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Repulsive   Listen
adjective
Repulsive  adj.  
1.
Serving, or able, to repulse; repellent; as, a repulsive force. "Repulsive of his might the weapon stood."
2.
Cold; forbidding; offensive; as, repulsive manners.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books



... milk-white body was speckled all over with jewelled scales, and shone with a pale blue phosphorescence; his eyes blazed in his head like twin carbuncles, and in spite of my instinctive dread of snakes, I could not help admiring his repulsive beauty. Presently he reared his long neck, and faced us with his forked tongue playing out and in. I shrank back, for I thought he was about to spring upon me; but Alumion, laughing gaily at my fears, stepped quickly up to him, and ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... true mountaineer from being afraid of death, that he seems to take a savage pleasure in imagining it in its most horrible forms and dwelling upon its most repulsive and terrifying features, merely to have the satisfaction of triumphing over it in fancy. As an illustration of this I give below a part of another Chechense song called "The Song of Khamzat." Khamzat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... before the fireplace, on which were two vases filled with flowers; flowers were also on a table near the window. The expression of the abbe's face, which was that of amazement at the change in the room, now restored to its former state, showing me that the dying woman had sent away the repulsive preparations which surround a sick-bed. She had spent the last waning strength of fever in decorating her room to receive him whom in that final hour she loved above all things else. Surrounded by clouds of lace, her shrunken face, which had the greenish pallor ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... youth, impatient for wealth and ambitious of power, he had tied himself to a rich dowager of quality, whose age, though sixty- seven, was but among the smaller species of her evil properties, her disposition being far more repulsive than her wrinkles. An inequality of years so considerable, had led him to expect that the fortune he had thus acquired, would speedily be released from the burthen with which it was at present incumbered; but his expectations proved as vain as they were mercenary, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... and obedience without love. This means a hard, cold, stern righteousness. It is truth without grace. Nothing can be made to seem more repulsive. One incident in Elijah's career furnishes the illustration here. Let us say such a thing very softly of such a mighty man of God, and say it in fewest words, and only to help. He was a man of marvellous faith, and prayer, and bold daring, in the midst of a very crooked and perverse generation. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... thirsty souls, wasted down almost to haggard skeletons. O! if some poet of wildest imagination could only place himself in the position of those poor tired travelers to whom water in thick muddy pools had been a blessing, who had eagerly drank the fluid even when so salt and bitter us to be repulsive, and now to see the clear, pure liquid, distilled from the crystal snow, abundant, free, filled with life and health—and write it in words—the song of that joyous brook and set it to the music that it made as it echoed in gentle waves from the rocks and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... public in general much prefer amusement to instruction, at which he laughs, and says that in this matter he perfectly agrees with us. He expresses his strong opinion as to Dickens's reading of the "Murder of Nancy" (Oliver Twist), which he characterizes as "repulsive and indecent." ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... recognition of the sorrow of the world, by the conquest of all desires, and by the exercise of kindliness to all that breathe this life of misery, is that Path to be trodden of which the fourth stage enters Nirvana's peace. Thus only can we escape from this repulsive carcass—"this bag of skin with carrion filled," as one of the Sisters called it—and so be merged into the element of calm, just as the space inside a bowl is merged into the element of space when at last the bowl is broken and ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... forsaken both by God and man; He did not hang there in the torment of His body, suffering all the agony the most exquisitely wrought, nerve -centered body of the universe could suffer of physical pain and anguish; God did not make Him to be sin and treat Him as the blackest and most repulsive thing in existence; He did not lay upon Him the weight and demerit of a world's guilt that He might suffer in His innocence, His purity and innate sinlessness on behalf of the vilest outcast this side of Gehenna, the lake of fire, just that He might keep us from lying, cheating, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... Vecchio that the most characteristic part of our ride began. The hills, into the folds and gullies of which we plunged almost immediately after leaving the walls of the little town, are of the most arid, and it is hardly too much to say, repulsive description. It is impossible to imagine soil more evidently to the least experienced eye hopeless for any purpose useful to man, than these rolling and deeply water-scored hills. Nor has the region any of the characters of the picturesque. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... so repulsive in the idea of smothering human Helena under layers of old garments, that Mollie finally thought of a better way. Helena should no longer be Helena, dear to her heart in all her little feminine adornings and her sympathetic, tender traits ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... poisoning for suicidal purposes with nitrate of silver are in most cases prevented from the fact that this salt has such a disagreeable metallic taste as to be repulsive; cases therefore of poisoning are only liable to occur by accident or by the willful administration of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... doors, bolted and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which he labours; the corpse of the plague-stricken beneath his hand ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays from the canvas, which strengthen us for the good fight in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... coarseness. The masses are not only fools, but very near the brutes. Yes, they can send forth fine individuals—but remain base. I don't deny the possibility of social advance; I only say that at present the lower classes are always disagreeable, often repulsive, sometimes hateful.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... the dark room, and in the centre of the yellow splash lay the dead man, with his one eye wide open, staring at the ceiling, while perched on his wooden leg, which was sticking straight out, sat the parrot, swearing. It was a most repulsive sight, and Barty, with a shudder of disgust, tried to drag his companion away, but M. Vandeloup refused to go, and searched his pockets for a match to see more clearly ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... something about that girl that was at once repulsive and sweet, a singular impudence mingled with pity, that I could not understand. If she had taken my hand in the street she would have inspired a feeling of horror in me, but it seemed so strange that a creature I had never seen should come to me, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... opinion Sir Harry very heartily agreed. He had the highest respect for Gabriel as a man and a priest, and could not believe that he had wantonly committed a brutal crime, so repulsive to his benign nature, so contrary to the purity and teachings of his life. He was quite satisfied that the young man both could, and would, explain how the pistol had passed out of his possession; but he did not seek the explanation himself. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... sank within him with disappointment, with rage, with mortification. He pushed with his left arm, opening the hand with haste, as if he had just perceived that he got hold by accident of something repulsive—and he watched with stupefied eyes Willems tottering backwards in groping strides, the white sleeve of his jacket across his face. He watched his distance from that man increase, while he remained motionless, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... milk' is a term used to designate milk taken from unclean animals, or those which have been kept in filthy, unventilated stables. The milk absorbs and carries the odors, which are often plainly perceptible. Such milk may not be poisonous, but it is repulsive. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... about Thyme's going about slumming. You see what she's been let in for this afternoon. The notion of that baby being killed through the man's treatment of his wife, and that, no doubt, arising from the girl's leaving them, is most repulsive!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a dead bough from a scrub oak he approached the snake cautiously while the rest sat in their saddles silently anxious, and Charley edged his restive pony a little closer to the repulsive reptile. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... bottom of the Red Sea; for he was taking his revenge of Puddock, and had already lost a gammon and two hits. Little Puddock won by the force of the dice. He was not much of a player; and the sight of Dangerfield—that repulsive, impenetrable, moneyed man, who had 'overcome him like a summer cloud,' when the sky of his fortunes looked clearest and sunniest, always led him to Belmont, and the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... admitting the blunder, yet pleads that 'this remarkable reading is attractive by the new and interesting fact which it seems to attest, and by the antithetic force which it seems to add to the question in ver. 17,' [is more than we can understand. To us the expression seems most repulsive. No 'antithetic force' can outweigh our dislike to the idea that Barabbas was our Saviour's namesake! We prefer Origen's account, though he mistook the cause, to that of the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I explain ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... either becomes a confirmed drunkard or marries a loose woman." How terrible! Indeed it won't do for me to ruin myself when I might have the great happiness of even becoming the Countess B——'s husband, or a Court chamberlain, or a Marechal de noblesse of my district. Oh, how repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You do not know what happiness is and what life is! One must taste life once in all its natural beauty, must see and understand what I see every day before me—those ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... which was once believed a necessary concomitant of true religion, a sort of outward pledge of the healthful condition of the inward man; and it was also through her that the first palpable departure was made from those purifying principles which might serve as an apology for even far more repulsive exteriors. By a singular combination of circumstances and qualities, which is, however, no less true than perplexing, the merchants of Newport were becoming, at the same ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... War I made three fairly long stays at Berlin, putting up at good hotels, where officers—sometimes generals—often lunched and dined. And their appetites frequently amazed me, whilst their manners at table were repulsive. In those days most German officers were bearded, and I noticed that between the courses at luncheon and at dinner it was a common practice of theirs to produce pocket-glasses and pocket-combs, and comb their beards—as well as the hair on their heads—over the table. As for their ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... showed a naked arm, greasily shining for a second in the ruddy glow which now diffused itself through the whole wood. Here the watchers saw a glistening back; again, an out-thrust leg, small and crooked, apelike and repulsive. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... from Moscow, eh?" Mike was feeling thoroughly jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... the ill effects of slavery is as emphatic, if not so circumstantial, as that of Mr. Olmsted. It is of the more weight as coming from a man who saw the system under its least repulsive aspect. His report also of what he heard from some of the chief plotters in the Secession conspiracy as to their plans and theories is very instructive, and deserves special attention now that their allies in the Free States are beginning to raise their heads again. We have always believed, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... myself, and the sight made me more hopeless than ever. I saw in the water a tall, wild-looking youth, with bare head, save for a mass of unkempt hair; a face all scratched and bruised, and made to look savage and repulsive by vindictiveness; the clothes were dirty, bedraggled and torn, while the riding ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... in utter abhorrence of the proposal, cast the Bible at his feet, and eyed her with such a fixed and evil frown, that he looked less like a living man than a marble statue, wrought by some dark- imagined sculptor to express the most repulsive mood that human features could assume. And, as his look grew even devilish, so, with an equal change did Mary Goffe become more sad, more mild, more pitiful, more like a sorrowing angel. But, the more heavenly she was, the more ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... appearance was not repulsive. She was a woman of heroic mould, considerably above the average height of womankind, with a large head nobly set upon large well-shaped shoulders. Bulky Miss Wendover decidedly was, but she carried her ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... stew is expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the actual prostitute suffers acutely. What she overlooks is that these men, however gross and repulsive they may appear to her, are measurably superior to men of the prostitute's own class—say her father and brothers—and that communion with them, far from being disgusting, is often rather romantic. I well remember observing, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... the old story. The fact that it had existed, and had written itself out in human passion, remained with him still as a personal and humiliating degradation. It was like a scar on his own body, a repulsive sore which he wished to keep out of sight, even from the eyes of the man who had been his salvation. The growth of this revulsion within him had kept pace with his physical improvement, and if at the end of these ten ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... legends connected with the mansion, one seemed to have a peculiar fascination for Miss Collingham, perhaps because it was the most ghastly and repulsive. One wing of the house was held to be haunted by the spirit of an ancestress of the family, who appeared in the shape of a tall woman, with one hand folded in her white robe and the other pointing upward. It was said, that in ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... for the better, if not in the substance of Rameau's character, at least in his manners and social converse. He no longer exhibited that restless envy of rivals, which is the most repulsive symptom of vanity diseased. He pardoned Isaura her success; nay, he was even pleased at it. The nature of her work did not clash with his own kind of writing. It was so thoroughly woman like that one could not compare it to a man's. Moreover, that success had contributed ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... revolver." When we had crossed the river, reckless of getting wet to our waists in icy-cold water, F—— took the revolver from me and went first; but, after an instant's examination, he called out, "Dead as a door-nail! come and look at him." So I came, with great caution, and a more repulsive and disgusting sight cannot be imagined than the huge carcass of our victim already stiffening in death. The shot had been a fortunate one, for only an inch away from the hole the bullet had made his shoulders were regularly plated with thick ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... all bodies may be considered as subjected to the action of two opposite powers, the one repulsive, the other attractive, between which they remain in equilibrio. So long as the attractive force remains stronger, the body must continue in a state of solidity; but if, on the contrary, heat has so far removed these particles from each other, as to place ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... Anna Kuari or Mahadhani, who is in our estimation the most cruel and repulsive deity of all, as she requires human sacrifice. Those savage people, who put good crops above everything, look upon her in a different light. She can give good crops and make a man rich, and this covers a multitude of sins. People may be sceptical about it and say that it is impossible ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... of the miserable wretch that we found within, stretched on a rough bed with wrists and feet heavily ironed. These manacles were hardly needed, for he was severely wounded, and seemed incapable of rising from his pallet. I never saw so repulsive a countenance; and the flatness of the head was quite remarkable. His eyes were very prominent, and had the restless look of a hunted animal, which was painful in the extreme; but there was absolutely no redeeming expression of human feeling in the dark coarse face. Well, there was something ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... said before. He is the noblest man I have ever known,—so good, so clever, so pure in heart! His Cousin Marmaduke, who was there at the same time, paid me great attention, but I never liked him; there was always something repulsive to me in his black eyes; I never trusted him; and beside Arthur,—oh, it seemed like the contrast between night and day! I don't know why it was, Madame, but I never felt that he loved Arthur really, though Arthur had done a great deal for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... aggravated by the smiles of the old woman, who dipped and courtesied before him in senile delight. She may have divined his feelings, for, drawing him inside, she relieved him of his overcoat, crying all the while, with an extravagant welcome more repulsive than ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... would be a most convenient moment for a wash and a cup of tea. As he said, the very last thing he seemed to be at was war, when suddenly, climbing over a small ridge, he discovered himself face to face with a hostile sentry, and near him were, at repose, a knot of other equally repulsive Bosches. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... warm. She would learn to do without shoes as well as without stockings. She would have to go about without shoes or stockings. She thought of the men. Strangely enough the thought of going about without shoes or stockings seemed less repulsive to her than the thought of going about ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... of the natives, but in the abodes of the wealthy white men, hid during the day in dark corners, are numbers of dark grey, hideous-looking lizards, which, when night comes on, crawl rapidly over the walls and ceilings, hunting for the flies and other insects to be found there. Repulsive as are these little geckos, and undeservedly possessing a bad name for being poisonous, they are not only harmless, but render good service by the destruction of numerous household pests. Their large eyes are so constructed ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... now stood leaning against the mantle-piece, beating the devil's tatoo upon the wall, and, from time to time, whistling snatches of a popular air. His strongly marked features, though handsome, were bold and repulsive, the upper lip curling with half a sneer—but it was merely the soul imaged in the countenance, for, lad as he was, the spirit had quaffed many a deep draught of sinfulness, while mildew and iciness had crept down ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... we human beings have always considered Nevians grotesque and repulsive, the feeling has always been mutual. For those "monstrous" beings are a highly intelligent and extremely sensitive race, and our—to us—trim and graceful human forms seems to them the very quintessence ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... the dupe of a coquette, who in her turn is the victim of a more contemptible swindler. Lesage, presenting a fragment of the manners and morals of his day, keeps us in exceedingly ill company, but the comic force of the play lightens the oppression of its repulsive characters. It is the first masterpiece of the eighteenth-century comedie ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... upon him the great temptation that was to torment him for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if they had played together when ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... body—deeply and widely affected by traits like these that the divine call was to be presented and urged. The messenger was well fitted for his work. To the zeal of a new convert to Baptist principles, and a missionary fervor deepened by recent contact with idolatry in some of its most repulsive forms, Luther Rice united a cultivated eloquence and a personal persuasiveness. Of course his first address was to pastors and congregations in the seaboard cities, unexcelled by any, of whatever name, for intelligent and reasonable piety; ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... curious instance of this which occurred soon after the appearance of the comet of 1858. It chanced that, while that object was under discussion, reference was made to the action of a repulsive force exerted by the sun upon the matter of the comet's tail. On this, some one addressed a long letter to a Glasgow newspaper, announcing that he had long ago proved that the sun's attraction alone is insufficient to account for the planetary motions. His reasoning ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... an odd pathos in the literature of vegetarianism. I remember the day when I read these periodicals and pamphlets with all the zest of hunger and poverty, vigorously seeking to persuade myself that flesh was an altogether superfluous, and even a repulsive, food. If ever such things fall under my eyes nowadays, I am touched with a half humorous compassion for the people whose necessity, not their will, consents to this chemical view of diet. There comes before me a vision of certain vegetarian ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... interested in her painting again. She worked in long fits, after long intervals of idleness. She worked with a hard, passionless efficiency. Nicky thought her paintings were hideous and repulsive; but he did not say so. He was not aware of the extent to which Desmond imitated her master, Alfred Orde-Jones. He knew nothing about painting and he had got used to the things. He had got used to Desmond, slouching about the flat, in her sloping, slovenly grace, dressed in her queer square ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... pollution or mixture, and gives its members the name of Stareobratzi. The head of the Baskir family, Aphanassi, soon fell in love with young Daria, and asked her in marriage from her father; but though wealthy, Aphanassi had a rough and repulsive look, and Daria could not bear him; she had, therefore, given him an absolute refusal. Her father doated on her, and had not pressed the matter farther, though he was desirous of forming an alliance so advantageous ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... right to be called tactful, and, seeing her advantage, followed it up quickly by a few bright words. These men were of an utterly different type from any she had ever met before, but they had in their eyes a kind of homage which Pop Wallis had not shown and they were not repulsive to her. Besides, the Boy was in the background, and her nerve had returned. The Boy knew how a lady should be treated. She was quite ready to "play ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... degradation, and she could say nothing more. And he on his part felt what a murderer must feel when beholding the body he has just deprived of its life. This body, deprived by him of its life, was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and repulsive in the memory of that which was purchased at the terrible price of shame. The shame of her moral nakedness was stifling to her, and this stifling feeling communicated itself also to him. But, in spite of all the horror before the body ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... would sometimes regretfully, sometimes in a tone of amusement, go over bits of narrow-minded folly that had struck her in the clergy, and more especially in her uncle's curate, Mr. Lifford, whose dryness was, she owned, very repulsive to her. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... description of this painting). Margaritone's favorite subject was the figure of St. Francis, his style being well suited to depict the chief ascetic saint. Crucifixions were also much to his taste, and he represented them in all their repulsive details. Vasari relates that he died at the age of 77, afflicted and disgusted at having lived to see the changes that had taken place in art, and the honors bestowed ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... devoid, life itself is scarcely of any worth, and for the defence of which it is the highest glory that a man should be called upon to die. To them Socrates was no more than an idle lounger in the public places and corners of the streets; grotesque, and even repulsive in his person; affecting in the oddities of his walking and in his appearance many of the manners of the mountebank. Neglecting the pursuit of an honest calling, for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... to go to sleep, was a warm admirer of the incomparable actress, who satisfied his requirement of the absolutely first class in art. He was drawn to the highest genius as much as he was repelled by mediocrity. He blamed Rachel, however, for the choice of one particularly repulsive role, and suspected that she chose it because the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... extraordinary performance. Let this worst be written roughly, and in a single sentence. To the vast majority of upright and thoughtful men who are at present living and laboring in the world, Mr. Frothingham's "Philosophy as Absolute Science" can be saved from being infinitely repulsive only by being infinitely ridiculous. But to stop with this assertion would give no adequate impression of an earnest and most conscientious work. A remarkable mind, even if a misdirected one, has mounted upon the battlements of its system, and proclaimed victory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... settled she should sit. Let Norah wait upon her and I do believe the sight of all of us, so happy, will give some happiness to her. 'Touched of God,' some people call these 'naturals.' She's a human being, she was once a girl like me, and she's simply—not finished! She isn't a bit repulsive and I'm sure it's right to have her with ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... the light. There, stretched out on the floor, lay Underwood, with a bullet hole in his left temple, from which blood had flowed freely down on his full-dress shirt. It was a ghastly sight. The man's white, set face, covered with a crimson stream, made a repulsive spectacle. On the floor near the body was a highly polished revolver, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... alone useful for those especially interested in music, but, being free from all repulsive technicalities, will be found highly attractive to the general reader. It contains a subtle dissection of a deeply interesting character, sketches of Heine, George Sand, Eugene de la Croix, Mickiewicz, and other celebrities in the world of literature and art, together with a most ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... is much more frequent; in this the caryoplasm of the nucleus and the cytoplasm of the cell-body act upon each other in a peculiar way, with a partial dissolution (caryolysis), the formation of knots and loops (mitosis), and a movement of the halved plasma-particles towards two mutually repulsive poles of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... is. In her, as in us all, it was often—nay, daily—a discontent; yet a noble discontent, and curbed with a grand, unconscious patience. She scoured her knives; she shuffled along the streets on hasty errands; she went up and down the house in her small menial duties; she put on and off her coarse, repulsive clothing; she uttered herself in her common, ignorant forms of speech; she showed only as a poor, low, little Irish girl with red hair and staring, wondering eyes, and awkward movements, and a frightened fashion of getting into everybody's way; ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... of the Second Csar, at the crisis of the great Dictator's assassination, was so hazardous and delicate, as to confer interest upon a character not otherwise attractive. To many, we know it was positively repulsive, and in the very highest degree. In particular, it is recorded of Sir William Jones, that he regarded this emperor with feelings of abhorrence so personal and deadly, as to refuse him his customary titular honors whenever he had occasion ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... protected me, at least, against the curious glances that pass right through me. The murderer Maurice and his mistress! You don't love me any longer, Henriette, and no more do I care for you. To- day you are ugly, clumsy, insipid, repulsive. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... hand, he took her hand as she stood by the bed. She was so young and fresh, such an incarnation of the spirit of health, and he was so far gone in decay and corruption, that there seemed in this contact of body with body something unnatural and repulsive. But Sophia ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... heard shots in front; then there was a long wait. As we trudged on we passed something—some things—lying by the wayside. During another wait we examined them, curiously lifting the blankets from their yellow-clay faces. How repulsive they looked with their blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of the lips! The frost had begun already to whiten their deranged clothing. We were as patriotic as ever, but we did not wish to be that way. For ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact it never does. And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic—knowing that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the repulsive ell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... last—and where there had once been Gypsy Nan, haglike and repulsive, there was now a stylishly, even elegantly, dressed woman of well under middle age. The transformation seemed to have acted as a stimulant upon Gypsy Nan. She laughed with nervous hilarity she even tried valiantly to put on a pair of new black kid gloves, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... Father Payne, "of course the little coteries and courts of great men are rather repulsive. But the best people don't do that. They live contentedly in a circle which combines with its admiration for the hero a comfortable feeling that, if other people knew what they know, they wouldn't ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... dust had been dispersed, he observed, under the place where the iron box had stood, a number of skeletons of rats, as dry as mummies. He selected one of these,* [footnote... I was so much impressed with the events of the day, and also with the fact of the young artist having taken with him so repulsive a memento as a rat's skeleton, that I never forgot it. More than half century later, when I was at a private view of the Royal Academy, I saw sitting on one of the sofas a remarkable and venerable-looking old gentleman. On inquiring of my friend Thomas Webster who ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... the fortune-teller raised her head, and, shading her eyes with one skinny hand, looked curiously at the new comers. Calton thought he had never seen such a repulsive-looking old crone; and, in truth, her ugliness was, in its very grotesqueness well worthy the pencil of a Dore. Her face was seamed and lined with innumerable wrinkles, clearly defined by the dirt ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... crafty criminal lawyer, was the local leader of the Republicans, and John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, a very rich man, of the Democrats. These two men were cronies: they bartered the votes of their followers. For some years crime ran its repulsive course: brawlers, thieves, cutthroats escaped conviction through the defensive influence of the lawyer-boss. In 1880, Cox, who had served an apprenticeship in his brother-in-law's gambling house, was elected to the city council. Thence he was promoted to the decennial board ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... book of commonplace thoughts, but a high and noble essay on an important subject, and we commend it to the attention of our readers. Let him who would look upon the reverse of the gentleman, turn to the Editor's Table of the July issue of THE CONTINENTAL, and regard the repulsive sketch of the 'Southern Colonel,' whose ideal seems to be 'Brandy Smash and Cocktails.' Alas! that such ideals too frequently occur among ourselves. Bayard and Sir Philip Sydney are valuable studies for our own young ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... patches," he said jerkily. "Maybe it sounds crazy to think of such things now. First things first, you know. But that is a first thing! So long as Darians don't look like the people of other worlds, they'll be considered different. If they look repulsive, they'll be thought of as evil.... Tell me about those patches. They're different-sized and different-shaped and they appear in different places. You've none on your face or ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... Philip, Schiller seems as if struggling against the current of his nature; our feelings towards them are hardly so severe as he intended; their words and deeds, at least those of the latter, are wicked and repulsive enough; but we still have a kind of latent persuasion that they meant better than they spoke or acted. With the Marquis of Posa, he had a more genial task. This Posa, we can easily perceive, is the representative of Schiller ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... right," said Mr. Stryker. "There is a vast deal of prettiness, and very little repulsive ugliness among the women in this country. But it strikes me they are inclining a little too much to the idea, just now, that all the beauty in the world is collected in these United States, which, as we all know is rather ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... without once hesitating or looking back. My low knock at her chamber-door was unanswered. I paused but a few moments before opening it. There stood my friend, with a pale yet firm countenance, and as I advanced she looked me steadily in the face with a cold, repulsive expression. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur

... growth, and of most exotic fragility. It must be constantly and tenderly cherished. Every noxious and foreign element must be carefully removed from it. All sunshine, and sweet airs, and morning dews, and evening showers must breathe upon it perpetual fragrance, or it dies into a hideous and repulsive deformity, fit only to be cast out and trodden under foot of men, while, properly cultivated, it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... the church from the duties of religion, down to the minor details of the kitchen and the mysteries of cookery. The wife is constantly recommended to practise humility, in a way which would probably be repulsive to many of our modern ladies. Her industry in weaving and making clothes among her domestics is very carefully dwelt upon. She lived in a kind of Oriental seclusion, and saw no one except her nearest relatives. The ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... is a spectacle of a rather curious kind, though repulsive. Coupled two and two—for the precaution is taken, and not unfrequently needed—to keep their leg-chains on; up in mud to the middle of their bodies, and above bespattered with it—such mud too! many of them with faces that, even when clean, are ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... Australia. Civilization has driven them farther and farther north, for the Australian black-fellows cannot be tamed and trained—their nature is too wild and fierce to be kept within bounds except by fear and crushing. They are treacherous and savage, and most repulsive in appearance. Though spoken of as black, they are really chocolate-brown, but so covered with hair ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... angry moods. All will agree that violence and coarse speech must not be countenanced in Christians, least of all in teachers of Christianity. In the writings of Luther there occur terms, phrases, passages that sound repulsive. The strongest admirer of Luther will have moments when he wishes certain things could have been said differently. Luther's language cannot be repeated in our times. Some who have tried to do that in all sincerity have found to their dismay that they were ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... which Byron's Island is the largest. The men, who were heathens, were quite naked, but the women wore small aprons of seaweed. They didn't tattoo themselves, but many of them had their skins rough and hanging in flakes, which gave them a most repulsive appearance. This was in consequence of their spending much of their ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... eulogism. A moderate plumpness had preserved the freshness and softness of her skin; her smile was charming, and her large blue eyes expressed both gentleness and goodness. Seen beside this smiling and serene countenance, the appearance of the stranger was downright repulsive, and Monsieur de Lamotte could hardly repress a start of disagreeable surprise at the pitiful and sordid aspect of this diminutive person, who stood apart, looking overwhelmed by conscious inferiority. He was still more astonished when he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes almost repulsive, never otherwise than powerful, pageantry of that play, which has been perhaps more misjudged than any other of Shakespeare's,—all these spring from the Tale of Troy, not in the least as handed down by the ancients, but tricked and frounced as the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... the moment when the Vicomtesse entered her husband's room, where he was lying on the couch. He signed to her to close the door. The Marquis was the living image of his mother, except that her beautiful regular features became in his face bony and repulsive. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... bedroom, which must have impressed itself on her brain before the occurrence of the apparition, though she had not attended to it. Oddly enough, she now learnt for the first time that the house at which she was staying had the reputation of being haunted, and by the very same somewhat repulsive-looking mediaeval personage that had troubled her inter-somnolent moments. The case seems to me to be typical with respect to the genesis of ghosts, and of the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... preparatory—it is life that gives the finals, not the college. The education of the von Humboldt boys was the Natural Method—the method advocated by Rousseau—the education by play and work so combined that study never becomes irksome nor work repulsive. Rousseau said, "Make a task repugnant and the worker will forever quit it as soon as the pressure that holds him to it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... delay. One great authority told us the other day that the sole object of legislation on this subject should be to get together the best possible 658 members of Parliament. That to me would be a most repulsive idea if it were not that by its very vagueness it becomes inoperative. Who shall say what is best; or what characteristic constitutes excellence in a member of Parliament? If the gentleman means excellence in general wisdom, or in statecraft, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... refreshed, toward the middle of the next day, I instinctively returned to my first opinion. The appearance of the farmhouse presented itself to me under the same repulsive colors which the evening before had determined me to make my escape from it. Reason itself remained silent when reviewing all those coarse details, and was forced to recognize in them the indications of a low nature, or else the presence ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... now rented a small store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his dealings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the rough clothing and general appearance of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... to it, modified as it was, with a most inauspicious grin, which the scars of his visage made appear still more repulsive. "You want to know my name? My name is the Devil's Dick of Hellgarth, well known in Annandale for a gentle Johnstone. I follow the stout Laird of Wamphray, who rides with his kinsman the redoubted Lord of Johnstone, who is banded with the doughty Earl of Douglas; and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... himself to Malvern, where Dr. Wilson presides over one of the largest cold-water establishments in the kingdom. In those days there were some seventy patients in residence, but the new-comer was pleased to find that there was nothing repulsive in the appearance of any of his confreres,—a consideration of material importance, inasmuch as the patients breakfast, dine, and sup together. Nothing could have a more depressing effect upon any invalid, than to be constantly surrounded by a crowd ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... Philalethes.[582] Jacob Behmen first announced the three working properties of nature, which Newton stole, as described in the Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1782, p. 329. These laws are illustrated in the whizgig. There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion. The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue. I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, and Swedenborg[583] by Laplace,[584] ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... twenty-eight years of age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the chief ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... which reached to the skies. Another says that a very dense column of smoke took people up. Another tells of a tree which, when it fell, was sixty miles in length. Another tree is mentioned which formed a sort of ladder, but on different sections of it there were repulsive or stinging insects, through which few but the very courageous persevered in forcing their way. First there was a part swarming with cockroaches; then a place full of ants; then a section covered with large venomous ants; beyond that again was a part of the tree overspread with ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... and greed from her mouth. Nothing but the wise woman could do that—and not even she, without the aid of the princess herself. So the shepherdess thought what a poor substitute she had got for her own lovely Agnes—who was in fact equally repulsive, only in a way to which she had got used; for the selfishness in her love had blinded her to the thin pinched nose and the mean self-satisfied mouth. It was well for the princess, though, sad as it is to say, that the shepherdess did not take to her, for then she would ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... did not object to speaking for the Administration. To him Stevens' idea of subjecting the South to the discipline and tutelage of Congress was repulsive, and his ringing voice filled the spacious hall of the House with clear-cut sentences. He denied that the Southern States had ever been out of the Union. "If they were," he asked, "how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... with another and more indignant 'Pah!' and I made my way out of her room (I think I felt my way out with my hands, although my eyes were open), almost suspecting that my voice had a repulsive sound, and that I was a ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... and all stale mulberry leaves removed, for the quality and quantity of the silk depend on the most scrupulous cleanliness. To preserve an even temperature, charcoal fires were lighted in the magnanerie, until the little black caterpillars, having transformed themselves into repulsive flabby white worms, these worms became obsessed with the desire to increase the world's supply of silk, and to gratify them, twigs were placed in the trays for them to spin their cocoons on. The cocoons spun, they were all picked off, and baked in the public ovens of the town, in order to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... hands up to his red, crooked fingers, which were ornamented with silver and gold rings, set with forget-me-nots of turquoise. His red, fresh, impudent face belonged to those countenances which, as far as I have observed, are almost always repulsive to men, but, unfortunately, are often admired by women. Apparently trying to give an expression of contempt and of weariness to his rough features, he was forever closing his small, milky-gray eyes, knitting his brows, lowering the corners of his lips, yawning forcedly, ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev

... whole vast and varied race of Canidae from a few exceptional individuals and highly-cultivated breeds. But it may be retorted that neither are all men Shakespeares and St. Augustines. The credit is so much the greater to those of the species which have overcome the disadvantages of a low and repulsive origin. None the less, however, will a strict veracity of mind and speech be careful not to generalize too sweepingly from a few particulars, and also not to make too indiscriminate and imperious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... hid in the trees which we had planted on the bare prairie thirty years before. As we stood in the yard I spoke of the silver wedding which took place there. The yard was attractive but the house (infested by the family of a poor renter) was repulsive. The upstairs chamber in which I had slept for so many years presented a filthy clutter of chicken feathers, cast-off furniture and musty clothing. Our ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... everything that was good and beautiful in such a way that it dwindled almost to nothing, but anything that was bad and ugly stood out very clearly and looked much worse. The most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best people looked repulsive or seemed to stand on their heads with no bodies; their faces were so changed that they could not be recognised, and if anyone had a freckle you might be sure it would be spread ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... agent of the United States in France, who explained to him the state of affairs in America, and encouraged him in his project. Deane was but imperfectly acquainted with the French language, and of manners somewhat repulsive. A less enthusiastic temper than that of Lafayette might, perhaps, have been chilled by the reception that he met with from Deane. He had, as yet, not been acknowledged in any public capacity, and was beset by the spies of the British ambassador. For ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... sword to the officer a naked savage, with hellish visage, made still more repulsive by the fact that half his head was shaved and the other half adorned with feathers, rushed at Allen and placed his ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... reminds me that never, in all these years of boyhood grown ripe, has duty come to me in as repulsive a form as now, I tell you, shocked as you may feel when you read the words, that I would rather put a bullet through my head than meet Evelyn Howard at this time! Why couldn't she stay in England? And what cursed folly induced my parents to thus bind me for life ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... was, to lean well out of the window if he wished to see it. A little way off were hundreds of soldiers, walking or squatting on the ground, and on the wall of the King's house and smaller trees the fat and repulsive eunuchs had perched themselves in order to watch the foreigner's doings. All of a sudden there was a piercing squeak and a quick change of scene. Every one standing fell flat on his chest, the soldiers to a man hid their faces in their hands on the ground, and the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... wagon seat to the ground. As he did so he noted a look of satisfaction gleam upon the man's dirty face, and he saw the fellow wave his hand toward the shanty's one window. He turned swiftly in the direction, and was in time to see two equally repulsive heads dodge aside ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... of predestination, in what the enemies of that scriptural doctrine consider its most repulsive form, being, like Samuel Rutherford, and David Dickson, the author of Therapeutica Sacia, and many other eminent divines of that time, a supralapsarian, he was far from exacting in others a rigid conformity to his particular opinions. It is impossible not to admire the Christian spirit that dictated ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... and very handsome; on the other hand, some of the historians of the day, to disprove the possibility of any guilty attachment, say that he was rather old and ugly. We may ourselves, perhaps, safely infer, that unless there were something specially repulsive in his appearance and manner, such a heart as Mary's, repelled so roughly from the one whom it was her duty to love, could not well have resisted the temptation to seek a retreat and a refuge in the kind devotedness of such ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... become highly unfavorable to him. The name of his deceased relative, Critias, was generally abhorred, and he had no powerful partisans among the popular leaders. With such disadvantages, with anti-democratical sentiments, and with a thin voice, we cannot wonder that Plato soon found public life repulsive, though he admits the remarkable moderation displayed by the restored Demos. His repugnance was aggravated to the highest pitch of grief and indignation by the trial and condemnation of Socrates (399 B.C.) four years after the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... reality as a penance for disobedience, all men, with these two exceptions, had suffered death, and been exiled to the gloomy caverns of Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to free men from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served a good purpose in keeping men's minds directed toward holiness, preparing them, as a schoolmaster would prepare his pupils, to receive the vitalizing truths of Christ. Now, at last, the Messiah or Christ had ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... often wish my wife would cease to love me so that we might separate. But she would be heart-broken at the suggestion and I feel driven to attempt to relieve my feelings even in a way that has previously seemed repulsive to me,—I ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... broad Scotch, from which he seemed to derive the most ludicrous enjoyment. Mrs. Waddel had two daughters, to whom nature had been less bountiful than even to herself. Tall, awkward, shapeless dawdles, whose unlovely youth was more repulsive than the mother's full-blown, homely age,—with them the old lady's innocent obliquity of vision had degenerated into a downright squint, and the redness round the rims of their large, fishy-looking, light eyes, gave the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... lamp on the floor, she coolly undid the collar of the sleeping man, and I saw a stud, the counterpart of the one on the dressing-table, fall on the bare boards with a sharp tap, and disappear in the surrounding darkness. Then the woman felt the edge of the knife with her repulsive thumb, and calmly cut the helpless man's throat. I screamed—and the murderess and her victim instantly vanished—and I realized I was alone in the room and very much awake. Whether all that had occurred was ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... afraid not. You see, when stripped of all unnecessary language, the repulsive fact is just this: we are living here on money that was unlawfully abstracted from the Weyland estate. No matter what the law may say, we know that this money morally belongs to its original owners. Now I ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... of the tumble-down shacks near the sea we found the Sultana, Inchy Jamela, mother of the present Sultan, who had preceded her son to Sulu on a little visit. She was a most repulsive old hag, blear-eyed and skinny with blackened teeth, from which the thin lips curled away in a chronic snarl, but she rose on her elbow from the couch where she was reclining, and shook hands in good American ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... examine the peculiarly Teuton ways of trade competition in their everyday guise, and without the glamour of political ideals to distract our attention, we are confronted with phenomena of a repulsive character. For the German's keen practical sense, his sustained concentration of effort on the furtherance of material interests, and his scorn of ethical restraints render him a formidable competitor in pacific pursuits and a dangerous ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... conqueror, and gorge upon that which is already overthrown. In the succeeding stanza, 29, two other epithetal similes are bestowed upon the monsters—they become 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects.' All these repulsive images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully obtuse or malignant mind, such as Shelley accounted the Quarterly reviewer of ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... confidence in him? The conduct of the disciples under the circumstances, through all the scenes of their after lives, proves their undivided and earnest honesty. The cause they had espoused was, if we deny its truth, to the last degree repulsive in itself and in its concomitants, and they were surrounded with allurements to desert it. Yet how unyielding, wonderful, was their disinterested devotedness to it, without exception! Not one, overcome by terror or bowed by strong anguish, shrank from his self imposed task and cried out, "I confess!" ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... de Montalembert, was a "mere Jesuit," the Belgian police at that moment was a compound of the Russian and Austrian police. I have read strange confidential letters of this Baron Hody. In action and in style there is nothing more cynical and more repulsive than the Jesuit police, when they unveil their secret treasures. These are the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... glad to get away from the crowd of enthusiastic admirers who wanted to lift Frank and Jerry on their shoulders, and carry them around town in triumph, something that felt repulsive to the lads. ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... (although they most earnestly, in the name of their prince, requested to be heard), but burst forth into invectives and denunciations of Illyricus and others, and finally also declaimed against the prince himself and his delegates, vociferating that Illyricus secretly entertained many repulsive errors, etc." On February 27, Melanchthon delivered his answer to the delegates. When these urged him to give a more favorable reply, he again interrupted them, exclaiming: "Oppress me, if you so desire; such is the lot of the peaceful.... I commend myself to God." After Melanchthon ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... many years, if not for generations. Cloth is a very durable material, and will outlast some of the leathers, but any wetting destroys its beauty, and all colors but the darkest soon become soiled and repulsive, if in constant use. In most libraries, I hold that every cloth-bound book which is read, must sooner or later come to have a stout leather jacket. It may go for years, especially if the book is well sewed, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... a part almost as prominent as that which is his in the Persian original. It was the introduction of this repulsive trait (e.g. 82) that gave to Heine the opportunity for the savage, scathing onslaught on Platen in the well known passage ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... her little sister by the hand, so gracious and modest in her mien, so sunny and affectionate, so obviously wholesome and high-principled—is she not a walking testimonial to the system? Yet to us the system is not the less repulsive in itself. Its results may be what you please, but its practice were impossible. We are too tender, too sentimental. We have not the nerve to do our duty to children, nor can we bear to think of any one else doing it. To children we can do nothing but 'spoil' them, nothing but bless their hearts ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... the lamp in the niche, she hastily examined the countenance of the nun; but its expression was cold—repulsive—stern: and Flora knew that it was useless to seek to make a ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... tried to smile his appreciation, but the effort resulted in a leer so repulsive that the girl looked dismayed. "You ought to have ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... daughter leisurely followed. As they walked they disturbed hosts of grasshoppers, that leaped with a whirring flutter of wings from the bushes and fled before them. This amused Zuleika, but she could not repress a cry of affright as now and then a green, repulsive looking lizard emerged from under the loose stones beneath her very feet and shot hastily away in search of a more secure hiding-place. Occasionally, too, they saw wild goats that pricked up their ears and stared at them with wide open ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... Robot in a Time-traveling cage! We tried to fathom it. And why had she been captured? Had she some enemy? She could only think of a fellow called Tugh. He was a hideously repulsive cripple who had dared make love to her and had threatened vengeance against her ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... to tell you. Everyone who saw her at the police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... not because he ever wanted her money now that Estcourt had been restored to its old splendour and set going again for their boy, but because meanness about money in a woman was something he could not comprehend—something repulsive, unfeminine, contrary to her nature as he had always understood it. He left off making the least suggestion about Anna's education or the household arrangements; everything that was done was done of Susie's own accord; and he spent more and more time in Devonshire, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... the reins to their imagination, and be guided altogether by chance, or by those whimsical impressions which take possession of the mind, and to which we give way as if to involuntary impulses. There was something so singularly repulsive in the hard features of the Scotch trader, that I could not resolve to put myself into his hands without transgressing every caution which could be derived from the rules of physiognomy; while, at the same ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... "Dammit, what a repulsive object I look!" he groaned. "And yet, what matter? Yes—it's just as well she should have seen me at my very worst! And yet—these cursed bristles! I tell ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... difficult and troublesome. The manners too of these easy people multiplied embarrassments, of a particular kind, which it required no ordinary authority and self-denial to controul. In one instance, however, it is said, the presence of an Otaheitan Venus, in any thing else than a repulsive attitude, had the effect of expediting the necessary work. Both sailors and soldiers, it seems, pressed towards the hatch-way, where she had planted herself in all the revealed attraction of native beauty; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... degrees of intensity, according to the constitutions of the parties affected. It may be highly attractive, it may be weakly so; it may be neutralized, it may be weakly antagonistic; it may be violently repulsive in ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... himself a little and looked down at Smaltz. As he stared at the smudged, bleeding face and into the yellow-brown eyes with their dilated pupils, the rage in his own gave place to a kind of intense curiosity, the scrutiny one gives to a repulsive and venomous insect or reptile he has captured. He was trying to impress upon his own mind the incredible fact that this human being, lying helpless beneath him, watching him with questioning fear, had ruined him without the least personal malice—had robbed ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart



Words linked to "Repulsive" :   offensive, physics, repulsive force, natural philosophy, repel, repugnant, abhorrent, repulsiveness, repulsion, hideous, ugly, attractive



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