"Shocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not shame; about such a trifling matter {to be} almost {flying} the country![44] 'Tis shocking to be mentioned; I pray the Gods may ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... must be roasted, so that there shall be nothing between. We take it so when we receive it straight from the fire of divine charity. And we ought to be girt with the girdle of conscience, for it would be very shocking that one should advance to so great cleanliness and purity with mind or body unclean. We ought to stand upright, that is, our heart and mind should be wholly faithful and turned toward God; with the staff of the most holy ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... any more shocking to reason than a God who punishes and rewards men's actions? Man, according to your views, is he free or not? In either case your God, if He has the shadow of justice, can neither punish him nor reward him. If man is free, it is God who made him free to act ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... memory will put a farm-hand or a sheep-herder through if he can read and write; he doesn't have to have a High School education." She inquired jocularly, appearing to find enjoyment in shocking him: "You've seen my hated rival, haven't you—Lamb, the new M.D. that pulled in here the other day? His wife looks like a horse with a straw bonnet on and he ought to be jailed on sight if there's anything in Lombroso's theories. Have you ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... there remained only the retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been lower than she had believed, whose exorbitant claims for himself had even blinded his scrupulous care for his own character, and made him defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honor. As for the property which was the sign of that broken tie, she would have been glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune which had been settled on her, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... occupants of the other hospitals already on their way. These men were all either sick or wounded, and were making their way with the greatest difficulty, most of them in silence, but there was an occasional one whose tongue gave expression to every possible mishap in outbursts of the most shocking profanity. There were enough of these to ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Nimrod. Instead I saw the outline of a Grizzly feeding quietly on the hillside. It was very lonely and gruesome. Under other circumstances I certainly would have departed quickly the way I came, but now I must find Nimrod. It was growing dark, and the bear looked a shocking size, as big as a whale. Dear me, perhaps Nimrod was inside—Jonah style. Just then I heard a ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Johnny had stood sullenly in his place, not moving to look out the windows, ostentatiously ignoring everything and everybody. And nobody paid attention! It was not a matter to offend an adult, but it was very shocking indeed to a rich man's son who had been able to make a career of staying emotionally ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as though you expected me to fly away with the tea-table and all the good things upon it,' he remarked, as he glanced with a well-satisfied and complacent look at the said tea-table; and added, 'I assure you that I don't mean to do anything so shocking, but shall content myself with a moderate share of the excellent provisions with ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... Am., Vol. 777. No. 807. Lyons to Russell, Dec. 31, 1861. But he transmitted a few days later, a "shocking prayer" in the Senate on December 30, by the Rev. Dr. Sutherland, which showed a bitter feeling. "O Thou, just Ruler of the world ... we ask help of Thee for our rulers and our people, that we may patiently, resolutely, and with one heart abide our time; for it is indeed a day ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... They found Dolores industriously shocking her mother by a persistent heckling of Lord James, who was smiling at her quips and sallies and twirling his little blond mustache as if he ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... state in which she had been living with her aunt returned forcibly to her mind. The various articles of furniture, the red silk handkerchiefs dabbed behind pendent plates, the musical elephants on the mantle-piece, the imitation Eastern antimacassars, the shocking fate, in the way of nailed and glued pictorial ornamentation, that had overtaken the back of the cottage piano—indeed, all the various objects of luxury and vertu with which Mrs. Alwynn had surrounded herself, seemed to recall to Ruth, as the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... charity," she repeated. Her attack rapidly veered. "Howat," she asked, "do you really dislike Jimmy?" Certainly, he asserted, he—he disapproved of him ... altogether. A headstrong young donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life. He would have to make the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself. "It is terrific," she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands. "Perhaps something can still be done," she said, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Lexicographer"—tutelary deity of my adopted habitat—has handed down to shuddering posterity a definition of the act of eating which might have been framed by a dyspeptic ghoul. "Eat: to devour with the mouth." It is a shocking view to take of so genial a function: cynical, indelicate, and finally unforgivable by reason of its very accuracy. For, after all, that is what eating amounts to, if one must needs express it with such crude brutality. But if "the ingestion ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... she answered. "We're all terribly tired of it. Tanya's given up going to the English hospital now, and is just meaning to be as gay as she can be; and Zinaida Fyodorovna had just come back from her Otriad on the Galician front, and she says it's shocking there now—no food or dancing or anything. Why doesn't ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... fell in love with her,—she, scarcely eighteen, and to have had this shocking experience! I don't like to tell you how much these ladies have hinted about her, but enough to make me feel as if I were reading the "Mysteries of Udolpho," instead of hearing of a live woman, out of a book, and belonging to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... still early in the morning, and all Naples knew that Count Bosio Macomer had committed suicide on the preceding evening. Every morning newspaper had a paragraph about the shocking tragedy, but few ventured to guess at any reason for the deed. It was merely stated that Count Bosio's servant had been alarmed by the report of a pistol about nine o'clock in the evening, and on finding the door of his master's room locked had broken in, suspecting some terrible accident. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... she tell?' said Mr. Aram; 'poor simple thing, she knows nothing.' With that, Houseman said, says he: 'If she tells that I am here, it will be enough; but however [with a shocking oath], we'll take an opportunity ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... line refers to Roger Bacon. "There is a tradition that the study of Friar Bacon, built on an arch over the bridge, will fall when a man greater than Bacon shall pass under it. To prevent so shocking an accident, it was pulled down many years since." We shall meet with a similar legend in another university city. Many persons have been shy of these localities, who were in no danger whatever of meeting the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... customs of the time appear especially shocking. The brutal gladiatorial games [29] were a passion with every one, from the emperor to his lowest subject. Infanticide was a general practice. Marriage grew to be a mere civil contract, easily made and easily broken. Common ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... forgotten, then!" said Franklin impetuously. "This is at least not the first time we have met." In any ordinary duel of small talk this had not been so bad an attack, yet now the results were something which neither could have foreseen. To the mind of the girl the words were shocking, rude, brutal. They brought up again the whole scene of the battlefield. They recalled a music which was indeed not forgotten—the music of that procession which walked across the heart of Louisburg on that far-off fatal day. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... do not relieve the shocking picture of ruin spread out below the mountain, but by contrast making it more striking. That part of the town to the south where the flood tore the narrow path there used to be a separate village which was called Kernville. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... is often obvious, but the remedies are doubtful. The accumulation of wealth in a few hands, generally by swindling, is shocking, but if it were distributed to-morrow we should gain nothing. The working man objects to the millionaire, but would gladly become a millionaire himself, even if his million could be piled up in no other way than by sweating thousands of ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... such, remembering that we may be reading the first characteristic work of a new literary era. Let us give over being shocked. Those who were shocked by Byron, the apostle of expansiveness, merely encouraged him to be more shocking. Nor is it any use to sit upon the hydrant of this new expansiveness. If a youth desires to tell the world what has happened to him, he must be allowed to do so, provided he has skill and power enough to make us listen. And these juniors have power even when skill has not yet been ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... make them better. He said that all evil was the result of men hating one another. He did not hate men, but predatory institutions, false fatherlands, and all slave-drivers. They hanged him for that hatred, but what was more shocking was to find that the people whom he loved and served were ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... been out in the rain, Miss Crofton,' she answered in a vexed impatient tone. 'Is that so very shocking to your sober ideas of propriety? I could not endure the house to-night. One has feverish fancies sometimes—at least I have; and I preferred being out in the rain to not ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... rather in the contrary direction. They cared too little what was thought of them to be at the pains of shocking one's delicacy intentionally; but they were by no means displeased to be thought "rough." It made them laugh; it was a tribute to their stout-heartedness. Nor was there anything necessarily braggart ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... was obvious, yet almost shocking, and Julian could not question her good faith. She had certainly not known. He longed to find out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment of her, but she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really loathed and detested ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... How shocking, a sensitive parvenu will say, to sit down in a common kitchen, and drink a glass of whiskey and water with peasants! It puts me in mind of a very fine young lady, whose grandfather had been a butcher, and her father none of the richest; who, being met in the streets ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... had to stay to the very end, which was not bitter, in order to discover that it was quite respectable. That is where the English playwright always seems to improve upon the French. In London, a heroine may be volatile, and saucy, and unconventional, and iconoclastic, and spicy, and shocking, and quite horrible, but in the last act the adapter allows you to discover that she is really a very good, nice, whole-hearted woman; that she loves her husband in a faithful, wifely way, and that she will live happily ever afterward, a perfect picture of all the domestic graces. The curse has gone! ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... purposely avoided riding close to them, knowing that the shocking sight of men who have met with a violent death is apt to shake the nerves of any one unaccustomed to such a sight, however ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... trifling the subject, the more he has to say.'—'Yes,' cried Olivia, 'he is well enough for a man; but for my part, I don't much like him, he is so extremely impudent and familiar; but on the guitar he is shocking.' These two last speeches I interpreted by contraries. I found by this, that Sophia internally despised, as much as Olivia secretly admired him.—'Whatever may be your opinions of him, my children,' ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... last Sunday, by reading Tam O'Shanter aloud to her. That autumnal vestal proclaimed that it was anything but suitable literature for an old philanderer who still saw fit to live alone. It showed, she averred, a shocking lack of respect for women-folk and should be taken ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... too strong, and the Democrats nominated Wade Hampton. They supported him with little scruple as to means,—with free use of intimidation and proscription, with frequent threats and often the reality of violence. There was a shocking massacre at Hamburg. Governor Chamberlain called on the President for aid, and a thousand troops were sent into the State. When the election came, there was claimed a majority for Chamberlain and for the Republican Presidential ticket. The claim was instantly and fiercely challenged by Hampton's ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... are but dark news from the Havannah; the Gazette, who would not fib for the world, says, we have lost but four officers; the World, who is not quite so scrupulous, says, our loss is heavy. But whit shocking notice to those who have Harry Conways there! The Gazette breaks off with saying, that they were to storm the next day! Upon the whole, it is regarded as a preparative to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... It seemed almost shocking that any one could even fancy she might be married, she who was just out of the cloister, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Doctor, to go out walking Is at all times honor and gain enough; But to trust myself here alone would be shocking, For I am a foe to all that is rough. Fiddling and bowling and screams and laughter To me are the hatefullest noises on earth; They yell as if Satan himself were after, And call it music and call ...
— Faust • Goethe
... gentle, sincere old friend. All these illnesses and deaths are the more striking I think in a bustling capital city, than they would be in the country surrounded by one's family. There is something shocking in seeing the bustling, struggling crowd who care nothing for one another dead or alive: and they may say, so much the better, we are spared unavailing thought and anguish, and yet I would rather have the thought and even the anguish—for without pain there is no pleasure for the ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... glance in the direction of the murmur and went on. "Yes. That is, war—calamity. But the means by which she obtained the power to work this havoc on our southern frontier seem to me, who have seen her and spoken to her, still more shocking. That particular thing left on my mind a dreadful amazement which the further experience of life, of more than fifty years, has done nothing to diminish." He looked round as if to make sure of our attention, and, in a changed voice: "I am, as you know, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... I found the two robbers were gone. The poet and his wife lay dead on the pavement. It was a shocking sight. The two children had vanished—whither I could not tell. And I knew, now, why it was that the fleeing persons I encountered slipped along so furtively and with such white faces. In the midst of ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... give offence, but a man cannot write a novel in autobiographical form from the personality of a woman without imparting the sense of something unwholesome. One feels this true even in the work of such a master as Tolstoy, whose Katia is a case in point. Perhaps a woman may play Hamlet with a less shocking effect than a man may play Desdemona, but all the same she must not play Hamlet at all. That sublime ideal is the property of the human imagination, and may not be profaned by a talent enamoured of the impossible. No harm could be done by the broadest burlesque, the most ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod, and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. The strife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife, Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... ran through the noble girl; the tears stood in her eyes. M. d'Esgrignon, the father of the present Marquis, had married a second wife, the daughter of a farmer of taxes ennobled by Louis XIV. It was a shocking mesalliance in the eyes of his family, but fortunately of no importance, since a daughter was the one child of the marriage. Armande knew this. Kind as her brother had always been, he looked on her as a stranger in blood. And this speech of his ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the opportunity of a spare half-hour to slip up and rest herself by reading it in the drawer. Unluckily, however, she had fallen asleep, and when I got the drawer out, there she lay, and I actually heard her snore. A shocking thing this education, ma'am, you see, and teaching people to read. All the cooks in the ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... could be silent before the judges—yes. Silent in all confidence now, to the very last; but the nurse, her mouthpiece, had already put Nilus, the keenest and most important member of the court, in possession of the evidence which spoke for her and against him. It was shocking, disgraceful! Base and deliberately malicious treachery. But the end was not yet: he still was free to act and to ward off the spiteful stroke by a counterthrust. How it should be dealt was clear from Perpetua's statement; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... blood of all of us. I have it from my father, and it has made me the poorest peer in England. Those fair ladies whom you see before you are not exempt. My poor brother Will is a martyr to it; and what I, for my part, win on one day, I lose on the next. 'Tis shocking, positively, the rage for play in England. All my poor cousin's bank-notes parted company from me within twenty-four hours after I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... government treated the Czech nation with special brutality. The persecutions in Bohemia were opposed not only to the liberal ideas of Czechs, but especially to their national feelings. The anxiety of the censor for the safety of the monarchy often bordered on absurdity. The word 'shocking' was deleted from a play, for instance, because it was English. Henry IV. was not allowed to be played 'until we reach a settlement with England,' and it was only when it was reported by the Vienna and Berlin papers that ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... invented the most horrible and old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too apt to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat, to say nothing of the kettle, by our shocking [far ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... before us. The lady was washing and the man was playing with a child on the porch. The little thing was trying to walk, the man would swear terribly at it—not in an angry way, but in a sort of careless, blasphemous style that was terribly shocking. I thought of the child being reared in the midst of such bad language and reflected on the kind of people we were meeting in this far away place. They seemed more wicked and profane the farther west we walked. I had always lived in a more moral and temperate atmosphere, and I was learning ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... does hurt—my goodness! she is game!" Cora thought, and aloud she went on, "Cecilia isn't a bad sort—a shocking snob, as all of us are who are not the real thing and want to be—like your own common pushers over here. We used to laugh at her awfully when she first came from Pittsburgh and tried to cut in before she married my cousin. Poor old Vin! He was crazy ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... of safety. But admitting the worst charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the restraints of self-control and the law are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... girl lived she might never have enjoyed an hour of reason. With that dethroned, what could death be but a welcome messenger. And yet the manner of the mad girl's taking off was shocking ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... quitted the private office, looking rather dumfounded into each other's blank faces, and in less than half an hour afterward every employee in the vast dry goods establishment heard the shocking news, that Mr. Lester Armstrong, whom they all believed well-nigh perfect, was terribly intoxicated up in his private office, but they were to be still more astounded ere the eventful ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... official reasons for the disproportionately small number of Negroes in some services, especially among the noncommissioned officers and in the officer corps. Chairman Gesell called the dearth of black officers a "shocking condition."[21-29] His group was particularly concerned with the absence of black officers on promotion boards and the possibility of unfairness in the promotion process where photos and racial and religious ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... shocking fright, for I thought at first sight he was living, and had got in unknown to me to surprise me. I felt my heart jump with fright, and I said, 'Oh!' but before I had hardly finished the exclamation, his figure was fading way, and, horrible to relate, it faded in such a way that the flesh ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... prayers the Roman Breviary contains a great variety of examples, some exceeding others very much in their apparent forgetfulness and disregard of the merits of the only Saviour, and consequently far more shocking to the reason and affections of us who hold it a point of conscience to make the merits of Christ alone, all in all, exclusive of any other to be joined with them, the only ground ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... of mind is particularly shocking to all those who live in a state of illusion, and there is probably no aspect of French character which is more difficult for the average Englishman to appreciate than this tendency towards sceptical dissection of the motives of conduct. Yet it is quite certain that it is ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in through the door, had been struck on the forehead by the glass, which had cut a deep gash, and stunned her into insensibility. The blood flowed instantly from the wound, and covered her face, which presented a shocking appearance. As I lifted her from the floor, upon which she had fallen, Morgan, into whose very soul the piercing cry of his child had penetrated, stood by my side, and grappled his arms around her insensible ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... convicted and executed, and his friends were convicted and executed with him, because, had they remained in the Convention, the Dictatorship, through their opposition, would have lost its energy. Also the form of the conviction was shocking in the extreme. The defence of these twenty-one men was, practically, suppressed, and the jury were directed to bring in a verdict of guilty. Still the prosecutions of the Girondists stopped here. When they refrained ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... the same time hideously contorted his face into a grotesque idiocy of expression, pursing his lips so extremely, and setting his brows so awry, that his other features were cartooned out of all familiar likeness, effecting an alteration as shocking to behold, in a man of his severe cast of countenance, as was his falsetto mimicry to hear. She rose in a kind of terror, perceiving that this contortion was produced in burlesque of her own expression, and, as he pressed nearer her, stepped back, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... phlegmatic pit in shiny shirt-fronts would rise and shout its approval at our opening? And to what reckless license might not the gallery yield? I fancied a burst of somersaults in the upper gloom, and tremendous handsprings—both men and women—down the sharp-pitched aisle. It would be shocking—this giddy flash of lingerie—except that our broader times now give it countenance. Peeping Tom, late of Coventry, in these more generous days need no longer sit like a sneak at his private shutter. He has only to travel to the beach where a hundred Godivas crowd the sands. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground; profaning the subject and shocking at once good taste and good sense? A little farther on, the eye rests on the divine Madre di Dio of Correggio: what beauty, what sweetness, what maternal love, and humble adoration are blended in the look and attitude with which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... n. One who makes laws for a state: vide dictionary) believing at last that his face must in fact be swollen, since several other travellers, who were in the plot, also spoke to him of his shocking appearance, got up from the table and went out to the barroom to consult the looking glass, such luxuries not being placed in the chambers. But there was no glass there. After some time he found the landlady, and she told ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... women trudging past; nor did they seem to notice him. The niceties of convention are quickly dulled by fatigue, and it is only the easefulness of modern life that makes the coarser little realities of human nature seem shocking. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... way of answer: "I have wondered, when you make Such a shocking, senseless clatter, Whether you ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... of this book were already in a highly polished state. They combined a limitless freedom of proposal with a smooth urbanity of manner, a tacit denial that the thoughts of one intelligent being could possibly be shocking to another. Upon this the doctor was very insistent. Conduct, he held, could never be sufficiently discreet, thought could never be sufficiently free. As a citizen, one had to treat a law or an institution as a thing as rigidly right as a natural law. That the social well-being demands. But as ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... throughout the day, Now a fitful gust springs over the bay, My wandering thoughts no longer stray, I'll fix my overcoat buttons; Secure my old hat as best I may (And a shocking bad one it is, by the way), Blow a denser cloud from my stunted clay, And then, friend BELL, as the Frenchmen say, We'll "go back again ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the shocking cold you'll catch If fog and slush hold sway; Nor yet the tumbles you must bear If frost should win the day; Nor sleepless nights—they're sure to come— When "waits" attune their lay; Nor pantomimes, whose dreariness ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... dying state, and has suffered much from the want of provisions. I was much pleased with this instance of filial affection and care. Sometimes the aged and infirm are abandoned or destroyed; and however shocking it may be to those sentiments of tenderness and affection, which in civilized life we regard as inherent in our common nature, it is practised by savages in their hardships and extreme difficulty of procuring subsistence for the parties who suffer, without being considered ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... for anything save grumbling, and so the headship naturally devolved upon Esther, whom her mother's death left a woman getting on for eight. The commencement of her reign coincided with a sad bisection of territory. Shocking as it may be to better regulated minds, these seven people lived in one room. Moses and the two boys slept in one bed and the grandmother and the three girls in another. Esther had to sleep with her head on a supplementary pillow at the foot of the bed. But there can ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "Shocking!" I fancy I hear Katie exclaim. "I breakfast at least two hours earlier. How can you bear to lose so much ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... immediately, and the law, the great rule of right, in every county in the province, executed. The stopping the courts of justice is a grievance which this House must inquire into. Justice must be fully administered through the province, by which the shocking effects which your Excellency apprehended from the people's non-compliance with the Stamp Act will ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... his good intentions. He could not understand the audacity of this young woman. He could not be blind to the evidence of these familiarities on the part of the mulatto whom he had not yet seen. He remembered those, no less shocking, of the Caribbean and the buccaneer. He believed himself to be the dupe of a frightfully depraved creature; he believed that Monmouth, her husband, no longer existed or no longer lived at Devil's Cliff; and if Angela had co-operated with himself (Croustillac) ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... as to the fate of my parents proved too true; for soon after I left them they were killed and scalped, together with Robert, Matthew, Betsey, and the woman and her two children, and mangled in the most shocking manner. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... was in England, not yet come to an agreement with the French King, nor likely to it if what we heard was true, yea, or a tenth part of it. God forbid that I should write what these ears heard; but this I will say. It was I who told the shocking tale to my lord Richard, adding also this hint, that his former friend was involved in it, Eudo Count of Saint-Pol. If you will believe me, not the tale of iniquity moved him; but he received it with shut mouth, and eyes fixed ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... nobody means anything! Nobody is anything but sorry for me: you, Billy, Elinor, the woman who expected us at dinner to-night, the servants at the club!" she said hotly. "Nobody blames me, and yet every one wonders how it happens! Nobody thinks it anything but a little amusing, a little shocking. I am to write the notes, and make the excuses, and be ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... his country, and as, since the dry weather had set in, a very large and dangerous bank had formed in the river seven or eight leagues below me, he offered me one or two thousand workmen to assist in making a passage for my boats. The shocking treachery used by the Moors being well known to me, I refused to accept his offers except on his furnishing me with hostages for his good faith. He first proposed himself, but with such a strong escort that it was not difficult ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... scornful face for a moment, Gerfaut glanced at his coarse blouse, his leggings, and muddy boots. His usual dainty ways made the details of this costume yet more shocking to him, and he exaggerated this little disaster. He felt degraded and almost ridiculous. The thought took away for a moment his presence of mind; he began mechanically to twirl his hat in his hands, exactly as if he had been Pere Rousselet himself. But instead of being hurtful to him, this ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... to reveal her life in a series of confidences of such shocking content as to be worthy of a Lais or a Phryne. Doctor von Kammacher, she said, might be sorry for her if he wanted to, but nobody was to make a mistake about her. Everybody associating with her was to know exactly who she was. In this she betrayed ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Lancashire man loves. It was low ceiled; it looked somewhat dark. Its windows were stone-mullioned, and instead of great plate-glass windows it had small diamond-leaded lights. And so Paul was able to get it at a comparatively nominal rent, especially as the place was in shocking repair. In a few weeks, however, a transformation had been wrought. The building had been thoroughly overhauled, and by the wise expenditure of a comparatively small amount of money, modern conveniences had been installed. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... out to me from England, to make a convert of me, I suppose. The arguments are strong, drawn from the Bible itself; and by showing that a time will come when every intelligent creature shall be supremely happy, and eternally so, it expunges that shocking doctrine, that sin and misery will for ever exist under the government of God, Whose highest attribute is love and goodness. To my present apprehension, it would be a most desirable thing, could it be proved that, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... funeral service in progress, there arrived and was set upon the coffin, in the view of all, that triumph of the florist's art, a shield of white roses, with this legend written across it in red immortelles: "Admit within fire lines only." It was shocking, but irresistible. It brought down even ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... she, with a shocked expression and voice subdued almost to a whisper, 'what do you think of these shocking reports about Mrs. Graham?—can you encourage ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... mustachios, and yellow face. He looks very odd, Clive thinks, very odd and very kind, and he looks like a gentleman, every inch of him:—not like Martin's father, who came to see his son lately in high-lows, and a shocking bad hat, and actually flung coppers amongst the boys for a scramble. He bursts out a-laughing at the exquisitely ludicrous idea of a gentleman of his fashion scrambling ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the dignity as well as the life of Marie Antoinette, the sister of the Austrian emperor—joined with a fear that other peoples might follow the lead of the French and overthrow monarchical institutions unless deterred by some world-shocking example, formed the mainspring of this atrocious procedure. Efforts were made in this country and in England to procure the release of the prisoner, but no governmental action was taken in that direction, the United States Congress ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... wish the rest of you would take Judith's room as a model. You may thank your lucky star, Sally May," she continued as Sally May joined them, "that Miss Watson hadn't time to inspect your room. It's in a shocking state. Run along now and have things ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... is there shocking and disgraceful? I see nothing shocking in the child," remarked ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... shocking to poor Jack, that he was ready to go mad. He ran to the window, and saw the two Giants coming along arm in arm. This window was right over the gates of ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... worse—it's even more horrible than that. He was expecting me. I—I of course knew nothing about it; I only knew about the garden-party at Lady Margaret. But he said I'd promised to come; he said all kinds of shocking, horrid things about my having dressed myself ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, how women could so far ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... assailed us; and though we used an additional pair of horses all the way from Vach, yet our travelling, which should have ended on Friday, was spun-out till Sunday. It is universally maintained that the Fair has visibly suffered by the shocking state of the roads; at all events, even in my eyes, the crowd of sellers and buyers is far beneath the description I used to get ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... features still retained something of a pleasing expression, and might have been termed beautiful, had it not been for that repulsive freshness of lip denoting the habitual dram-drinker; a freshness in her case rendered the more shocking from the almost livid hue of the rest of her complexion. She could not be more than twenty; and though want and other suffering had done the work of time, had wasted her frame, and robbed her cheek of its bloom and roundness, they ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the idea so shocking to Cecilia, so revolting,—so vulgar in the mode of expression, that the feeling at once gave her the strength necessary to go on with her task. She would not condescend to answer the accusation, but at once told her story in plain language. "I think, Sir ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... those who live opposite; he is part and parcel of the street view, and must make a part of the picture whenever it is painted, or else it wont be like. You cannot realise the idea of meeting him elsewhere; it would be shocking to your nerves to think of it: you would as soon think of seeing the Obelisk walking up Ludgate Hill, for instance, as of meeting him there—it could not be. Where he goes when he leaves his station, you have not the least notion. He is there ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... discussed in our letters. I do not think it irreverent to advert to the highest subjects at any time. That which is most profoundly serious to me, is always very near my thoughts—so much so that it mingles constantly with them and my words in a manner rather startling and shocking, I think, to people whose minds are parcelled out into distinct and detached divisions—pigeon-holes, as it were—for the sacred and profane, and whose seriousness never comes near their mirth. This is not at all the case with me, with whom they are apt to run into each ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to Fanny Burney.) December 16, '92. . . .. Everything that is most shocking may, I fear, be expected for the unfortunate King of France, his queen, and perhaps all that belong to him. M. d'Arblay said it would indeed scarce have been possible to hope that M. de Narbonne could have escaped ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Selenin, "our last talk has made a profound impression on me. You were right concerning Maslova. I looked carefully through the case, and see that shocking injustice has been done her. It could be remedied only by the Committee of Petitions before which you laid it. I managed to assist at the examination of the case, and I enclose herewith the copy of the mitigation of the sentence. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the world we discover that certain tribes of sentient beings prey upon certain other tribes; and this seems, on a cursory view, to be very shocking to the finer sensibilities of our nature; yet it is an arrangement which results in a larger amount of sentient enjoyment than could otherwise obtain among these lower denizens of our inexplicable world. The most vigorous—that which embodies within itself the greatest ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of toil and hardship he came again to Fort Crevecoeur. Anxiety for Tonty and his faithful companions had consumed him all the way. Yet he was unprepared for the shocking sight that met his eyes. The once populous town of the Illinois was now a valley of dry bones; the bodies of women and children strewed the plain, and the charred trophies of Illinois warriors ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... It is shocking that a man should live so, held of less account than the sheep which he rears; but it is admirable that this man should live as he does. The house, to call it so, was as clean as a dairy; the children were neat, washed and brushed; the girl was one for Herrick to have ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... There had been no jar, no report. The hammer had only clicked, I tell you, shocking me to the core. A missed cartridge? An empty chamber? Which? No matter. I should achieve for her, first; then, myself. I heard her gasp, they were very near, how they shouted, how the bullets and arrows ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... and indignation, he rebelled against Edward's harshness and distrust. He—who had brought him there—who ought to have known him better! Moreover, there was the crushing sense of the guilt of his brothers; guilt most horrible in its sacrilegious audacity, and doubly shocking to the feelings of a family where the grim sanctity of the first Simon de Montfort, and the enlightened devotion of the second, formed such a contrast to the savage outrage of him who now bore their name. Richard, as with bare feet and ashes whitening his dark locks ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intimate friend of mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground than it did upon a nearer view, when I took him up in my hand and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight. He said he could discover great holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colors, altogether disagreeable; although I must beg leave to ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... dumps: 'The Dean is dead: (Pray, what is trumps?) Then, Lord have mercy on his soul! (Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.) Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall: (I wish I knew what king to call.) Madam, your husband will attend The funeral of so good a friend.' 'No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight; And he's engaged to-morrow night: My Lady Club will take it ill, If he should fail her at quadrille. He loved the Dean—(I lead a heart)— But dearest friends, they say, must part. His time was come; he ran his race; We hope he's in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... sudden and very awful," said Mr Crawley. "Such deaths are always shocking. Not more so, perhaps, as regards the wife of a bishop, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... shocking name the next is—LYING LUCY! It is dreadful to think that any one should deserve to be so called, but this wicked little girl deserves it, for she has no sense of honour, and seldom speaks the truth. Even when she does say what is ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... Blake told him the story of the shocking treachery of Humpy Joe, together with the miserable undoing of the Flying Heart. "Why, those poor fellows are broken-hearted," she concluded. "Their despair over losing that talking-machine would be funny if it were not so tragic. I told them you would win it back for them. And you will, won't ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach |
