"Odious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her appearance, at once a slattern and a coquette; much emaciated, but still carrying the remains of beauty. She made twenty apologies for being seen in such odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused, as she had stayed out all night at the gardens with the countess, who was excessively fond of the horns. "And, indeed, my dear," added she, turning to her husband, "his lordship drank your health ...
— English Satires • Various
... freedom as she had been used to do at home; so that, in a short time, there was scarcely a young miss or master in the neighbourhood whose character she had not attempted to injure. What made her slanders the more odious was, that she generally vented them under a pretence of the greatest friendship and respect for the persons to whom she related them, and with great seeming pity for those whose reputation they were intended to destroy. She had likewise the malicious cunning to say many trifling things in praise ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... to manage the empire, at the head of which they found themselves after the humiliation of Athens. Their attempt to force an oligarchy upon every dependent state was an unwise policy, which made them generally odious. The decemvirates of Lysander, and the governors ([Greek: armostai]) established in various Greek cities to maintain Lacedaemonian influence, were regarded as instruments of tyranny. It was found that Spartan governors and generals, when ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... and odious parallels drawn. Her home is seen to be miserably inadequate beside the one she once had. Her supply of pin money is painfully small, judged by the standard which has hitherto been her guide. Callers are entertained with anecdotes of "my first husband," and her dinner table is graced ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... declared as law what was not the law of civilized nations; that in 1762 Lord Northington declared that "as soon as a man sets foot on English ground he is free"; and that Lord Mansfield had, in 1772, held that "Slavery is so odious that it cannot be established without positive law." He knew (or he declared what he did not know) that at that day the sentiment in France was so directly to the contrary, that in 1791 the law was "Tout individu est libre aussitot qu'il est en France." At the time to which he referred, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... over all the tools and accessories of the act. Arms are honourable, and the use of them, even in seeking the life of the meanest creatures of the fields, becomes a honorific employment. At the same time, employment in industry becomes correspondingly odious, and, in the common-sense apprehension, the handling of the tools and implements of industry falls beneath the dignity of able-bodied men. Labour ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... crowd of servants, she brought her to the King. When the King beheld her, so beautiful and splendidly attired, he loved her as his own life; blaming himself for all the misery he had made her endure, but excusing himself on account of that odious goat-face which had been the cause of it. Thus Renzolla lived happy, loving her husband, honouring the fairy, and showing herself grateful to the old man, having ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... imposture. If he reduced other things below their true value, making them seem worthless and hollow, he did not degrade the pretensions of tyranny and superstition below their true value, by making them seem utterly worthless and hollow, as contemptible as they were odious. This was the service he rendered to truth and mankind! His Candide is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called "the dull product of a scoffer's pen"; it is indeed the "product of a scoffer's pen"; but after reading ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... did not mind, it would be a great comfort to me to think she would wear it after my death, and that the sight of it would remind her to pray for me; but after what has passed, the rosary could hardly fail to revive an odious recollection. My God, my God! I am desperately wicked; can it be that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sir, there was subject for his envy in Sordido, his wealth: so was there not in the other. He stood possest of no one eminent gift, but a most odious and fiend-like disposition, that would turn charity itself into hate, much more envy, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... irresolute. By the look of excitement on Dudley's face, he judged that anything must be better for him than the eager suspense from which he was evidently suffering. This news of the death of the odious inhabitant of the house by the wharf must surely bring relief to him. As soon as they were alone together, Dudley burst ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... It first appeared in the fourteenth century, as a substitute for usury, in the first law ever enacted by a Christian nation that permitted the taking of a premium for any loan. The word usury was very odious to the Christian ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... company," Kelso assured him. "Nature guards her best men with some sort of singularity not attractive to others. Often she makes them odious with conceit or deformity or dumbness or garrulity. Dante was such a poor talker that no one would ever ask him to dinner. If it had not been so I presume his muse would have been sadly crippled by indigestion. If you had been a good dancer and a lady's favorite I wonder if ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... Kansas; the Dred Scott decision, by which a learned and subtle judge, who had it within his power to enlarge the boundaries of human liberty and cover his own name with glory, deliberately and laboriously summarized and dignified with the sanction of a court of last resort all the most odious prejudices that had restricted the opportunities of the colored people; the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; the John Brown raid; the [1855] assault on [Massachusetts antislavery U.S. Senator] Charles Sumner,—each of these incidents has been, in ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... his odious presence I bid him an unceremonious good- night, and marched down the glen with the air not of one who has parted with a friend, but who rather has shaken off an intrusive companion. On the road I pondered the whole matter over with an anxiety which did not in the smallest ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and could have wished to have shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable of human beings; the past, the present, and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some domestic amusement of books, building, etc. he answered, with a deep tone Of despair, 'Dans l''etat o'u je suis, je ne puis sentir que le coup de vent qui m'a abbatu.' How different from the conscious ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... resulted in great part from the Scottish habit of securing wealthy Church offices for ignorant, brutal, and licentious younger sons and bastards of noble families. This practice in Scotland was as odious to good Catholics, like Quentin Kennedy, Ninian Winzet, and, rather earlier, to Ferrerius, as to Knox himself. The prevalent anarchy caused by the long minorities of the Stuart kings, and by the interminable ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... the Horacistas revolted and obtained the government, only to be overthrown in 1903 by followers of Jimenez. The new administration proving odious to both parties they combined to drive it out in the fall of 1903. The Horacistas gained the upper hand in the succeeding government and remained in power until 1912, though a serious division developed in the party, to the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... know that 'tis seldom that what is mutually desired fails to come about) 'twas not long before they had fruition of their love. Now the lady being, as I said, fair and winsome, it so befell that a gentleman, Messer Lambertuccio by name, grew mightily enamoured of her, but so tiresome and odious did she find him, that for the world she could not bring herself to love him. So, growing tired of fruitlessly soliciting her favour by ambassage, Messer Lambertuccio, who was a powerful signior, sent her at last another sort of message ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... M. de La Fayette, M. Romeuf, despatched by that general, and bearer of the order of the Assembly, arrived at Varennes at half-past seven. The queen, who knew him personally, reproached him in the most pathetic manner with the odious mission with which his general had charged him. M. Romeuf sought in vain to calm her indignation by every mark of respect and devotion compatible with the rigour of his orders. The queen then changing from invectives to tears, gave a free vent to her grief. M. Romeuf ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Comparisons are odious, but the contrast between the conduct of Northern and Southern soldiers during their invasions of each other's territory is very striking and suggestive; especially when taken in connection with the fact that the Federal army, from first to last, numbered twenty-eight hundred thousand ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... to carry the idea a step further; 'The sublime and beautiful are not opposed to each other, but stem and boughs of a tree whose top is the most sublimely beautiful of all,' that is the romantic. In the same book he attempted to analyze his impressions of Nature, calling a rugged place odious, an insignificant one without character tedious. 'In the presence of great mountains,' he says, 'the spirit is filled with bold aspirations, whereas in gentle valleys it lies quiet.' Harmony in variety was his ideal, like the sea in storm ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... mind of man," began Mae, as if she were reading, "there are three classes of women; the giddy butterflies, the busy bees, and the woman's righters. The first are pretty and silly; the second, plain and useful; the third, mannish and odious. The first wear long trailing dresses and smile at you while waltzing, the second wear aprons and give you apple-dumplings, and the third want your manly prerogatives, your dress-coat, your money, and your vote. ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... of course odious." She had a pause as if for renewed emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note. "Is her life ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... good-looking—that jumped to the eye—and with a careless, indifferent grace—five years had only matured and increased his attractions. He had "it"—manifesting in every part of him and his atmosphere! A magnetism, a hateful, odious power which she felt, and fiercely resented. He had recovered completely from whatever shock he had felt upon seeing her it would seem! for his face looked absolutely unconcerned now and perfectly ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... probably have mastered the despot, whose intellect was far from brilliant. But Mme. Favoral was too proud to be shrewd; and besides, the springs of her will had been broken by the successive oppression of an odious stepmother and a brutal master. Her abdication of all was complete. Wounded, she kept the secret of her wound, hung ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... see him on the cliff! Farewell, farewell to hope, If he should look this way, and if He's got his telescope! To whatsoever place I flee, My odious ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... longer be apprehended in the lying family narratives; such as the predominance of the Fabian clan which furnished one of the two consuls from 269 to 275, and the reaction against it, the emigration of the Fabii from Rome, and their annihilation by the Etruscans on the Cremera (277). Still more odious was the murder of the tribune of the people, Gnaeus Genucius, who had ventured to call two consulars to account, and who on the morning of the day fixed for the impeachment was found dead in bed (281). The immediate effect of this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... between Rapp and M. Talleyrand which could warrant the suspicion of their being concerned in the affair in question. "When Napoleon saw the matter in its true light," said Savary, "when I proved to him the palpable existence of the odious machination, he could not find terms to express his indignation. 'What baseness, what horrible villainy!' he exclaimed; and gave me orders to arrest and bring to Paris the infamous writer of the letter; and you may rely upon it his orders ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... acquaintance of that man, who was sent up to me in order that I might provide for him, without my consent being obtained or even demanded; but I now rejoice in the circumstance, without which I might still have been playing the odious, disgraceful, and heart-breaking part which I had supported so long. But by the decided step which I now took, the burden of obloquy fell at once from my shoulders, as the bundle of sin from the back of Christian, and rolling into a deep ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... for a moment felt not only awkward and ashamed, but seemed odious to himself. He should have believed in himself, but he failed to understand that this awkwardness and shame were the noblest feelings of his soul begging for recognition, and, on the contrary, it seemed to him that it was his foolishness that was speaking within ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... key which alone can open that civilisation to a stranger. Things irksome or a heavy burden to the young men of my age, born and brought up in the French air, were to me, brought up with Englishmen an Englishman, odious and bewildering. Orders that I but half comprehended; simple phrases that seemed charged with menace; boasting (a habit of which I knew little), coupled with a fierce and, as it were, expected courage that seemed ill suited to boasting—and certainly ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... friend and asks him for succor,—and all that follows! I hope you never may know it; it is far worse than the anguish of death. You have written me letters which, if I had written them to you in a like situation, you would have thought very odious. You expected of me that which it was out of my power to do. But you are the only person to whom I shall try to justify myself. In spite of your severity, and though from being a friend you became a creditor on the day when Bordin asked ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... afterwards she did not utter a word or make a movement in society without first considering whether it could by any malicious observer be considered rustic or stuck-up. But the more she strove to attain perfect propriety of demeanor, the more odious did she seem to herself, and, she inferred, to others. She longed for Lydia's secret of always doing the right thing at the right moment, even when defying precedent. Sometimes she blamed the dulness of the people she met for her shortcomings. It was ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... smooth and suddenly sprang asunder, and the tree closed so quickly that I could not pull out my beautiful white beard; so now it is tight in and I cannot get away, and you silly, sleek, milk-faced things laugh! Ugh! how odious ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... suppose," Mrs Grantly remarked briskly, still standing draped in the obnoxious material, "that there is any bye-law to the effect that the garments should be of an odious and humiliating description." ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... next, and many years, rather than, for the sake of appeasing the popular cry, to throw yourself away on a dolt, or a villain. What consolation can it be, when bound to such a companion for life, to reflect, that you have escaped the odious name of an "old maid?" Better ten lives of singleness, than a few years of that wretchedness so often occasioned by marrying simply and solely for fear ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... and Jessie added, "Nevertheless, your comparisons are odious. Joe, the ash-man, is not what you might ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... influence of the House of Commons is mainly kept up by old social traditions. I believe if the eldest sons of peers now members would all accept the Chiltern hundreds, and the House thus cease to be fashionable, before a year was past, it would be as odious and as contemptible as ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... sack than try the experiment again. An uneducated, coarse-minded European is too disturbing an element in the family life of Easterns; the sort of filial relation, at once familiar and reverential of servants to a master they like, is odious to English and still more to French servants. If I fall in with an Arab or Abyssinian woman to suit me I will take her; but of course it is rare; a raw slave can do nothing, nor can a fellaha, and a Cairo woman is bored to death up in the Saeed. As to care and attention, I ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... any kind of stimulants is unhealthy work, and tends to no good. I never use any kind of stimulant for intellectual work—only a glass of wine during dinner to sharpen the appetite. As to smoking generally, it is a vile and odious practice; but I do not know that, unless carried to excess, it is in any way unhealthy. Instead of stimulants, literary men should seek for aid in a pleasant variety of occupation, in intervals of perfect rest, in fresh air and exercise, and ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... away, because it is said, If she find not favor in his eyes.' The school of Hillel said 'If the wife cook her husband's food ill, by over-salting or over-roasting it, she is to be put away.' On the other hand Rabbi Jochanan (a Shammaite) said 'The putting away of a wife is odious.' Both schools agreed that a divorced wife could not be taken back.... Rabbi Chananiah said 'God has not subscribed His name to divorces, except among Israelites, as if He had said: I have conceded to ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... say I expected it," said Mrs. Penniman. "And I had a sort of foolish hope that you would come home without that odious ironical tone with which you treat ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... anything real," said Maggie, looking hurt. "As if I, with my old gowns and want of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lucy,—who knows and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I am,—even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her rival. Besides, I never go to aunt Deane's when any one is there; it is only because dear Lucy is good, and loves me, that she comes to see me, and will have me go to see ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... should, by any accident, get killed, considerable delicacy is required in introducing a new one. The hens may mope, and refuse to associate with their new husband, clustering in corners, and making odious comparisons between him and the departed; or the cock may have his own peculiar notions as to what a wife should be, and be by no means satisfied with those you have provided him. The plan is, to keep him by himself nearly the whole day, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... which heightened the spirit of the people against them, and that made them so odious and filthy in their eyes, was for that (at least so I think) these publicans were not, as the other officers, aliens, heathens, and Gentiles, but men of their own nation, Jews, and so the brethren of those that they so abused. Had they been Gentiles, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... I was acting in London," resumed Susan, thoughtfully, "the leading lady refused to receive the attentions of a certain odious English lord. She was to make her appearance in a piece upon which her reputation was staked. Mark what happened! She was hissed! Hissed from the stage! My lord led this hostile demonstration and all his hired claqueurs joined ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... She attempts to get away in his absence. Is prevented by the odious Sinclair. He exults in the hope of looking her into confusion when he sees her. Is told by Dorcas that she is coming into the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... divine simplicity in him Who handles things divine, and all besides, Through learned with labor, and though much admired By curious eyes and judgments ill informed To me is odious Such should still be affectionate in look And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of Grace to ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... in one of his letters, "Never shall I forget the happy days passed there [in Edinburgh], amidst odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and the most enlightened and cultivated understandings." His only criticism of the conversation of that day (1797-1802) concerned itself with the prevalence of that form of Scotch humor which was called wut, and with the disputations ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... play whist, said Mr. Perry, without thinking of this, and shall love the game the better for the thought; though I am no party-man. Nor I, said my master; for I think the distinctions of whig and tory odious; and love the one or the other only as they are honest and worthy men; and have never (nor never shall, hope) given a vote, but according to what I thought was for the public good, let either whig or tory ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... and he had a tremendous air of intimacy. And the murmur of their chatter continued. Their chatter was nothing, and about nothing, but Mr. Povey imagined that they were exchanging eternal vows. He endured Mr. Scales's odious freedom until it became insufferable, until it deprived him of all his self-control; and then he retired into his cutting-out room. He meditated there in a condition of insanity for perhaps a minute, and excogitated a device. Dashing back into the shop, he spoke up, half across ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... for popular favor, so shrivelled and dwarfed them as to inspire only fear and hatred. But men of this character were scarce in that day in Mississippi. Such was the tone of society, and such the education of her sons, that traits so dishonorable rendered odious the man manifesting them, and those of talent and education emigrating to the country soon caught this spirit as by inoculation. If there were any who were influenced by such base and degrading motives, and who felt these a part of their nature, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... followed behind her; and her feathers on the top of her hat were broke going in at the low back door and she pulled out her little bottle out of her pocket to smell when she found herself in the kitchen, and said, 'I shall faint with the heat of this odious, odious place.' ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... bending her head and absently pouring sand between her fingers—'I suppose you think me a blue-stocking, or something odious?' ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... in which my friend has so nearly been destroyed—and his daughter, who now, too late, I find is the only creature in the world I love—that mine is now odious to me. I desire by deed to hand it over to Hope and yourself, upon condition that you follow the seams wherever they go, and that you give me such a share of the profits during my lifetime as you think I deserve for my ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... were too apt to take. The consequence is, that even in his freest passages, and those which one would most wish unwritten, Spenser is by no means a seductive poet. Vice in him, however truly described, is always made contemptible or odious. The same may be said of Milton and Shakespeare; but Milton was of a cast of mind originally austere and rigorous. He looked on vice as a judge; Shakespeare, as a satirist. Spenser was far more indulgent than either, and acted therefore the more wisely in setting himself a rule, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... radiant and reasonable too, I hope,' said Althea. Her head still whirled as she heard herself analysing for Mrs. Mallison's correction these sanctities of her life. Odious, intolerable, insolent woman! She could have burst into tears as she walked beside her, held by her, while her hateful dogs, shrilly ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... but God alone; yet the Devil would gladly bring some Discredit upon it, as if it were but some Humane Contrivance; Of nothing, is the Devil more desirous, than this; That we should not count, Christ so precious, Heaven so Glorious, Hell so Dreadful, and Sin so odious, as the Scripture has ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the question.' Thus she greeted her husband. 'The girl herself I could endure, but oh, her odious mother!—Three guineas a week! I ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... not in human nature a more odious disposition than a proneness to contempt, which is a mixture of pride and ill-nature. Nor is there any which more certainly denotes a bad mind; for in a good and benign temper there can be no room ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... bond—revealing Phoebe's existence perhaps to ears unprepared—and laying greedy hands upon the 'Genius Loci.' It would have been hard to keep him off it—unless Lord Findon had promptly come forward—and it would have been odious to yield it to him. 'Now I shall take my time.' Of course, ultimately, he would repay the money to Mrs. Morrison and Bella. But better, even in their interests, to wait a while, till there could be no question of any other claim ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... human being?" No wonder that there was a proverb, "As many slaves, so many foes." No wonder that many masters lived in perpetual fear, and that "the tyrant's devilish plea, necessity," might be urged in favor of that odious law which enacted that, if a master was murdered by an unknown hand, the whole body of his slaves should suffer death,—a law which more than once was carried into effect under the reigns of the Emperors. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... one may almost find oneself admiring him. One feels that he is made so, that he cannot wholly help it, and we lose ourselves in wondering why a human being should be so strangely hampered. But if a man displays an odious fault complacently; if he takes mean advantage of other people, and frankly considers people fools who do not condescend to the same devices; if he gives one to understand that he dislikes and despises one; if he reserves a spiteful respect only for those who can beat him with his own weapons; if ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... when she closed her eyes; the moonlit yard, the shadow that fell from the tall sunflowers, and the huddled, dark mass on the ground, with the turned-up face and the sightless eyes. But she was not afraid; she only felt bitterly resentful against Andor, who, she firmly believed, had played her an odious trick. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... not mistaken," replied the messenger: "it really was Sir Robert Melville and Lord Lindsay; but there came yesterday with Sir William Douglas a third ambassador, whose name, I am afraid, will be still more odious to your Majesty than either of the two I ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the rigid Protestant Dissenters, naturally favored these new victims, persecuted by a church still more odious to them than that of England. Their sympathies were deeply excited by the arrival of the French exiles. The destitute were liberally relieved, the towns of Massachusetts making collections for this purpose, and also furnishing them with large tracts of land to cultivate. In 1686 the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... penalties, must sink this crime; and if the gentlemen of England would once drop it as a mode, the vice is so foolish and ridiculous in itself, it would soon grow odious and out ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... great a territory on a distant continent was necessarily delayed; and, before the Captain- general of France reached New Orleans in 1803, the Spanish authorities, still in possession, had become so odious to the inhabitants of the western section of the Union by their suspension of the right of deposit at New Orleans, that there was constant danger of an armed collision. Mr. Ross of Pennsylvania, an able and conservative statesman, moved in the Senate of the United States that ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Brass faintly, as he again applied himself to the odious pipe. 'But if he should get better, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of Orleans, became so odious to his clergy that they sent a complaint against him to Pope Alexander III., concluding: "Let your apostolical hands put on strength to strip naked the iniquity of this man, that the curse prognosticated on the day of his consecration may ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the infamy of starting a Bible class for big boys on Saturday afternoons. This outrage had appalled and disgusted the boyhood of Wesleyanism in Bursley. Their afternoon for games, their only fair afternoon in the desert of the week, to be filched from them and used against them for such an odious purpose as a Bible class! Not only Sunday school on Sunday afternoon, but a Bible class on Saturday afternoon! It was incredible. It was unbearable. It was gross tyranny, and nothing else. Nevertheless the young minister had his way, by dint of meanly ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... crushed; for the failure of the Chronique came upon me at Sache, at M. de Margonne's, where, by a wise impulse, I was plunged in work to rid myself of that odious Bechet. I had undertaken to write in ten days (it was that which kept me from going to Nemours!) the two volumes which had been demanded of me, and in eight days I had invented and composed Les Illusions perdues, and had written a third of it. Think ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... contrary to public faith, and to the sentiments and law of Nature, and which he, the said Hastings, was sensible "could not fail to draw obloquy on himself by his participation," did disgrace the king's commission, and render odious to the natives of Hindostan the justice of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... introduced, on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself, for which it was created, are erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... illness I anticipate is an utter and complete weariness of life. I don't know which sounds the most dreadful: being bumped along dusty roads in an ambulance, and sleeping with snakes and toads under a tent; or being stifled in an odious little corrugated-iron hotel, living on poisonous tinned stuffs in a perpetual odour of stale roast nigger. If I am going to endure it for my country, I hope my country will give me the only fitting ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... and the humor arising from a sense of superiority, are both of them social in their nature. No less social, surely, is the function of satire. It is possible that satire may be decaying, that it is becoming, if it has not already become, a mere splendid or odious tradition. But let us call it a great tradition and, upon the whole, a splendid one. Even when debased to purely party or personal uses, the verse satire of a Dryden retains its magnificent resonance; "the ring," says Saintsbury, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... "He makes everything too odious!" she exclaimed; but whether she referred to her husband or the Baron it was left to ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the following story to be wrapped in silence. A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's bodyguard, had made his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the zeal with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was so skilled an archer, that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way off on a wand ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... we shall soon have you out of this horrid place," she cried; "and before the execution they tell us of, can issue, as they call it, we shall have time to make some proper arrangement for you. I shall be of age, by that time; and I can at least become your creditor, instead of that odious Mr. Daggett. You would not hesitate to owe me money, Miles, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... furious. There was Mr. Tod's chair, and Mr. Tod's pie dish, and his knife and fork and mustard and salt cellar and his table-cloth that he had left folded up in the dresser—all set out for supper (or breakfast)—without doubt for that odious ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it.(1) The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... which he had never tasted. While he waited he looked round on the painted women, on the men escorting them, on the loungers with their newspapers and cigars, the shouting, supercilious waiters. But all the little odious details of the scene escaped him; he felt only the touchingness of his human comradeship, the yearning of a common life, bruised and wounded but ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said the wife, looking up from the wristband to which she was attaching a neat mother-o'-pearl button. She said no more; it was the sharpest rebuke she was in the custom of administering to her husband's cynical and odious observations. Riccabocca lighted his pipe with a thread paper, gave three great ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... not the home of England or America. The genuine Parisian lives on the street, or in the theater or ball-room. He never lives at home. Hence, the mothers and daughters of England and America are not there to be found. "Comparisons are odious" but I cannot express my meaning so plainly without making them, and I state but the simple truth. Young men and women are not taught to seek their pleasure at the family fireside, but beyond it, and a man marries ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... state to you these opinions of mine, that you might know that I think the Translation of the "Faust" a task demanding (from me, I mean), no ordinary efforts—and why? This—that it is painful, very painful, and even odious to me, to attempt anything of a literary nature, with any motive of pecuniary advantage; but that I bow to the all-wise Providence, which has made me a poor man, and therefore compelled me by other duties inspiring feelings, to bring even ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... odious nature and the immense magnitude of the evil which you have associated to oppose, and the inestimable importance of the objects which you are seeking to obtain, we cannot forbear to urge unremitted exertions, in pursuing the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Latin prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long, "curing" patients by drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling, selling lies at a guinea apiece,—a routine, in short, of giving unfortunate sick people a mess of things either too odious to swallow or too acrid to hold, or, if that ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... 1765, the Stamp Act was passed. This act produced great excitement throughout the whole country, and no where was it more violently denounced than in North Carolina. The Legislature was then in session, and so intense and wide-spread was the opposition to this odious measure, that Governor Tryon, apprehending the passage of denunciatory resolutions, prorogued that body after a session of fifteen days. The speaker of the House, John Ashe, informed Governor Tryon that this law "would be resisted ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... recover she had run into the house, through the hall, up the stairs into her bedroom. Down she sat on the side of the bed. "How vile, odious, abominable, vulgar," muttered Isabel. She pressed her eyes with her knuckles and rocked to and fro. And again she saw them, but not four, more like forty, laughing, sneering, jeering, stretching out their hands while she read them William's letter. Oh, what a ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right honorable gentleman,[61] as the support of the crown and Constitution against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by his Majesty's ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an estate which in the comparison effaces ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... you have not heard of it?" exclaimed Miss Peppy in surprise. "Why, the town has been ringing with it for a fortnight at least, and those odious creatures, the gossips, (who never come near me, however, because they know I will not tolerate them), have got up all sorts of wild stories, showing that the man must have got the money by foul means, though I don't know, I'm sure, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know, moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason and of the same divine particle—how can I ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of perjury, and that, before the publication ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she cried, with a blithesome laugh. "Everything from when you slew the odious Abbot until the fight ended on the stairs; and you can never know, dear, the joy with which I recognized the ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow-creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... their absent friends, those especially who were expected to bear a part in this concert; for instance—"Those two eternal Miss Byngs, with voices, like cracked bells, and with their old-fashioned music, Handel, Corelli, and Pergolese, horrid!—And odious little Miss Crotch, who has science but no taste, execution but no expression!" Here they talked a vast deal about expression. Alfred did not understand them, and doubted whether they understood themselves. "Then her voice! how people can ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... have her—no, not for worlds, Kate, that odious old woman, with her stiff and antiquated ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... grimacing mask of slang and ridicule humiliated him so deeply that he became absolutely reckless. Her grace was only an uneasy wriggle, her audacity was the result of insolence and envy, and her wit was restless spite. As her personal mannerisms grew more and more odious to him, he began to dull his perceptions with champagne. He had it for tea, he drank it with dinner, and during the evening he took enough to insure that he would be well insulated when he got home. This behavior spread alarm among his friends. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... parallel. Still, the relation contains an excellent lesson, not only to princes, but to other people. How happy would it be for the world, if we all lived under the full persuasion of the fact, that the faithful hand of history will not fail to send us down to posterity odious or respected, as by our lives and conduct we shall have deserved! And if my friend Wheelwright shall feel offended that I have kept a record of the most striking incidents of his life, I have only ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... to the chief the number required; the latter then sends out his runner or messenger, (te vea), who delivers to each of the subordinate chiefs, one of these packages for each victim to be furnished from his immediate district. The odious duty of designating the individuals to be taken, then devolves upon the subordinate, and having decided upon this, he sends a number of armed men to secure the destined victims before they secrete themselves or flee into the woods, as those who have any reason to fear being selected generally do, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... behind; on the other hand, carried forward and universalized. This immense error demands correction. Let us notice a few specimens in exemplication of it. Jehovah is not the only true God in distinction from odious idols; but Brahma, Ahura Mazda, Osiris, Zeus, Jupiter, and the rest, are names given by different nations to the Infinite Spirit whom each nation worships according to its own light. The Jews and the Christians are not the only chosen people of God; but all nations are his people, chosen in the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... betake himself to the pestle and apron. He always detested the trade, and it was only necessity, and the offer of his mother's brother, a London apothecary of low family, into which Pendennis's father had demeaned himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious a calling. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... joke of the witty knight would have failed to produce its effect on the listening waiter just now; for the gentlemen outside were again discussing the Reuchlin controversy, and in doing so uttered such odious words about the Cologne theologians, whom Dietel knew as godly gentlemen who consumed an ample supply of food, that he grew hot and cold by turns. He was a good man who would not hurt a fly. Yet, when he heard ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... territory of the Maguire clan, for instance, belonged exclusively to Maguire, and that he could prove his title to the property by legal documents, was erroneous—in fact, such a thing was impossible. Yet, such was the ground on which the king based his establishment of the odious commission. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... rest at the Caillou farm, he went to the front with Bertrand and a young officer, Gudin by name, and peered at the enemy's fires dimly seen through the driving sheets of rain. Satisfied that the allies were there, he returned to the farm, dictated a few letters on odious parliamentary topics, and then sought a brief repose. But the same question drove sleep from his eyes. At one o'clock he was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. Once more they strained their ears to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... offer like this. There is no doubt that the form of it may be open to objection, but substantially it represents the wishes of the German people, even though the medium through which it may be conveyed is an odious and hateful one, but I must make up my own mind on this and I must not be held off from an acceptance by any feeling of criticism that may come my way. The gentlemen in the Army who talk about going to Berlin and taking it by force are foolish. It would cost a million American lives to accomplish ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of publicity, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... against the Spaniards, many breaches being made by the fire among the pales, great heaps of earth falling into the ditch. Then the pirates climbing up, got over into the castle, though those Spaniards, who were not busy about the fire, cast down many flaming pots full of combustible matter, and odious smells, which destroyed ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... evening dresses her mother had made her wear! Girlish, she had called them. A girl in thick-lensed glasses should not wear tulle evening frocks with a girlish note. Elizabeth had always felt comic in them. Yet there she had sat, shrinking lest the odious Oakley, of the fat white fingers and the wheezy breath, should ask ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this odious hand?" ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... tourist agency, the enclosing of stamps and the payment of a shilling or two; that there was no question of visas entailing endless humiliation and back-breaking delays, waiting about in ante-rooms and empty apartments of squalid, desolating ugliness situate always in the most odious parts of a town. But the Foreign Offices of Europe were agreed on one topic, and this was that having got their feet back on the necks of the people, their serfs of the glebe should not, save under circumstances hateful, fatiguing, unhealthy ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... The warmth with which he praised that little "caprice" was surely genuine; and she felt so grateful that she even played him others, and then a song for him to sing. From that day, he no longer seemed to her odious; she even began to have for him a certain friendliness, to be a little sorry, watching him, pale, trim, and sphinx-like, in her drawing-room or garden, getting no nearer to the fulfilment of his desire. He had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reactions, and total attitudes are different from usual or professional attitudes. To get at them you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious, which in some degree everyone possesses. This sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... homesick for a sight of the poplar trees, with the roses on the headlands, and the plushy touch of green grass under his feet, and the wizened little Scotch milliner across the road took what she called a "scunner" at the silk and muslin flowers, with their odious starchy, stuffy smell, and wondered where the farmer was, who two years ago had asked her to marry him. The wind—heavy with the perfume that stirred so many hearts with longing, eddied carelessly ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... heard him express any noble or benevolent sentiments, or discover any sorrow or compassion for the misfortunes of so many worthy men who had suffered in his cause. But the most odious part of his character is his love of money, a vice which I do not remember to have been imputed by our historians to any of his ancestors, and is the certain index of a base and little mind. I have known this gentleman, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Apology with every kind of argument from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers, councils, and the decrees of the Popes; thereupon, diligently to discuss in detail everything concerning the Primacy, which was omitted in the Confession because it was odious. The latter we completed so far to-day that we shall immediately deliver a copy to the princes. The former, however will be postponed to another time and place, since it requires a longer time, as well as libraries, which are lacking here." (C. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... this cause than I ever will take again, although my engaging in this and another popular cause has raised much resentment. But I think I can sincerely, declare, that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes. Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct, that are ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... it for a man to deaden, if I may be allowed the expression, the splendour of his rising glory, by a sweet and modest carriage; and not to excite jealousy, by haughty and self-sufficient behaviour, as this naturally awakens pride in others, and makes even virtue itself odious! ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... near the summit of any of the surrounding rocks, or anything like it; but as you are not far from the verge of the wood, be so good as to step a little farther and I will show you my entrance in hither."—"Well," says she, "now this odious dazzle of light is lessened, I don't care if I ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... rival from the scene, Alessandro de' Medici plunged with even greater effrontery into the cruelties and debaucheries which made him odious in Florence. It seemed as though fortune meant to smile on him; for in this same year (1535) Charles V. decided at Naples in his favour against the Florentine exiles, who were pleading their own cause and that of the city injured ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... In entering upon opposition to the superior talents and virtues, by which impotence feels oppressed, it comes to a realization of its inferiority and to a consciousness of its own nothingness, and the nemesis, even when bad and odious, is, by treating it with contempt, rendered ineffectual. Like the public, which forms a circle for such activity, it is confined to a harmless malicious joy, and to a condemnation which reflects ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... himself, by drawing some horrible picture of him. 'Tis only too likely these ten thousand imps here will leap upon him and carry him off alive to Hell. His doom is fixed. And alack! I have myself figured, in mosaic and other ways, very odious caricatures of Devils, and they have good reason to bear me ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... sounds than those of steps within Ruhleben camp, that odious place of misery out of which they had broken, other noises than the heavy tramp of a ponderous Landsturm guard as he strode from behind the hut till the barbed-wire entanglements stopped his progress and he rattled his bayonet upon it, sounds which came ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... prime favorite. It had been a sore disappointment to them, as year after year went by, to see that there seemed no likelihood of his becoming Katie's husband. As the day wore on, even Elspie relaxed a little from her indifferent attention to him, and began to perceive that, spite of the odious freckles, he was, as the girls had said, a ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... afflicted with this disease, and no means have hitherto been found out for prevention or cure. The old legend imputes this disease to the curse laid by St Thomas upon his murderers and their posterity, as an odious mark to distinguish them: But St Thomas was slain by the Tilnigue[3] priests at Miliapoor in Coromandel, above four hundred miles from this coast; and the natives there have no ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... pieces of treachery, which in themselves appear base and detestable to every one. There are actions, which perhaps can scarce have any other general name given them than indecencies, which yet are odious and shocking to human nature. There is such a thing as meanness, a little mind, which as it is quite distinct from incapacity, so it raises a dislike and disapprobation quite different from that contempt, which men are ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... inclined to carry to extremes the generous and heroic tendencies of the clan or epoch to which he belongs. He would have recoiled in disgust from this timid, cunning evasion of a natural and sacred revenge, from this odious traffic in friendship, fidelity, and love. Nor is it conceivable, on the other hand, that he should have attained sufficient loftiness of spirit to be able to let his gaze travel beyond the noblest and most incontestable duties of the moment, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... want of funds; and—with no more abominable object in view than I have, at this moment, in poking the fire—he would have ended in producing his modest subscription list and would have betrayed himself (just as our odious Benwell will betray himself) by the two amiable little words, Please contribute. Is there any other presentiment, my dear, on which you would like to have your ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Colony. To this old cause much of the unpopularity that still attaches to them seems due. Unpopular they certainly are. They are reproached with the paucity of their converts, and that by white men whose own treatment of the Kafirs might well make the white man's religion odious to a native. They are also accused of abusing their position to enrich themselves by trade with the Kafirs. This abuse has sometimes occurred, and clearly ought to be checked by the home societies. But probably it does not disgust the wandering white trader any ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... seated next to a lady-like well-dressed Englishwoman of the middle age, whom he heard called Miss Baker; and next to her again sat—an angel! whom Miss Baker called Caroline, and whom an odious man sitting on the other side ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Chapman Catt, in an address entitled Comparisons Are Odious, showed the contrast between the Government's treatment of the Sioux Indians, exempted from taxation and allowed to vote, and of law-abiding, intelligent women in the same section of the country, compelled to pay taxes and not allowed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... peaceful slumbers, embellished by dreams. On the contrary, I did not sleep an hour, and I have waked up stung to the heart by an odious thought. But before I transmit that thought to you, I must tell you what ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... aggravating manner at each ascent, and when we came to a creek sat down on his tail, refusing to stir. My position was a most trying one; the track was so bad that I would fain have given my mind entirely to my own safety, but instead of this all my attention was centred on Tucker the odious. When we first started I expressed to F—— my fear that Tucker would fairly drag him off his own saddle, and he admitted that it was very likely, adding, "You must flog him." This made me feel that it entirely depended on my efforts ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... of the Urine, discourse the Cause, Nature, what the Disease is, and what will be the issue of it, propose Medicines, nay sometimes endeavour to advise with the Physician, to contradict and dispute with him, to compare and set himself above the Physician; and to say truth, these odious and intolerable Comparisons and intrusions daily complained of by my Collegues, were a great cause of my ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett |
