the virtuous exercise of his most loving subjects and people, and to avoid that most abominable sin of idleness out of the Realm, hath, by the advice and consent of his Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, ordained and enacted that every person occupying land for tillage, shall for every sixty acres which he hath ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... costumes interfere with bodily freedom. Take our tight and ungainly shoes. Here is an abominable instance of our slavery to style. In most instances the foot is made to fit the shoe, and the suffering that is endured by many so-called stylish people for the purpose of making the foot fit the shoe would be difficult to describe. A shoe should fit the foot. The more nearly you approximate ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... it, was a pleasant fishing village—what like it is now, I know not; but what I detest in the great folks of your time, is, that insane selfishness which makes them prefer any place, however abominable, where they can herd together in their little exquisite coteries, to the noblest mansions surrounded with the noblest domains, where they cannot exist without being more or less exposed to the company of people not exactly belonging to their own particular sect. How can society hang together ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... to go there (he wrote his adventure stories there, saying anything might happen in such a lonely place), and the Gardener, because he was obliged to. Come-Back Stumper was excluded. They had taken him once, and he had said such an abominable thing that he was never allowed to visit it again. "A messy hole," he called it. Mr. Jinks had never even seen it, but, after his death in the railway accident, his remains, recovered without charge from the Hospital, had been buried ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... with the greatest patience and tenderness, would be wholly carried away. In these cases it always occurs to me, how would the Saviour have acted with such persons? The hypocrisy that appears in many is abominable, and could we have received them upon a mere verbal profession of love to the doctrine of Jesus, we might in a short time have baptized the whole nation, as far as we could reach. Many would have come here to live, but we were obliged to prevent them, and many expressed ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... indignant. It was abominable that he should pursue her in this way. She sat thinking how abominable it was for five minutes; and then it suddenly struck her that she was hungrier than ever. She had forgotten her material troubles for ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Peggy's leg," of the "crackers"—that is, a confection resembling dog biscuit sown with caraway seeds—and, above all, of the "crubeens," which, being interpreted, means "pigs' feet," slightly salted, boiled, cold, wholly abominable. Here also is the three-card trick, demonstrated by a man with the incongruous accent of Whitechapel and a defiant eye, that even through the glaze of the second stage of drunkenness held the audience and yet was 'ware of the disposition of the nine ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw. As for Godwin himself, he has large, noble eyes, and a nose—oh, a most abominable nose! Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation." In mentioning the matter of Godwin's nose, it is perhaps well to remember that Southey merely gave a pretty ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... makes one condition, does he not? An abominable condition, such as would suggest itself to a wretch like that? I am right, am ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable harangue. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a brisk passage of arms between the two men of opposite party in the group by the fire, and Mrs. Cricklander incited them to further exertions. It had arisen because Mr. Derringham had launched forth the abominable and preposterous theory that the only thing the Radicals would bring England to would be the necessity of returning to barbarism and importing slaves—then their schemes applied to the present inhabitants of the country might all work. The denizens in the casual wards, having a vote and a competence ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853') are published some atrocious monuments of the Assyrian cruelty in the treatment of military captives. In one of the plates of Chap xx., at page 456, is exhibited some unknown torture applied to the head, and in another, at page 458, is exhibited the abominable process, applied to two captives, of flaying them alive. One such case had been previously recorded in human literature, and illustrated by a plate. It occurs in a Dutch voyage to the islands of the East. The subject of the torment in that case as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... she opened it to go out in the morning, and she read it on her way to the Synthesis. It seemed to make the air reel around her, and step by step she felt as if she should fall. A wild anger swelled her heart, and left no room there for shame even. She wondered what abominable lies that little wretch had told; but they must have been impudent indeed to overcome her mother's life-long reluctance from writing and her well-grounded fears of spelling, so far as to make her send a letter out of the usual course. But when her first fury passed, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... fellow is a sorcerer, a Moorman, an accursed, a liar, a traitor, a hypocrite;[FN105] nor deem I that the devils under the earth are damnable as he. Allah abase him in his every book! Hear then, O my mother, what this abominable one did, and all I shall tell thee will be soothfast and certain. See how the damned villain brake every promise he made, certifying that he would soon work all good with me; and do thou consider the fondness which he displayed to me and the deeds which he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... ordered charities to be distributed to the poor, without distinction of Jew, Christian, or Mohammedan. Yet this brilliant ruler had to repel Christian attacks on his dominions, and to witness the most abominable cruelty wrought by the soldiers of the Cross. Where, in the annals of Christendom, shall we find such a noble example of true charity; of charity which overflows the petty barriers of creeds, and loses itself in the great ocean ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Warwickshire people would call 'unked,' to her. New paint, new paper, new colours; grim servants dressed in their best, and objecting to every change—from their master's marriage to the new oilcloth in the hall, 'which tripped 'em up, and threw 'em down, and was cold to the feet, and smelt just abominable.' All these complaints Molly had to listen to, and it was not a cheerful preparation for the reception which she already ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... having done so, she could not help them or countenance them in any way. The miserable men, being reduced to a hard extremity, made this disavowal. Elizabeth then said to them, "Now you have told the truth. Neither I, nor any one else in my name, incited you against your queen; and your abominable treason may set an example to my own subjects to rebel against me. So get you gone out of my presence, ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the doorway and pointed out the land-office. Ichabod thanked him, and under the impulse of habit felt in his pocket for a cigar. None was there, and all at once he remembered Ichabod Maurice did not smoke. Strange he should have such an abominable inclination to do so just then; but nevertheless the fact remained. Ichabod Maurice never ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... object to about them," Mrs. Howard remarked presently, "their abominable arrogance. Look at that man. It is just as though there was no one else on this balcony but himself—no one else exists ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... At that moment an abominable oath, uttered in a loud voice, reached my ears. I looked in the direction whence it came. As I ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... great Mover of all, he was taken to witness the pitiable sight of the Jews turning away from His worship, and to see their elders burning incense before walls covered with "every form of creeping things and abominable beasts—all the idols of the house of Israel![1]" How must the vision have prepared him to realize the depth of degradation with which he had to contend, and have fired him with energy ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... discovered that in the giving of the physic in the morning the man's hand had been scratched; a youth had suffered the dog to lick his sore finger, and the animal had also been observed to lick the sore ear of an infant. He was a remarkably affectionate dog, and was accustomed to this abominable ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... I know her. I know all about her. She's a poor, weak thing," said Hetty, with no shade of tenderness in her voice; "but Jim was the most to blame, and it's abominable the way people have treated her. I always wished I could do something for them both, and now I've got the chance: that is if you ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Provost Marshal's administration is abominable. Mr. Garnett, M. C., told me that in an interview with the President, the latter informed him that he had just received a letter from Gen. Johnston, stating that the enemy not only knew everything going on within our lines, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... other crawling and flying obscene and obnoxious things; and out of these he composed a sort of monster or chimera, which he represented as about to issue from the shield, with eyes flashing fire, and of an aspect so fearful and abominable that it seemed to infect the very air around. When finished, he led his father into the room in which it was placed, and the terror and horror of Piero proved the success of his attempt. This production, afterward known as the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... hope of changing Ironsyde's decision. Raymond had evidently considered the matter, and though his argument was abominable in Ernest's view, and nothing more than a cowardly evasion of his promises, he suspected that the writer found it satisfy his conscience, since its further education in the consciousness of power. He did not suppose that any whose opinion he respected ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... her ears seemed bursting with the abominable sound; pain darted through her temples, flashing into agony as a heavy jar shook the house, followed by a ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... that my condition at the time was not one of fear, but rather of burning indignation. Indeed, I had not the slightest doubt but that when my case was re-tried before the great council, I should be able to establish my complete innocence of the abominable charges that had been brought against me. Therefore it came about that when Marie suggested that I should try to escape, I begged her almost roughly not to mention ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... uncleanest and variablest nature that was made under heaven; of whose seed and disposition all the world is lineally descended, insomuch that this evil nature is so fused and shed from one into another, that at this day there is no man nor woman living that can of themselves wash away this abominable vileness: and so we must needs grant of ourselves to be in like displeasure unto God, as our forefather Adam was. By reason hereof as I said, we be of ourselves the very children of the indignation and vengeance of God, the true inheritors of hell, and working all towards hell: which is ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... go," Miss Clendenning answered, spreading her fan as she spoke, looking in between the sticks as if searching for specimens. "In Philadelphia I find some very delightful houses, quite like our own. In New York—well, I rarely go to New York. The journey is a tiresome one and the hotels abominable. They are too busy there to be comfortable, and I do not like noisy, restless people. They give me ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "It's this abominable county council! What earthly use is it? Only weakens the government and sets people thinking the wrong way." (He gesticulated with his left hand, freed from the pressure of the glove.) "And arouses false hopes." (Kollomietzev blew on his hand.) ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... Sergeant Baggett in existence. Years had passed since that bad quarter of an hour in her life, before Mrs Baggett had been made over to her present master. And he, though he probably knew something of the abominable Sergeant, never found it necessary to mention his name. For this Mrs Baggett was duly thankful, and would declare among all persons, the baker included, that "for a gentleman to be a gentleman, no gentleman was such ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... did not actually scare me, Doctor; but you managed to give me such a thrill of horror and disgust as I have not experienced for many a long day. But, I say, do you really mean to tell me, in sober earnest, that that abominable experience was due to hypnotic ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... vicar, in whose conversation I find so much pleasure, nor of wrapping myself up in my own thoughts and giving the reign to my fancy, nor of silently admiring the beauty of the scenery around us. Dona Casilda is gifted with an abominable loquacity, and we were obliged to listen to her. She told us all there is to be told of the gossip of the village; she recounted to us all her accomplishments; she told us how to make sausages, brain-puddings, pastry, and innumerable other dishes and delicacies. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... those abominable April mornings which deserve the name of Sans Cullotides, as being cold, beggarly, coarse, savage, and intrusive. The earth lies an inch deep with snow, to the confusion of the worshippers of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... see if his beloved Wordsworth was there and then he took his way across the fields, under a sky of purple and amber, walking quickly despite his limp. He wanted to get to some solitary place where he could forget Aunt Catherine and her abominable suggestions and escape into the world of dreams where he habitually lived and where he found the loveliness he had not found nor could hope to find in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... immense quantities. The chestnut is as essential to the Italian as the potato is to the Irishman. A failure in the crop is attended with the same disastrous consequences. They dry the nuts, grind them into a kind of flour, and make them into cakes. I tasted one and found it abominable. Yet these people eat it with garlic, and grow fat on it. Chestnut bread, oil instead of butter, wine instead of tea, and you ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... Gordon Riots, wrote (Letters, vii. 403):—'Who is secure against Jack Straw and a whirlwind? How I abominate Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, who routed the poor Otaheitans out of the centre of the ocean, and carried our abominable passions amongst them! not even that poor little speck could escape European ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... This truly abominable tragedy of Roux de Marsilly is "another story," narrated in the following essay. It must suffice here to say that, in 1669, while Charles II. was negotiating the famous, or infamous, secret treaty with Louis XIV.—the treaty of alliance against ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... not dare to expatiate on these monstrosities. We shall only cite the words of the lawyer Heterus: "Shamelessness is a crime in a free man—a duty in a freedman—and a necessity in a slave." For further details of the abominable and precocious depravity into which slaves and their children were dragged, see Wallon, History of Slavery in Antiquity, ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... themselves entitled to tell any falsehoods which they think proper, and to shoot you if you venture to express a doubt as to their veracity: one of my chief reasons for disliking the English is, that they are such abominable liars. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... disadvantages and dangers. It leads to spitting; it leads to coarse speech; it must lead to these things so long as it is honorable; comradeship must be in some degree ugly. The moment beauty is mentioned in male friendship, the nostrils are stopped with the smell of abominable things. Friendship must be physically dirty if it is to be morally clean. It must be in its shirt sleeves. The chaos of habits that always goes with males when left entirely to themselves has only one honorable cure; and that is the strict discipline of a monastery. Anyone who has seen our ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... fun, this jovial company bellowed their abominable ballads in the hall, one of them about 'Sally M'Keogh,' whose sweetheart was hanged, and who cut her throat with his silver-mounted razor, and they hooted their gibes up the stairs. And at last Mary Matchwell, provoked ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be denied that among idle, nervous women to-day there is a tendency to take stimulants to excess, and even to smoke abominable cigarettes. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... civilized Beautiful, ugly Friend, enemy Hope, despair Wise, foolish Love, hate Enormous, minute Admirable, abominable Curse, bless Pride, humility ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... mansion, which had been the seat of his ancestors for centuries. The tale was well told, and seemed most pitiful; an impression was produced on the committee that the privacy of something like Hatfield, or Knebworth, was about to be infringed on by the "abominable railway." A stiff cross-examination brought out the reluctant fact, however, that this "house of my ancestors," this beautiful Elizabethan mansion had been for many years let as a Lunatic Asylum ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... again, my head was fairly clear, but there was an abominable reek of ether all about me. The moment I opened my eyes, I felt that something had happened. I asked for Sir John and for Alice. I saw a swift, curious look that I could not interpret come over the face of the nurse, then she was calm again, ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... there was suddenly produced a great revolution, which changed the entire condition of the government, or they added two tables of very tyrannical laws, and though matrimonial alliances had always been permitted, even with foreigners, they forbade, by the most abominable and inhuman edict, that any marriages should take place between the nobles and the commons—an order which was afterward abrogated by the decree of Canuleius. Besides, they introduced into all their political measures corruption, cruelty, and avarice. And ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lifting her head defiantly. "And," she added, "I hated him for it. I hate him more and more every time I think of it. He—he was perfectly abominable." ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... when young men are beginning at last to 'think great.' A few more gasps by the politicians and down they must go into infinite depths of congenial darkness, to be remembered only as allied to 'the abominable state of affairs ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water! Ye happy mixtures of more happy days! In these sad centuries of sin and slaughter, Abominable Man no more allays His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter, I love you both, and both shall have my praise: Oh, for old Saturn's reign of sugar-candy!—- Meantime I drink to your return ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... monstrous that you, our dear Father, should have such enemies about you! We will crush them!" she declared angrily. "I will see Nikki about it in the morning. To send me your clothes is a personal insult to myself. It is abominable! These people shall suffer!" ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... once more. She considered the circumstances. In spite of herself, she considered the circumstances again. Her husband and Sydney Westerfield together in the shrubbery—and Sydney crying. Had Mrs. Presty's abominable suspicion of them reached their ears? or?—No! that second possibility might be estimated at its right value by any other woman; not by ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... up in great indignation. "It is an abominable slander," said he. "We have lost ten thousand pounds by the wreck of that ship, and Wylie's life was saved by a miracle as well as your own. It is a foul slander. I ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... English got into the town by storming it, and then gave it up to the rough mercies of a hardened soldiery, some of whom were Sepoys, a description of warriors of whom the English now ask us to believe all that is abominable. Manila was most savagely treated by heathen soldiers led by Christian chiefs, a fact to be commended to the consideration of those humane Englishmen who can with difficulty breathe while reading General Butler's arrangement for the maintenance of order in New Orleans. The Archbishop ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... She is, by long odds, the most intelligent and bemusing of women. She shows cunning, foresight, technique, variety. She always fails a dozen times before she succeeds; but she brings to the final business the abominable expertness of a Ludendorff; she has learnt painfully by the process of trial and error. Red-haired girls are intellectual stimulants. They know all the tricks. They are so clever that they have even ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... you hear the bell—see the crush of horses at the starting-post—bang—bang—off they go!—and in a minute or two all is over, and your money gone. I will have a race of snails between London and York. It would be occupation for a year. But come, let us leave the abominable place." He hurried me into the stanhope, gave the rein to his active grey mare, and making a detour towards Kingston, we soon left the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... place,' said my neighbour when the able-bodied pauper who superintended us had trooped us into this abominable chamber, 'and I'd a dam good mind to smash a lamp or summat and get run in instead o' comin' here. If I'd ha' knowed the truth about ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... with experiments of the same nature, and at one time entertained the hope that by means of the hygrometer he would arrive at a solution of the mystery. But alas! it was not to be. On several occasions when the air was well-nigh saturated, scent proved abominable. That the relative humidity of the air is not the all-important factor was often proved by the bad scent experienced just before rain and storms, when the hygrometer showed a saturation of considerably over ninety per cent. But there are undoubtedly ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... doubt that he simply quoted from Carew. Carew tells us how the Cornish gentlemen borrowed money from the merchants of London, giving them tin as security (p. 14); and though he does not call the merchants Jews, yet he speaks of them as usurers, and reproves their "cut throate and abominable dealing." He continues afterwards, speaking of the same usurers (p. 16), "After such time as the Jewes by their extreme dealing had worne themselves, first out of the love of the English inhabitants, and afterwards out of the land itselfe, and so left the mines unwrought, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... statements hardly amounted to a confession of abominable and unpardonable crimes by Ledenberg, nor did they establish a charge of high-treason and corrupt correspondence with the enemy against Barneveld. It is certain that the extent of the revelations seemed far from satisfactory to the accusers, and that some pressure would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his nature, from which he once drew a love for all mankind. He seems to have gone about hating people, so that if he speaks of Florence it is with a passionate enmity, if of Siena with scorn, Pisa has only his contempt, Arezzo is to him abominable and beastly. He has judged his country as God Himself will not judge it, and he kept his anger for ever. And since the great Florentine can bring himself ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... "This is abominable treatment, Captain Jan Dunck," exclaimed the Baron. "I insist that you obtain provisions at the first place you can reach, or else that you land us where we can obtain them. I am sure the Count agrees ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies—by columns, or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Karizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Bursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sterility and sorrow, unless some potent voice can say to it,thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. Slavery engenders pride and indolence in him who commands, and inflicts intellectual and moral degradation on him who serves. Slavery, in fine, is unchristian and abominable. Sir, I shall not stop to deny that slavery is all this and more; but I shall not think myself the less authorized to deny that it is for you to stay the course of this dark torrent, by opposing to it a mound raised up by the labors of this portentous discretion on the domain of others—a ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... overthrow of one party and the triumph of another; it contained no unworthy faction, indulging in odious joy and applauding the presence of foreign soldiers! We Frenchmen, unhappier in our defeats, have known this abominable joy; for we have seen everything in this century: the extremes of victory and of defeat, of grandeur and of abasement, of the purest devotion and of the blackest treachery!" Alas! What Frenchman could have foretold in 1806 the disasters of 1814 and 1815? The army deemed ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... are various acids—vinegar, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, and others. The acidity of this vinegar is very weak. Your wine is only some abominable acid thing. This great eminence is not a natural mountain. The height of that mountain is not ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... notwithstanding the praise it has received, is a little too heavy for the light head of a poppy, even when filled with water. As for 'aratro,' coming as it does after the hiss of 'succisus,' it is altogether abominable. Had Homer written the lines, he would have ended with some hieroglyph, which would have continued the hiss or described the fall of a flower. To the hiss of 'succisus' Diderot is warmly attached. Not by mistake, but in order to justify the sound, he ventures to translate ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... thy perpetual mischiefs." —[Tacitus, Annal., xv. 67.]—But the public and universal testimonies that were given of him after his death (and so will be to all posterity, both of him and all other wicked princes like him), of his tyrannies and abominable deportment, who, of a ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... nor General Demikof (properly THEMICOUD, a Swiss, deserving little thanks from us, who has taken in hand to command these Missionaries of the Pit), can help the results above described. Which are justly characterized as abominable, to gods and men; and not fit to be recorded in human Annals; execration, and, if it were possible, oblivion, being the human resource with them., The Russian Officers, it seems, despise this Cossack rabble incredibly; for their fighting qualities withal are close on zero, though their talent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... them to death with his own hand. He was a terrible blasphemer of God and the saints, and that for every trifle, being the most choleric man alive. To church he went never and all the sacraments thereof he flouted in abominable terms, as things of no account; whilst, on the other hand, he was still fain to haunt and use taverns and other lewd places. Of women he was as fond as dogs of the stick; but in the contrary he delighted more than any ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... abominable talk!" cried the Major, who took every thing at its word. "I have heard all that sort of stuff ever since I was as high as this table. Waiter, show me this gentleman's bill. Oh well, oh well! you have not done so very badly. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... and one was divided: and seven votes being requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively, it was lost. The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided, or of one of those which were of the negative, would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn, hanging on the tongue of one man, and Heaven was silent in that awful moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent, and that the friends to the rights of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... support the war correspondents of the great newspapers, how are you ever to know the real truth concerning the doings of our armies in the field? I tell you that you have not heard one-millionth part of the truth concerning this South African enterprise, and now you never will know the truth. Had the abominable practice of censorship been abolished prior to this war, most of the abuses which have made our Army the laughing stock of Europe would have been set right by the correspondents, for they would have pointed out the evils to the public through the medium of their journals, and an ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... the living Bentham. The stoop, you see, is not so much on account of his great age as from a long habit of bending over his abominable manuscript,—the worst you ever saw, perhaps, not excepting Rufus Choate's or Napoleon Bonaparte's,—day after day, and year after year, while adding his marginal annotations in "Benthamee" to what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... thing! Slumbering as two thirds of it were, it still held in its abominable claws the remnant of an unfortunate lamb—or possibly (but I hate to think so) it was a dear little boy—which its three mouths had been gnawing before ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... measures of confiscation and outrage. Their loudest leader was a certain Pierre Gogois, who used to wind up their meeting by singing songs of his own composition, addressed to the 'crowned brigands who were trying to re-establish the abominable monarchy with the help of their anthropophagous hordes!' These worthies abolished the school kept by the 'Daughters of the Cross,' confiscated their property, and set up their own headquarters in ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and I came to myself in a panic. Dance with John—there? I hadn't thought of that. Of course I must, but—why, his step is abominable! It ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... to take from me my fief at Sudbury," said the Duke of York, "in order to give it to de Vere. That is both absurd and monstrous and abominable." ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... indignantly. "Abominable scandal! How the devil is it possible you can know whether she expected Mark Driver to ask her ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... another most abominable principle that runs through them all, namely, that there is in high birth, something of superior nature, instinctive courage, honour, and talent. Who can look at the two royal youths in CYMBELINE, or at the noble youth in DOUGLAS, without detesting the base parasites ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... the way,—why not nine children, it would have been just half as pathetic again): "statues of sleep they seem'd." "Frost-mangled wretch:" "green putridity:" "hail'd him immortal" (rather ludicrous again): "voiced a sad and simple tale" (abominable!): "unprovender'd:" "such his tale:" "Ah! suffering to the height of what was suffer'd" (a most insufferable line): "amazements of affright:" "the hot sore brain attributes its own hues of ghastliness and torture" (what shocking ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... from my feet as I descended the steps, and when the flare of my torch penetrated the darkness I heard a scurrying of wings mingled with various hissing sounds and wild cries. I knew now—none better—what weird and abominable things had habitation in this storehouse of the dead, but I felt I could defy them all, armed with the light I carried. The way that had seemed so long in the dense gloom was brief and easy, and I soon found myself at the scene of my unexpected awakening from sleep. The actual ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... And, if that were the case, of course it would not be the den of a panther or other carnivorous animal at all; for monkeys, pigs, and antelopes would not frequent a spring in a cave which one or more of their most deadly enemies had made their lair. And yet— what about that abominable stench which issued from the cave; how was that to be accounted for? It was a difficult question to answer, and Stukely felt that there was but one way of getting at the truth, namely, by thoroughly ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a little, she kept her eyes fixed steadily on his—oh, in the drollest fashion, with a gaze that seemed to say "How admirably you do it! I wonder whether you imagine I believe you. Oh, you fibber! Aren't you ashamed to tell me such abominable fibs—?" ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... "To wed the abominable Cambaceres!" I cried, stung with rage. "To wear a duchess's coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one to care, and the best way out of the business was by death. A knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa had told him, a year ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. He went into the nursery, unearthed the now-disused Noah's Ark, and sucked the paint off as many animals as remained. It tasted abominable, but he had licked Noah's Dove clean by the time Aunty Rosa and Judy returned. He went upstairs and greeted them with: "Please, Aunty Rosa, I believe I've nearly killed a boy at school, and I've tried to kill Harry, and when you've done all about God and ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... president of the honorable congress,' or 'the honorable convention.' This fulsome, nauseating cant may be well enough adapted to barbarous monarchies, or to gratify the adulterated pride of the 'magnifici' in pompous aristocracies; but in a great, free, manly, equal commonwealth, it is quite abominable. For my own part, I would as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as the 'excellency' with which I am daily crammed. How much more true dignity was there in the simplicity of address amongst the Romans,—'Marcus Tullius Cicero,' 'Decimo Bruto Imperatori,' or 'Caio Marcello Consuli,'—than ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... persecution will not do; it is unwise to make it, because it can be so very easily, and so very justly retorted. The business is to forget and forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say nothing of what has passed; which is to the credit of neither party. There have been atrocious cruelties, and abominable acts of injustice, on both sides. It is not worth while to contend who shed the most blood, or whether death by fire is worse than hanging or starving in prison. As far as England itself is concerned, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... them what you are and who you are, and who your mother was, and what is the end of the base man who imagines lies and the end of all the workers of iniquity. You will ask me to tell them that it is all false, all abominable intrigue and treachery and I shall demand in your name and in my own as your only near relative and a minister of the Gospel, an apology. It is but jealousy, cousin. Forgive me, but you are too beautiful and too young to live alone in ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison |
