"Execrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... full confidence in successfully attaining the end of their struggles. The swamp, the river, the alligator, the man-hunter, and worse than all, the blood-hound, had been met and successfully overcome or evaded; and after three long weeks of travel from the execrable and inhuman people, who had held them as prisoners of war, and treated them worse than dogs, they now found themselves ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... heareth the word of God, and keepeth it." He railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the Presbyterians, and against the present term, now in use, of "tender consciences." He ripped up Hugh Peters (calling him the execrable skellum—[A villain or scoundrel; the cant term for a thief.]—), his preaching and stirring up the maids of the city to bring in their bodkins and thimbles. Thence going out of White Hall, I met Captain Grove, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... papers to be sold amongst the groups. "He is gone," said one of them, "this imbecile king, this perjured monarch. She is gone, this wretched queen, who, to the lasciviousness of Messalina, unites the insatiable thirst of blood that devoured Medea. Execrable woman, evil genius of France, thou wast the leader, the soul of this conspiracy." The people repeating these words, circulated from street to street these odious accusations, which fomented their hate, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... gradually spread, more particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback. The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea. That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of Taylor, the water-poet—who deplored the introduction of carriages ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... less acquainted with Greek and Latin. There is one thing, however, connected with them, which is a great drawback—the horrid jargon which they speak. However learned they may be in Greek and Latin, their English is execrable; and yet I'm told it is not so bad as it was. I was in company, the other day, with an Englishman who has resided here many years. We were talking about the country and the people. "I should like both very well," ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... abounds in picture and incident and dramatic situations and touches; but it lacks true unity, and the reason simply is given by Stevenson himself—that the "ending shames, perhaps degrades, the beginning," as it is in the Ebb-Tide, with the cockney Huish, "execrable." "We have great pictures by genius of the—to the prosaic eye—invisible realities, as well as the outward form of the action." True, but the "invisible realities" form that from which true unity is derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... depreciate his own verses as compared with Lewis', some of which he recited to Ballantyne, in 1799, speaking of their author, says Lockhart, "with rapture." But however fine an ear for rhythm Lewis may have had, his verse is for the most part execrable; and his jaunty, jiggling anapaests and pragmatic manner are ludicrously out of keeping with the horrors of his tale, increasing the air of bathos ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ancient one, and the plashing fall known as the "Chute de Lapaca," we turned round in the opposite direction, and passing the "Hotel de la Cascade" and a wooden hut, again turned to the left, down what, though an execrable road, led, nevertheless, to the object of our desires. At this turn the Pic d'Aspe reared above us on the right, succeeded by barren hills covered with loose stones, but as we proceeded, the famous central excursion—the Pimene (9193 ft.)—came in ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... longer. Then losing all hopes of hearing any confession from his mouth, they commanded a negro to run him through with a lance, which put an end to his life and a period to their cruel and inhuman tortures. After this execrable manner did many others of those miserable prisoners finish their days, the common sport and recreation of these Pirates being these and other ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... confer even upon your God Himself the right to be unjust to the vilest of His creatures. A despot is not a God. A God who arrogates to Himself the right to do evil, is a tyrant; a tyrant is not a model for men. He ought to be an execrable object in their eyes. Is it not strange that, in order to justify Divinity, they made of Him the most unjust of beings? As soon as we complain of His conduct, they think to silence us by claiming that God is the Master; which signifies that God, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... continued the young princes. "But is not this enough? Ah, brave Jason, turn back before it is too late. It would grieve us to the heart, if you and your nine and forty brave companions should be eaten up, at fifty mouthfuls, by this execrable dragon." ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... last century. The keeper of the "Wishing Gate-house" had several, and an old man who lived in a low hut near the mill (the remains of which still stand in the Waterloo-road) had two or three, and made money by them. At that time Bootle and Bootle Marshes were wild places, the roads execrable, and as for frogs (Bootle organs), the noise they made at night was wonderful. I recollect all the docks and streets from Bath-street downwards being sand-hills and salt-marshes. New Quay, of which Bath-street was a continuation, was a sort of haven, into which small vessels, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... orator could do justice to the scene which Moses depicts in one word: "Cain rose up against his brother?" Many descriptions of cruelty are to be found on every hand, but could any be painted as more atrocious and execrable than is the case here? "He rose up against his brother," Moses writes. It is as if he had said, Cain rose up against Abel, the only brother he had, with whom he had been brought up and with whom he had lived to that day. But not only the relationship Cain utterly ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the past ages, they would not meet a man of such a high and noble order as this, and that to lay at our door the blood of a man the like of whom might not be born for centuries was too impious and execrable a thing to be thought of. I'll warrant me, he made a rustling among them when he said that, and the Pope's commissary—old Romalino—then whispered and frowned; but Agnolo is a stiff old fellow when he once begins a thing,—he never minded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the mysterious X.Y.Z. who will—for so small a recompense as thirty postage-stamps—impart the secret of an elegant and pleasing employment, whereby seven-pound-ten a-week may be made by any individual, male or female;—under every flimsy disguise with which the swindler hides his execrable form, Captain Paget plied his cruel trade, and still contrived to find fresh dupes. Of course there were occasions when the pigeons were slow to flutter into the fascinating snare, and when the vulture had a bad time of it; and it was a common thing for the Captain to sink from the splendour ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the front, and we chose a tall Swahili because he grinned better than the others. "Although," as Fred remarked, "what the devil grinning has to do with cooking is more than anybody knows." The man, whose name was Juma, turned out to be an execrable cook, but as he never left off grinning under any circumstances (and it would have been impossible to imagine circumstances worse than those we warred with later on) we never had the heart to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... in his demands upon the states to pay his soldiers' wages. The soldiers of the different armies who now overran the country, indeed, vied with each other in extravagant insolence. "Their outrages are most execrable," wrote Marquis Havre; "they demand the most exquisite food, and drink Champagne and Burgundy by the bucketfull." Nevertheless, on the 4th of December, the Prince came to Ghent. He held constant and anxious conferences with the magistrates. He was closeted daily with John Casimir, whose vanity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable system,—without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it cannot save,—must have a flinty heart, and be qualified ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... the year 1648 the ill-fated Charles was brought a prisoner to Windsor, where he remained while preparations were made for the execrable tragedy soon afterwards enacted. After the slaughter of the martyr-monarch the castle became the prison of the Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Duke of Hamilton, and other royalists ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "in the dunnest smoke of hell." Not, however, that this is the policy of doubt and apprehension, the evading and repelling caution of men who suspect themselves to be wrong and dread being forced to meet the proof. For the subjects of this execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself secured them against knowing anything that could discompose their sense ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... to anchor," said our dirty Polish host to us in execrable English. "And we may be off on board," said Smith. "Not yet," he said; "they must put their cargo out first." I saw, however, that Smith was uneasy, and I made up my mind to go off to the vessel at once. When they should see an English portmanteau ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... letter-writer who is still so conspicuous a figure in the East. It is seldom if ever that the Babylonian, whoever he may be, betrays any ignorance of the art of reading and writing, and the endless variety of handwritings and the execrable character of many of them indicate pretty plainly that the aid of the professional letter-writer was rarely invoked. In a commercial community like that of Babylonia an ability to write was of necessity a matter of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... the hot season the wildest parts of South Italy, strangely unprejudiced, heedless of bugs and brigands—a real danger in 1828: did he not find the large place Rossano actually blocked by them?—sleeping in stables and execrable inns, viewing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating everybody about everything and, in general, "satisfying his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence in this book, a sentence ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... and took part in all the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was, in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable tribunal, the Inquisition. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... the duke, "this is more of Father le Doux's work, that execrable Benedictine! At least I know a treatment which will ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... pay!" he went on in his execrable accent. "Louis came on posthaste, as you know, and he hasn't turned up this morning yet. Ah, I always knew Tom was close, but I never dreamed you knew anything. When I used to see sitting near the door in his office ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... churches, the females being excluded from the sight of the males by means of lattices. Their bishops lead a life of great simplicity, as will be seen from the following account of a dinner given by the bishop of Salona to Mr. Dodwell:—"There was nothing to eat except rice and bad cheese; the wine was execrable, and so impregnated with resin, that it almost took the skin from our lips. Before sitting down to dinner, as well as afterwards, we had to perform the ceremony of the cheironiptron, or washing of the hands. We dined at a round ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... outrageously attacked by all the wits, first by Warburton, in his preface to Shakspeare, who declares that "he hardly thinks there ever appeared so execrable a heap of nonsense under the name of commentaries, as hath been lately given us on a certain satyric poet of the last age." It is odd enough, Warburton had himself contributed towards these very notes, but, for some ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... displeased with the clergyman, because in his sermon he had said nothing at all of politics. "I charged him to his face," says La Fayette, "with preaching only about Heaven!... But next Sunday," continues the keen young officer, "I heard him again, when his loud invectives against 'the execrable House of Hanover,' showed that he was ready and willing to take ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he deprived them by murdering the people upon whom he obtruded them, and thus paying off former crimes committed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... excite the people's rage against their governors, or sink them into a despondency of the public welfare." I readily admit this apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think any man capable of entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather to claim our pity than excite our indignation; he finds himself out of power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... god robbing, shabby, villainous, infamous, halter-sick vagabond! Does not everybody know that your father was a tatterdemalion, and your mother no better than she should be? that you murdered your brother and are guilty of other execrable crimes? You lewd, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... father and drive the veteran into temporary exile. It happens in this wise. The first aim of a baby—not yours, madam; yours is well known to be an exception, but of other and common babies—is to make itself as widely offensive as possible. The end, indeed, is execrable, but the method is masterly. The baby has an a priori intuition that the note of the domestic cat is repulsive to the ear of the human adult. Consequently, what does your baby do but betake itself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... habit, evidently borrowed from their uncultivated neighbors beyond the Dasht-i-na-oomid, is the execrable practice of chewing snuff. Almost every man carries a supply of coarse snuff in a little sheepskin wallet or dried bladder; at short intervals he rubs a pinch of this villainous stuff all over his teeth and gums and deposits a second ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... laborers in their sphere—are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defense. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measures recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... that on a sudden you and your friends will come to my conclusion, that the present philosophy of the Schools and Universities of Europe, based on faith in witchcraft, magic, &c., is a system of execrable nonsense, by which quacks live on the faith of fools; but I desire a free and fair examination of my Aphorisms, and if a few are admitted to be true, merely as courteous concessions to arithmetic, my purpose will be effected, for men will thus be led to think; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... diamonds lifted audaciously, the same fixed smile of childish expectancy on her oval, painted face. Her dress had left vulgarity behind. It was too much a part of herself—in its way too genuine—to be merely laughable. It was like her execrable dancing, the expression of an exuberant, inexhaustible life. As she walked, with short impatient steps, she swayed the great ostrich-feather fan and twisted her rope of pearls between her slender fingers. The open stare that ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... she cried, and quite against her will tears of wrath and of disappointment rose to her eyes. "What villainy! what odious, execrable treachery!" ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... began. As the slave-holders in the United States counted the curse on Ham a justification of negro slavery, so the curse on the Jews was counted a justification for hindering them from pursuing agriculture and handicrafts; for marking them out as execrable figures by a peculiar dress; for torturing them to make them part with their gains, or for more gratuitously spitting at them and pelting them; for taking it as certain that they killed and ate babies, poisoned the wells, and took pains to spread the plague; for putting it to them whether they ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... especially the bandage around Captain Barker's head, attracted some attention. More than one group turned to stare as the little man began in execrable Dutch to explain his wants to the drawer. The fellow, too, was more than ordinarily dense, and a tempestuous scene was plainly but a matter of a minute or so, when a tall ensign of the guard rose from a neighbouring table, and, lifting his hat, addressed the Englishmen in their own language. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... execrable voice among the Wallencampers—if anything so weak could be designated by so strong a term—and his manner of keeping time with his head was clock-like in its regularity and painfully arduous; yet, out of that pristine naughtiness which found a hiding-place in the hearts of the Wallencamp ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... had been as quicksighted as he was remarkable for the contrary, passion might at present very well have blinded him. He thanked Jones for offering to undertake the office, and said, "Go, go, prithee, try what canst do;" and then swore many execrable oaths that he would turn her out of doors unless she consented to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... warm spring mornings when vital energies flag, that Mr. and Mrs. Vincent toiled up the third flight of stairs; the halls filled with execrable odours of fried ham and cheap coffee; each busy with their own thoughts, possibly of green fields, apple-blossoms, spring violets, tables with damask and silver, cool, inviting rooms, and other equally tantalising suggestions. Faith, at the top, panting and pale as any lily, drew ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... cambric frills, were all here displayed; while upon shirt-fronts, wristbands, and neckties, upon every finger, even upon the very ears, they wore an assortment of rings, shirt-pins, brooches, and trinkets, of which the value only equaled the execrable taste. Women, children, and servants, in equally expensive dress, surrounded their husbands, fathers, or masters, who resembled the patriarchs of tribes in the midst of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... brought on by his own crimes. In his war against Jeroboam he had indulged in excessive cruelty; he ordered the corpses of the enemy to be mutilated, and permitted them to be buried only after putrefaction had set in. Such savagery was all the more execrable as it prevented many widows from entering into a second marriage. Mutilating the corpses had made identification impossible, and so it was left doubtful whether their husbands ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... and bristly grey hair, and when I hear your abominable chuckling and laughing, and your confused talk, I rather turn away from you with disgust, and am even inclined to believe that you possess some execrable power for attracting me to you." "O God! God! God!" whined the old dame, a prey to unspeakable pain, "what fiendish spirit of darkness has put such fearful thoughts into your head? O Tonino, my darling Tonino, the woman who took such tender loving care of you when a ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... most charming country-house YOU CAN IMAGINE: it is QUITE SHUT IN by trees, and so retired that, though only thirty miles from London, the post comes to us but once a week. The roads, it must be confessed, are execrable; it is winter now, and we are up to our knees in mud and snow. But oh, Eliza! how happy we are: with Thomas (he has had a sad attack of rheumatism, dear man!) and little Bobby, and our kind friend Dr. Bates, who comes so far to see us, I leave ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Social Revolution, it is no doubt, first of all, to give bread to everyone; to transform this execrable society, in which we can every day see capable workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer who will exploit them; women and children wandering shelterless at night; whole families reduced to dry bread; men, women, and children dying ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe. Better be a valet in Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia. It is a monotonous existence here—no society, no life—and the cuisine—bah, execrable! But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even sighted a European ship. A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off two girls (who didn't belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo—the Month ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... that either she might keep me back or go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped: for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... nation as "prone to superstition, opposed to religion." [48] And as far as they made any distinction between Jews and Christians, it was for the latter that they reserved their choicest and most concentrated epithets of hatred and abuse. A "new," "pernicious," "detestable," "execrable," superstition is the only language with which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to notice it. Seneca,—though he must have heard the name of Christian during the reign of Claudius (when both they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, "because of their perpetual ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... to-day, and finding it all so fair, it seems hard to believe that the foundation of all its wealth and prosperity rested upon the most cruel, the most execrable, the most inhuman traffic that ever was plied by degraded men—the traffic in slaves. Yet in the old days the trade was far from being held either cruel inhuman—indeed, vessels often set sail for the Bight of Benin to swap rum for slaves, after their owners had invoked the blessing ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... idea of his ultimately resisting that which should be fair and honourable to Lady B. did not come within my view of his character—at least of his natural character; but I hear that, as you intimated, he has had execrable advisers. I hardly know a more painful object of consideration than a man of genius in such a situation; those of lower minds do not feel the degradation, and become like pigs, familiarised with the filthy elements in which they grovel; but it is impossible that ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "tumultuous waste of huge hill-tops," which no one takes the trouble to specify. Perhaps the least praiseworthy feature of Exmoor is its weather. To adapt a Cornish description of something quite different, "when it's bad, it's execrable; and when it's good, it's only middlin'." It has a disagreeable partiality for haze and drizzle. In such an untamed region "routes" are only an embarrassment. The regulation drive is from Minehead to Dulverton, and from Dulverton through Simonsbath to Lynton, which virtually circumscribes the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... These execrable wretches, who aimed at nothing less than the total overthrow of Venice, or at least of her government, looked towards the completion of their extravagant hopes with the greater confidence, since a new but necessary addition to the already existing taxes had ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... desired, do not so much demand the care of the legislature, as those who are yet untainted with this pernicious practice, and who may, perhaps, by the frequency of temptation, and the prevalence of example, be induced in time to taste these execrable liquors, and perish in their first essays of debauchery. For such is the quality of these spirits, that they are sometimes fatal to those who indiscreetly venture upon them without caution, and whose stomachs have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... of the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted, especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... will have you flayed alive a little if you do not leave off that execrable habit of sleeping twenty ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... American customs. They are not apt to learn, and great patience is required in teaching them. The virtues of order and cleanliness seem to be not only rare in them, but exceedingly difficult to graft upon them. Their cooking, especially, is generally execrable. But once properly trained, they make the best of servants. They are generally contented, almost always cheerful and good tempered, and have little of that irritating pertness and 'independence' so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... favour of printers that some authors do write an execrable hand. One sometimes receives a letter which requires about three readings before it can be understood. At the first time of reading the meaning is scarcely intelligible, at the second time some faint glimpse of the writer's object in ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, excerpt, excommunicate, excoriate, excruciate, execrable, exegesis, exemplary, exhalation, exhilarate, exigency, exodus, exonerate, exorbitant, exotic, expectorate, expeditious, explicable, explicit, expunge, extant, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of his followers. His arguments made no impression on the mind of Philip II. The King even showed some favour to the children of Tupac Amaru by putting them in the succession to the Marquisate of Oropesa. In the Inca pedigrees Toledo is called "el execrable regicidio." When he presented himself on his return from Peru the King angrily exclaimed: "Go away to your house; for I sent you to serve kings; and you went to ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... the same execrable barren prairie offering no clew by which to guide our way. As we drew near the hills an opening appeared, through which the Indians must have gone if they had passed that way at all. Slowly we began to ascend it. I felt the most dreary forebodings of ill success, when on looking round I could ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a more cruel thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's lifeless form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate furies that belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The blood of generations of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in her veins. The spirits of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired her with new fury. She was at this moment like a pantheress that has brought down ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in agony cannot examine himself—cannot survey the past with calmness or feel convinced of the greatness of his offenses. I thank God for that; but, Jack, although I have committed many a foul and execrable murder, for which I am full of remorse—although I feel how detestable has been my life—I tell you candidly that, although those crimes may appear to others more heavy than the simple one of theft, to me the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... audience, and these were principally civilized Indians of the Tagalo tribe, a fine-looking race. They were remarkably well behaved, and listened with much attention and apparent pleasure, to some most execrable music, elicited by scraping "the hair of the horse over the entrails of a cat," to wit: fiddling! which, ceasing at last, at a given signal, up rose the curtain, and with it Apollo took flight, and ascended to the clouds. The performance commenced, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... ther was no merites in the virgin, which procured her that honor, to be made the mother of Christ, and to be preferred before other women, but Gods only free mercy exalted her to that estate. Which wordes were counted most execrable in the face of the Clergie ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... catholic, which in all ages has been, and ever will be, close and native to the heart of man,—parental anguish from filial ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though coffined in bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I ought to have added the Merchant of Venice; but here too the same remarks apply. It was an old tale; and substitute any other danger than that of the pound of flesh ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... dearest friend.' He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (Life, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:—'A physician ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... beat him with staffs, thrust splinters of reeds into his eyes, and having dragged him into one of the suburbs, stoned him to death. The next person they seized was a Christian woman, called Quinta, whom they carried to one of their temples to pay divine worship to the idol. She loaded the execrable divinity with many reproaches, which so exasperated the people that they dragged her by the heels upon the pavement of sharp pebbles, cruelly scourged her, and put her to the same death. The rioters, by this time, were in ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Oppression of their Subjects; and would they be watchful to entail the Harmony and due Subordination betwixt the several Orders in their Government. Whereas for several Centuries past, they have been labouring to erect an Arbitrary Power; and the two last have taken large Steps towards this execrable End. ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... a market and where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold: execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... prosecution is carried on against the prisoner at the bar, in order to bring her to justice for a crime of so black a dye that I am not at all surprised at this vast concourse of people collected together to hear and to see the trial and catastrophe of so execrable an offender as she is supposed ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Kiel, was a small, dark-eyed, clean-shaven fellow, quick and energetic in his movements, having more the appearance of a Celt than of a Teuton. He seemed to be full of amiability, and assured the major in execrable English how very happy he was to be able to do a service to one who had shown kindness to their esteemed colleague and persecuted patriot, Von Baumser. Indeed both of the men showed great deference to the German, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... affected to the church, carried them to the official, or judge of the ecclesiastical court, who joined in the dark design. They showed them to the Archbishop, saying, It was out of their zeal, and that they were exceedingly sorry that one of their fraternity was an heretic, and as such execrable. They also brought me in, but more moderately, saying Father La Combe was almost always at my house, which was false. I could scarcely see him at all except at the confessional, and then for a very short time. Several other things equally false they liberally ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... of that cruel tyrant of St. Gildas, and of those execrable monks,—monks out of greed only, whom notwithstanding you call your children,—which still harass you, close the miserable history. Nobody could read or hear these things and not be moved to tears. What then must they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 12th February the States-General sent letters to all their ambassadors and foreign agents, informing them of this execrable plot to overthrow the Commonwealth and take the life of the Stadholder, set on foot by certain Arminian preachers and others of that faction, and this too in winter, when the ice and snow made hostile invasion practicable, and when the enemy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his eyes rested only on the camp-followers, the baggage trains, the mobs of cattle, the maimed and unfit men; when the fine show of the fighters was out of sight. Plainly if a curse of any real value was to be pronounced it must be by a prophet who saw much that was execrable, little that ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled into dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable tyranny over the parental tie, and that Lord Eldon whom an outraged father ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... of the partisans of slavery, or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the most execrable feature of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... disqualifications affected both voting and eligibility; but eligibility was restricted still farther. Ineligible were to be all atheistic persons, scoffers at Religion, unbelievers in the divine authority of the Bible, or other execrable heretics, all profaners of the Lord's Day, all habitual drunkards or swearers, and all who had married Roman Catholics or allowed their children to marry such. For the rest, all persons of the voting sex, over the age of twenty-one, and "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation," ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying execrable posters of roosters. Hurrah! hurrah! A flash ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... saw dancing in the vineyard, as he took his evening rest on the hillside. They have all fled back into the impenetrable shade whence they came; our minds are free; and if social equity is not a chimera, Marie Antoinette was the protagonist of the most barbarous and execrable ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... that most monstrous of crimes would go oftenest unpunished; since, of all culprits, murderers do most shun the eyes of men in their dark deeds, and so provide beforehand that direct testimony to their execrable crime there shall be none. Only herein I am advised to take a distinction that escaped the learned sergeant. I say that first of all it ought to be proved directly, and to the naked eye, that a man has been murdered; and then, if none saw the crime done, let circumstances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... David, "the man after God's own heart." The deists, struck by the absurdity of the comparison, proceeded to relate all the scandalous facts they could find recorded of David, and by clever distortions painted him as the most execrable of Kings, in a work entitled David or the Man after God's Own Heart, which formed the ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... any expectation at court learned to play at cards. Soon after the humour changed, and games of chance came into vogue—to the ruin of many considerable families: this was likewise very destructive to health, for besides the various violent passions it excited, whole nights were spent at this execrable amusement. The worst of all was that card-playing, which the court had taken from the army, soon spread from the court into the city, and from the city pervaded the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... priory of St. Pancras was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1537, Thomas Cromwell, that execrable vandal, not only abolishing the monks but destroying the buildings, which covered, with their gardens and fish ponds, forty acres. The ruins that remain give some idea of the extent of this wonderful priory, another relic being the adjacent mound on which the Calvary stood, probably constructed ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... to wish you may: for I have just made an acquaintance with one who knows a vast deal of his private history. The man is really a villain, my dear! an execrable one! if all be true that I have heard! And yet I am promised other particulars. I do assure you, my dear friend, that, had he a dozen lives, he might have forfeited them all, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... remembered his youth, when he translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse translations. "Nice man"—"civil man"—"clever man . . . has been everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, he had the supreme good fortune to meet Captain Bosvile for the first time for thirty years, and not being recognised, said, "I am the chap what certain folks calls the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the "Carman's Whistle" was composed by Bird, and the favourite tune of "Queen Elizabeth" may be found in the collection called "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book." One who has lately heard it played says, "that it has more air than the other execrable compositions in her Majesty's book, something resembling a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The Greve had then that sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, "a justice and a ladder," as they were called in that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... clothing and three or four books. Small business this for a Railroad, though it will do in stage transportation. Our passports were scrutinized—mine not very thoroughly—we (the green ones) obtained an execrable dinner for 37 1/2 cents, and changed some sovereigns for French silver at a shave which was not atrocious. Finally, we were ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... yet such ridiculous conjuration is commonly the cement of every conspiracy, how dark, how treacherous, how impious soever it may be: a certain sign that there are some remains of religion left in the human mind, even after every moral sentiment hath abandoned it; and that the most execrable ruffian finds means to quiet the suggestions of his conscience, by some reversionary hope of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... given this power to the multitude, who have changed the entire ecclesiastical order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, not only with respect to the leader but also with respect to doctrine, at the point of causing an execrable schism ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus, we should create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Constitution either are, or affect ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... that the paper was contrived and adhered to for advancing some private interest against the unity and peace of the Church, and rather unfairly insinuated that Mr Spence was the more hardened therein by the late execrable murder of the Bishop of St. Andrews and the expectation of a Revolution to follow thereupon, and unanimously resolved that this unruly and unreasonable member be deposed. Mr Spence was quite prepared for this, and, "with some signs of ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the Colonies which could not be brot about by the Industry of years in reasoning on the necessity of it for the Common Safety. Since the memorable 19th of April one Event has brot another on, till Boston sees her Deliverance from those more than savage Troops upon which the execrable Tyrant so much relyed for the Completion of his horrid Conspiracys and America has furnishd her self with more than seventy Battalions for her Defence. The burning of Norfolk & the Hostilities committed in North Carolina have kindled the resentment of our Southern Brethren who once thought ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... intention I turned up at the Grange. I was coming here from a place west of the settlement, and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn't find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Any way, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... to be summoned, our astrologer addresses his first reproaches to the sun, stretching out his hands and using the strongest of invectives, after which, when he has worked himself into a towering rage against the orb of day, an execrable beating on the drums begins, accompanied by the howling of all the people present. The god of rain gets his share of insults, and is severely reprimanded for the casual way in which he carries on ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... sought traces of the hard-hearted husband, but in his departure, presumably sometime earlier, Congdon had made a clean sweep; there was nothing to afford a clue to his character beyond a four-in-hand tie whose colors struck Archie as execrable. Below in the snuggery fitted up for masculine use was a table, containing a humidor half filled with dried-up cigars, and an ill-smelling pipe—Archie hated pipes—and a box of cigarettes. A number of scientific magazines lay about and a forbidding array of books ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... free.' This prayer gone up, from out a cloud there broke A voice which thus in godlike accents spoke:— 'The suppliant must himself bestir, Ere Hercules will aid confer. Look wisely in the proper quarter, To see what hindrance can be found; Remove the execrable mud and mortar, Which, axle-deep, beset thy wheels around. Thy sledge and crowbar take, And pry me up that stone, or break; Now fill that rut upon the other side. Hast done it?' 'Yes,' the man replied. 'Well,' ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... no necessity for taking this trouble, as they might certainly have done their business without it, since the whole city was so deserted before night, that I believe not a soul remained in it, except those execrable villains, and others of the same stamp. It is possible some of them might have had other motives besides robbing, as one in particular being apprehended—they say he was a Moor, condemned to the galleys—confessed at the gallows that he had set fire to the King's ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... not flagitiously and foolishly advert to ancient animosities, nor with rash hand attempt to hurl the brand of discord between the nations." In the same connection he attacks Gallic philosophy and the equality of man, the latter of which he styles an "execrable delusion of hair-brained philosophy." Others might speak of "the Republic of letters;" with Dennie it was the Monarchy of letters. Several articles ran through the Port Folio of 1801 on the sentiment and style of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... East Indies had brought home sundry strange animals, which were exhibited at the Jolly Mariner at Portsmouth, and thus announced on a bill printed on execrable paper, brought out to Portchester by ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years and a half Wenceslas had produced a statue and a son. The child was a picture of beauty; the statue was execrable. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... advice is—act upon your own advice. Your beautiful gipsy is a magnificent creature with a mind and will of her own, the dignified unrestraint of a dryad and the deplorable diction of a wandering gipsy wench. She would be excellent as a picture, entertaining as a companion and execrable as a wife. This of course is merely the opinion of a Vereker which to another Vereker is of not the slightest consideration. None the less, being somewhat your senior in years, I would venture to point out what I have learned ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... but stayed all day at home in my study, and at my prayers, that this day's work might not so displease God as to bring prejudice to this poor afflicted nation."[8] Evelyn, in his Diary, writes, "I kept the day of this martyrdom as a fast, and would not be present at that execrable wickedness, receiving the sad account of it from my brother George and Mr. Owen, who came to visit me this afternoon, and recounted all the circumstances." Archbishop Usher came out to witness the scene from his house at Whitehall; but he fainted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... to Belford.— The suffering innocent arrested and confined, by the execrable woman, in a sham action. He curses himself, and all his plots and contrivances. Conjures him to fly to her, and clear him of this low, this dirty villany; to set her free without conditions; and assure her, that he will never ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... always right, when you axe concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... according to his deserts, he would have been hanged at least a dozen times." The duc d'Ayen was right: M. de la Vrilliere was a brazen-faced rogue; a complete thief, without dignity, character, or heart. His cupidity was boundless: the emanated from his office, and he carried on an execrable trade in them. If any person wished to get rid of a father, brother, or husband, they only had to apply to M. de la Vrilliere. He sold the king's signature to all who paid ready money for it. This man inspired me with an invincible horror and repugnance. For his part, as I was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... about himself. Desirous, therefore, to know what the Sage thought {thereof}: "Does it appear to you," said he, "that I have been too conceited? I have no empty confidence in my own capacity." Worried to death with the execrable volume, Aesop replied: "I greatly approve of your bestowing praise on yourself, for it will never be your lot ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... admitted that Punch's dialect has not always pleased up there, where "the execrable attempts at broad Scotch which appear weekly in our old friend Punch" have before now been authoritatively denounced. Under the heading of "Probable Deduction" Punch had the following paragraph:—"A pertinacious Salvation ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... morning was Thursday morning, and by Thursday night, at the very latest, we counted on being back in Brussels; but we were not destined to see Brussels again for nearly six weeks. We breakfasted frugally on good bread and execrable coffee at a half-wrecked little cafe where soldiers had slept; and at eleven o'clock, when we had bestowed Bulotte, the ancient nag, and the dogcart on an accommodating youth—giving them to him as a gracious gift, since neither he nor anyone else would buy the outfit at any price—we repaired ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and farther to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... brought this great criminal before you, and called upon your Lordships to punish him. This ruined country, its desolate fields and its undone inhabitants, all call aloud for British justice, all call for vengeance upon the head of this execrable criminal. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... own; but you know there is an execrable proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is to be with a person ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... lost his reckoning; supper was served up; and I desired him to sit next me. It was a long table, and there were at least five-and-twenty in company, notwithstanding the landlord's promise. The most execrable repast that ever was begun being finished, all the crowd insensibly dispersed, except the little Swiss, who still kept near me, and the landlord, who placed himself on the other side of me. They both smoked like dragoons; and the Swiss ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and Marco Polo by heart, credulous, uncritical, not consciously dishonest, but unready to correct false impressions caused by his ignorance and gullibility. His notes, as may be seen from a reproduction of a page of his manuscripts (facing p. 38), were in an execrable hand. The forger of the Journal of the First Voyage was no puzzle expert, and made mistakes in deciphering scrawls. Thus, for example, the note Giaua min., i.e., Java minor, was read Guanahin, the same destined to masquerade ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... twenty men of the garrison to the Indians in lieu of the same number they had lost during the siege; and in all probability these miserable captives were put to death by those barbarians, with the most excruciating tortures, according to the execrable ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... had begun early in January, rendered the roads execrable, and the Savannah River became so swollen that it filled its many channels, overflowing the vast extent of rice-fields that lay on the east bank. This flood delayed our departure two weeks; for it swept away our pontoon-bridge at Savannah, and came near drowning John ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... cannot tell but this latter might be the nature of the agreement between the Kenites and the Canaanites. He conceives also, that a justification of Jael's conduct might be found in the character of Sisera, pleading that we are not required to keep good faith, or to show lenity to those execrable persons who only avail themselves of our regard to these virtues, to violate them in their conduct to others, to falsify their promises, and carry blood and carnage wherever they go. Under this impression, he prays that Providence may never raise up among ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... at daybreak on January 11th, and, covered by the 'Royals,' took the Springfield road. It had been raining heavily, and the road, never good, soon became execrable. The column was followed by a long line of waggons carrying baggage, supplies, ammunition, pontoons, &c. On arriving at Pretorius' Farm, the brigade halted and pitched camp. The battalion found the outposts, which ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the house of a rich merchant in Bristol, who had refused to comply with their demand. The same species of villany was practised in different parts of the kingdom; so that the government was obliged to interpose, and offer a considerable reward for discovering the ruffians concerned in such execrable designs. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... foolish as to imagine that the man might still be keeping track of me, I put all thought of his actions away from me and kept up with Lillian's brisk pace, chatting with her gayly over our past experience in buying hats and the execrable creations ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c. (malevolent) 907. unadvisable &c. (inexpedient) 647; unprofitable &c. (useless) 645; incompetent &c. (unskillful) 699; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have left him Robert Hall, instead of those execrable Typhons! But would that medicine have suited his case, or must grim Experience write ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
