"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... convicts underwent, instead of having a penitential influence, only served to harden them in their iniquities; and while they frequently became perfectly callous to the infliction of punishment, they were debased to the incarnation of fiends, merely wanting in the opportunity to perpetrate the most atrocious ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... I laid down my halbert 'twas my duty to assist at the crowning consummation of that disastrous Tragedy. One of the Prime Traitors in the Scottish Risings had been, it is well known, the notorious Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, of Castle Downie, in Scotland, then come to be Eighty years old, and as atrocious an old Villain as ever lived, but so cunning that he cheated the Gallows for three quarters of a century, and died like a Gentleman, by the Axe, at last. He had been mixed up in every plot for the bringing back of King James ever since ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... navvies went doggedly digging on, despite atrocious weather. By May 1st, 1860, the track was sufficiently complete from Oswestry to Pool Quay to be opened for traffic to that point, and advertisements began to appear announcing "cheap trains" for excursionists to the "far-famed and commanding heights of Llanymynech Hills." ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... which Peter bent Russia to his will were base and atrocious; for, although one of the greatest men that have influenced the course of Christian history, he is undoubtedly the worst of them; but he was not working for himself; at Pultawa he told his troops that they ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... of witchcraft. Abominable, unquestionably, the evil was; but justice compels us to add that the remedy of relentless and ruthless persecution with which it was sought to remove the pest was a reign of abhorrent and atrocious cruelty. Into the question itself we dare not enter, lest we should be ourselves bewitched. We know that divination by supposed supernatural agency existed among the Hebrews, that magical incantations were practised among the Greeks and Romans, and that more modern witchcraft has been contemporaneous ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... youngsters do, while their mother is being eaten? Easily consoled, heedless of the atrocious scene, they climb on the conqueror's back and quietly take their places among the lawful family. The ogress raises no objection, accepts them as her own. She makes a meal off the mother ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... 'Moonlighters.' Would not 'martial law,' if applied to that particular spot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?" This language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the atrocious crime of taking a farm "boycotted" by the National League, shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... induced your Majesty to lay down your arms remain the same as ever. Our affairs are not looking better, nor is the requisition of Wesel of so great importance as to justify our involving Flanders in a new and more atrocious war than that which has so lately been suspended. The restitution is due to the tribunal of public faith. It is a great advantage when actions done for the sole end of justice are united to that of utility. Consider the great successes we have had. How well the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Orsini, Francesco Orsini, duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da Fermo were all men of arms, accustomed to intrigue and to bloodshed, and more than one of them were stained with crimes of the most atrocious treachery. Yet such were the arts of Cesare Borgia that in 1502 he managed to assemble them, apart from their troops, in the castle of Sinigaglia, where he had them strangled. Having now destroyed the chiefs of the opposition and enlisted their forces ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Mr. Badger sternly, "it appears that you have not only made an atrocious assault on my son, but lied deliberately about it. You shall have neither dinner nor supper, and tonight I will give you a flogging. Now, go back to ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, a life of atrocious misery commenced for him. A dependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was made a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... then to burn it and him together, to choke a freeman, as Skarphedinn says, like a fox in his earth, was quite against the free and open nature of the race; and though instances of such foul deeds occur besides those two great cases of Blundkettle and Njal, still they were always looked upon as atrocious crimes and punished accordingly. No wonder, therefore, then that Flosi, after the Change of Faith, when he makes up his mind to fire Njal's house, declares the deed to be one for which they would have to answer heavily before God, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... left by Baronof, believing itself in perfect safety, was attacked one night by great numbers of Kalushes, who entered the entrenchments without opposition, and murdered all they met there with circumstances of atrocious cruelty. A few Aleutians only, who happened to be out in their little baidars,[2] escaped by standing out to sea, and brought to Kodiack the news of the annihilation of ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS.—Our disapproval of Henry's unscrupulous conduct in compassing the ruin of the religious houses flames into hot indignation when we come to speak of his atrocious crimes against the lives and consciences of his subjects. The royal reformer persecuted alike Catholics and Protestants. Thus, on one occasion, three Catholics who denied that the king was the rightful Head of the Church, and three Protestants who disputed the doctrine of the real presence ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle." In language still more forcible does a Hindu poet denounce this basest of vices: "To cut off the teats of a cow;[18] to occasion a pregnant woman to miscarry; to injure a Brahman—are sins of the most aggravated nature; but more atrocious ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... inflexibility and integrity of those gentlemen were proof against all bribes, the generals foresaw the impending storm which threatened to break and overwhelm them. In this critical situation, they conceived one of the most atrocious plots on record. Its object was to create a disturbance, by which the town-house should be set on fire, and the documents which implicated them in the pillage should be consumed. They agreed to produce this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... we have seen, in the summer of 1793. The king of France had been put to death on the 21st of January in that year; and in less than a month afterwards the convention had declared war against England. The murder of the king, alike imprudent as atrocious, had in fact united the princes of Europe against the revolutionary cause; and within France itself a strong reaction took place. The people of Toulon, the great port and arsenal of France on the Mediterranean, partook these sentiments, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... under Visigothic rule these people had greatly prospered, but the leniency that had been shown to them was succeeded by atrocious persecution, when the Visigoths abandoned their Arianism and became orthodox. The most inhuman ordinances were issued against them—a law was enacted condemning them all to be slaves. It was not to be wondered at that, when the Saracen invasion took place, the Jews did whatever ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... deprecated because the crime of piracy is often attended with the murder of the crews, these robbers knowing if any survived their lurking places would be exposed and they be caught and punished. That this atrocious practice should be carried to such extent is cause of equal surprise and regret. It is presumed that it must be attributed to the relaxed and feeble state of the local governments, since it is not doubted, from the high character of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... equivalent. For the rest, what he was doing was perfectly justifiable in his eyes: if the couple had been caught within the territory of the Republic, Alessandro Stradella would have had to answer to the law for the atrocious crime of carrying off a Senator's niece and affianced bride who was a minor, and the law would not have been tender to the Sicilian; the least penalty he would have suffered would have been to be chained to an oar on a government galley, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... It was atrocious that Cheever should be permitted to prosper with this scandal unrebuked, unpunished, actually unsnubbed, accepting the worship of an angel like Charity Coe and repaying it with black treachery! To keep silent was to co-operate ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... General Hamilton, and all that portion of politicians over whom he had a controlling influence, opposed the election of Colonel Burr with an ardour bordering on fanaticism. The press teemed with libels of the most atrocious character. An event connected with this election has rendered it memorable in the history of our state and country. A letter, written by Dr. Charles D. Cooper, and published pending the election, ultimately led to the hostile and fatal meeting between General Hamilton and Colonel Burr. Immediately ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... mingle the poison, there is the earthly executioner at hand to transfer him to the still more dreadful sentence of the after-world! The same opinion which condemns the crime of murder here on earth, as the most atrocious that can be committed, follows him to that other tribunal; and all that his imagination has been accustomed to depict of the horrors of internal and eternal punishment, rushes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... who live at Batavia usually employ themselves in fishing, having very neat and shewy vessels, the sails of which are most ingeniously constructed of straw. These are a most wicked and profligate people, who often commit atrocious murders for very trifling gain. They profess the Mahomedan religion, but are so absolutely devoid of moral principle, that they even make a boast and merit of cheating Christians. Their last chief was publicly whipped and branded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... judgment-seat as a fresh relay of criminals entered, two of them with faces atrocious enough for any crime, and passed out of the courtyard of the Yamun through the "Gate of Righteousness," where the prisoners, attached to heavy stones, were dragging and clanking their chains, or lying in the shade ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... sisters;[97] that boar which, of enormous size, is roaming amid our fields, that boar I must strike." All the raging multitude rushes upon him alone; all collect together, and all follow him, now trembling, now uttering words less atrocious {than before}, now blaming himself, now confessing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... incursions, engendered a general feeling of resentment, that sought in some instances, to wreak itself on those who were guiltless of any participation in those bloody deeds. That vindictive spirit led to the perpetration of offences against humanity, not less atrocious than those which they were intended to requite; and which obliterated every discriminative feature between the perpetrators of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... victim's flesh. Anon he twists the knife in the fresh wound and you receive another horrible thrill, all the time wondering over the fate of the Lunar Pierrot and—hold on! Here's the first clew. If this new music is so distractingly atrocious what right has a listener to bother about Pierrot? What's Pierrot to him or he to Pierrot? Perhaps Schoenberg had caught his fish in the musical net he used, and what more did he want, or what more could his listeners expect?—for to be hooked or netted by the stronger volition ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... virtue of the construction of a certain clause in the Constitution by the Supreme Court, Congress has the power to pass a law for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Well, Sir, does this constitutional obligation authorize Congress to pass any law whatsoever on the subject, however atrocious and wicked? Had you voted for a law to prevent smuggling, in which you had authorized every tide-waiter to shoot any person suspected of having contraband goods in his possession, would it have been ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... buttons on the slenderest of threads never detached itself on my account. I have never had to restrain my humorous remarks in the slightest degree, but on the contrary have sometimes been driven into making the most atrocious jokes, and even puns, because it was evident something of the sort was expected from ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... spars; and were soon compelled to return by the coming-on of a dreadful hurricane. Of the whole crew, and of sixty passengers (chiefly English people returning from France), not one is saved. It is said that a very atrocious criminal was on board the Halcyon. We look with the utmost anxiety for the details of ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... between the Tinleys and the Poles; and when Mr. Pericles entirely gave up the former, the latter rewarded him by spreading abroad every possible kind interpretation of his atrocious bad manners. He was a Greek, of Parisian gilding, whose Parisian hat flew off at a moment's notice, and whose savage snarl was heard at the slightest vexation. His talk of renowned prime-donne by their Christian names, and the way that he would catalogue emperors, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... aboriginal deities as well as Krishna. Little is known of their religious teaching, if indeed they have anything worthy of the name, but in the latter half of the eighteenth century they distracted the kingdom of Assam with a series of rebellions which were suppressed with atrocious cruelty. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Mr. Gibney shouted to the helmsman. The schooner had hove to and when the Maggie also hove to some thirty yards to windward of her Mr. Gibney informed the Mexican, in atrocious Spanish well mixed with English, that if the latter so much as lifted his little finger he might expect to be sunk like a dog. "Down below, everybody but the helmsman, or I'll sweep your decks with another muzzle burst," ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... with emotions more easily imagined than described, the appearance of that remarkable work, which has awakened a world-wide sympathy on behalf of the suffering negro, and called forth a burst of honest indignation against the atrocious system of slavery, which, we trust, under the divine blessing, will, at no distant period, accomplish its entire abolition. We are not insensible to those extraordinary merits of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as a merely ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of Kintail, and sister of Hector Roy, with issue - three sons. He married, secondly, a daughter of Roderick Macleod, VII. of Lewis, with issue - one son, Roderick, subsequently known as Ruairidh Mac Alain, author of an atrocious massacre of the Macleods of Raasay and Gairloch at Island Isay, Waternish, Isle of Skye, erroneously attributed in the first edition of this work to his grandfather, the above-named Roderick Macleod of Lewis. Allan of Gairloch was himself related to the Macleods of Lewis, but it is impossible ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... emerald green and blood red. He would have exclaimed at the loss of those exquisite colours when you showed him the monochrome, and perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when you forced him to look through that atrocious glass. But he would have identified the aspect as the one he had seen before; just as even the least musical person would identify "God save the King" whether played with three sharps on the flute or with four flats on ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... would be outnumbered in the proportion of thirty or forty to one, they had no military following, and yet went boldly forth to rob on the kaid's behalf. I remembered how, beyond Tangier, the men of the hills round Anjera had risen against an unpopular khalifa, had tortured him in atrocious fashion, and left him blind and hideously maimed, to be a warning to all tyrants. Doubtless our prosperous fellow-traveller knew all about it, doubtless he realised that the Sultan's authority was only nominal, but he knew that his immediate master, ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... liquor traffic was thus regulated more stringently and prohibited more widely and effectively at the South than in any other part of the country. Even the lynchings occurring from time to time in some quarters, while atrocious and frowned upon by the best people, seemed due in most cases less to disregard for the spirit of the law than to distrust of legal methods and machinery. Indications multiplied, moreover, that this damning blot on Southern civilization would ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... other folk's things," and made light of "scrazing" the tops of mahogany tables over which better folks than themselves had had to—suffer a waste of tissue through evaporation. She was not scrubbing indiscriminately, for there would be further dirt of the same atrocious kind made by people who had still to fetch away their purchases; but she was bent on bringing the parlor, where that "pipe-smoking pig," the bailiff, had sat, to such an appearance of scant comfort as could be given to it by cleanliness and the few articles ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... you are exactly like my father in person and in voice. Loosen my bonds, and listen to me, for the most hideous, atrocious, and accursed treachery threatens us the king ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be done with gods playing at being human, or at being half god and half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede—nay, proclaim—the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his godship ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... as panel after panel was exhausted with no result, not only did the ridiculous shortcomings of our jury system become apparent, but also the fact that the Mafia had, as usual, made full use of its sinister powers of intimidation. In view of the atrocious character of the crime and the immense publicity given it, those citizens who were qualified by intelligence to act as jurors had of necessity read and heard sufficient to form an opinion, and were therefore automatically debarred from service. It became necessary to place ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... and dizzy for a moment. Then, by a strong effort of will, he pulled himself together. "Oh, come now," he said, "you don't really mean that, you know. After all your kindness! You're much too good-natured to be capable of anything so atrocious." ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... six intelligent persons of above the average grade, and in a few minutes our hair will be rising and our pulses hammering while a Choctaw Indian control, in atrocious English, will tell us she is happy and we are happy and so ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... air. Its words are brave words to conjure with. It is susceptible of a good and loyal sense. It may mean, restore the supremacy of the Constitution and the integrity of the Union by crushing this atrocious rebellion to utter extinction by force of arms. It may mean that all the revolted States are to be brought back into the Union and under the authority of the Constitution by military subjugation. It may mean this, though it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... taint in the air, and as I stood there fascinated by fear Dick took a step forward and threw the faint light of his torch upon the atrocious figure. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the present time are atrocious and help to make criminals. The worst crimes have not even a name yet, much less a punishment. What about the crime of working little children and cheating them out of an education and a happy childhood? There is ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... this atrocious characteristic, competition would lose its happiest effects; without the arbitrary element in exchange and the panics of the market, labor would not continually build factory against factory, and, not being ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... at under the circumstances, for I afterwards learned that while I was below in my berth, suspecting nothing worse than the purchase and transfer of a cargo of slaves from one ship to another, a most atrocious and cold-blooded act of piracy had been committed, and that, too, under the shadow and disguise of the British flag; Mendouca having coolly hoisted British colours the moment that I left the deck, and, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... do," replied her father. "But what an atrocious shame, if it is so! One of the most popular of the minor princes of Europe spirited away, and perhaps either murdered or thrown into some prison or fortress, where he will drag out his days and nights in solitude until he goes mad: a young, bright, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... success of his enterprises, no matter by what means or at what price, was his sole law of conduct. He could show, on occasion, moderation and mercy; but when he had to put down an obstinate resistance, or when a long and arduous effort had irritated him, he had no hesitation in employing atrocious severity and perfidious promises. During his first campaign in Belgica, (A. U. C. 697 and 57 B.C.), two peoplets, the Nervians and the Aduaticans, had gallantly struggled, with brief moments of success, against ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... were some acts of hostility committed previous to the war with this country, and very little indeed subsequent to that declaration, which abjured the love of conquest. The attack upon the Papal State, by the seizure of Avignon, in 1791, was accompanied by a series of the most atrocious crimes and outrages that ever disgraced a revolution. Avignon was separated from its lawful sovereign, with whom not even the pretence of quarrel existed, and forcibly incorporated in the tyranny of one and indivisible France. The same system led, in the same year, to an aggression ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... reaching his drowsy destination at last, began a series of the most surprising horticultural experiments until, what with orchids as big as a barrel, and geraniums which could be reached only by a ladder, he had converted the silvery strand of the dreamful domain into a forest of atrocious color and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... he said, on hearing it. "It would be a most atrocious murder. Every Protestant in the settlement must unite, and insist on having his life spared. It would be useless to petition; we must demand ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... something of the kind—was a monument to his discoveries, a record of his adventures among the masterpieces of Europe, beginning on the ground floor as the Strozzi Palace, developing into various French castles, and finishing on the top as a Swiss chalet, atrocious as architecture, but amusing as autobiography. All his buildings were more or less reminiscent, and told again in stone the story so often told in words at the Nazionale, for Death was kind and claimed him before he had ceased to be the discoverer ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be infamous as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an Austrian, she hated France; that ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Such atrocious wickedness as the treatment of the nuns and monks, described in this chapter, would never have been countenanced in any warfare between civilized nations. But Morgan's pirates were not making war; they were robbers and murderers on a grand scale. They had no ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... and atrocious use, too, of the prisoners whom they conveyed away. When they arrived at a fortified town where there was a garrison or any other armed force prepared to resist them, they would bring forward these helpless captives, and put them in the fore-front of the battle in such a manner that the men on the ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... aside the sheet, and exposed to view their faces, livid as corpses. Far from inspiring with terror the wretches assembled round the Hospital, such spectacles became to them the signal for savage jests, and atrocious predictions upon the fate of these poor creatures, when once in the power of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... forgetting that he has not had his dinner, and who can live apparently content amid the grossest domestic neglect. He had once spoilt a hundred and fifty pounds' worth of ware by firing it in a new kiln of his own contrivance; it cost him three years of atrocious parsimony to pay for the ware and the building of the kiln. He was impulsively and recklessly charitable, and his Saturday afternoons and Sundays were chiefly devoted to the passionate propagandism of the theories of liberty, equality, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... man made an atrocious grimace. Then, "Yes, monsieur, the Mayor of Bottitort," he said frankly. "A year ago he put Philibert in the stocks for a riddle; that is his affair. And the woman of this house has more than once befriended me, and he is for ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... experience I have been obliged to look upon many cruel scenes in connection with Indian warfare on the Plains since that day, but the effect of this dastardly and revolting crime has never been effaced from my memory. Greater and more atrocious massacres have been committed often by Indians; their savage nature modifies one's ideas, however, as to the inhumanity of their acts, but when such wholesale murder as this is done by whites, and the victims not only innocent, but helpless, no defense ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... grace and feeling; but we do not see why the character of Rienzi should be so essentially altered from history as it has been; neither do we think that any desirable effect has been gained by this change. In history, Rienzi is a master-spirit of reckless and atrocious daring, but in the drama, he is softened down to a fickle liberty brawler, and the sternest of his vices are glossed over with an almost inconsistent show of affection and tenderness. As he there stands, he is rather like an injured man, than one who so liberally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... as steel, which dived into his own, Morange was seized with abject fear. All his weakness, his cowardice of heart returned. Could he accuse her of such an atrocious crime? He pictured the consequences. And then, too, he no longer knew if he were right or not; his poor maniacal mind ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in childish, unthinking mirth. She ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the shop, only to meet an atrocious woman from "The Gables," who stopped me with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... Rastadt on the breaking out of war, and were attacked and cut to pieces by some Austrian hussars in a wood close to the city gate. Jean de Bry alone escaped, although dangerously wounded, with his life. This atrocious act was generally believed to have been committed through private revenge, or, what is far more probable, for the purpose of discovering by the papers of the ambassadors the truth of the reports at that time in ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... he said, "you have told me one of the saddest stories that I have ever known, and I can find nothing but sympathy and regret for you in my heart. You have been but the victim of an atrocious wrong—no stain rests upon your character, if there appears to be upon your name, and so I ask you again, will you give me your daughter, if I find that I have been so fortunate as to have won her ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... not enough to burn books of an unpopular tendency, cruelty against the author being plainly progressive from this time forward to the atrocious penalties afterwards associated with the presence of Laud in the Star Chamber. All our histories tell of John Stubbs, of Lincoln's Inn, who, when his right hand had been cut off for a literary work, with his left hand waved his hat ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... if our portrait statuary became much worse, when some monster murderer had been tried and found guilty, the judge, putting on the black cap, should say, 'Prisoner at the bar, a jury of your countrymen having found you guilty of a most atrocious crime, you must be hanged until you are dead, and then a statue shall be erected to perpetuate your memory, and God help your soul.' Carlyle assented, but not in any hearty manner. No doubt I had ventured a little ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... thought Willis. "By Jove! there she is—on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer's wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a grocer's car! ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... better to give him his two men,' put in Father Concha, in his atrocious English, speaking to the General. 'The man is honest in his love of Conyngham, if ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... some God-given bill of rights had been smashed, and the very altar of liberty desecrated. And when John Burnham explained how the autocrat's triumvirate could at will appoint and remove officers of election, canvass returns, and certify and determine results, he could understand how the "atrocious measure," as the great editor of the State called it, "was a ready chariot to the governor's chair." And in the summer convention the spirit behind the measure had started for that goal in just that way, like a scythe-bearing chariot of ancient days, but ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... spite of six years of art in Rome and Paris, he still had a fastidious reverence for women. If she had loved her husband she would have been safe enough from him; but to be bound to a companionship that she gave unwillingly—this had seemed to him atrocious, even before he loved her. How could any husband ask that? Have so little pride—so little pity? The unpardonable thing! What was there to respect in such a marriage? Only, he must not do her harm! But now that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the little finger of the left hand was an emerald ring, which I had often seen the murdered man wear, and which, being covered with blood and sand at the time of the catastrophe, no doubt escaped the attention of the villians who perpetrated the atrocious act. The left jaw was fractured by a rifle-bullet, which knocked him off his horse backwards, as described by one ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... feeling) that the United States could, and ought to, protest against this clear violation of the law of nations—this glaring manifestation of a spirit which was going to make this war the most cruel and atrocious known to history. The foreboding of a return to barbarism has been fulfilled, alas, ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... French. It has been officially stated, e.g., that not only before but also after the outbreak of the war French officers have been at Liege in order to instruct the Belgian soldiers as to the fortification service. England's complaints of the violation of international law, however, are the most atrocious hypocrisy and the vilest Pharisaism. At all times English politics have unscrupulously disregarded all forms of law as soon as their own interest was touched. During the last few weeks the same method has been quite sufficiently manifested in the unlawful capture of the Turkish ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... "filthy," "disgusting," "atrocious"—such are usually the words of observers in describing these shocking mutilations. Nevertheless they always apply the word "ornamentation" to them, with the implication that the savages look upon them as beautiful, although all that the observers had a right to say was ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... be kidnapped in Baden territory and hurried off to the castle of Vincennes. He was, however, already aware of his prisoner's innocence when on March 21 he had him shot there by torch-light after a mock trial before a military commission. All Europe was shocked by this atrocious assassination, and though Napoleon sometimes attempted to shift the guilt of it upon Talleyrand, he justified it at other times as a measure of self-defence, and left on record his deliberate approval of it, for the consideration of posterity. Two ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... eyes. It was one thing to have a pet grievance and see herself as a heroine, righting her dear injured brother's wrongs, and another to reproach two of the quietest most matter-of-fact people in the world with the atrocious frauds of which only ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... acquaintance. And first of all let me tell you that we shall be glad to print your review of The Kentons, and shall be pleased to send you a long succession of novels for analysis if you can always use the scalpel with such atrocious cunning as in this case. I say atrocious cunning, for really you have treated Mr. Howells with a touch of that genial "process of vivisection" to which it pleases him to subject the lively ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... our own days has received a striking illustration in the progress made in appreciating the works of the latest of the great musical geniuses, Richard Wagner, whose music twenty-five years ago was regarded by the public generally as unmusical and atrocious; whereas now it is heard with pleasure, and takes hold of the more advanced musical minds with a firmness beyond that of any other musical production. The explanation is to be found in the development of finer ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... as if in careful consideration. As I stepped toward him the pliable bamboo floor undulated; the movement was carried to him and he began to nod, very gently and gravely. He seemed to be saying: 'No, Ah cain't affawd it.' It was atrocious. Finally I was by his side and he was again motionless, staring thoughtfully. Then I saw he was considering. In his hands, which lay twined on his knees, were a lot of little metallic oblongs. I disengaged them. The muchacho drew nearer, and with the torch over ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... body, divided into four quarters and set up in the most public places of the county where the act was committed. He said that the slaves pretty well knew about this barbarous Maryland law, and that he even heard of dismemberments for atrocious ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... are qualities or predispositions, for which—hideous as they may be—we are no more responsible than we are for being born with an unprepossessing face. Men are born with certain attractive qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in consenting to them and ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... had caused the strange noise that mystified them—the rumbling followed by a crash. No accidental debacle or falling of a portion of the cliff, as they had been half supposing; but a deed of atrocious design—a huge rock rolled by the united strength of the savages, until it rested over the orifice of the shaft, completely coping ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... instantly ceased, and the system of Repartimientos would have been abandoned by men who were only waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership, "atrocious." Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... cognizance of a raven. The leader of this band, who was known as the Knight of the Raven, had won for himself a specially evil notoriety in France by the ferocity of his conduct. Wherever his band went they had swept the country, and the most atrocious tortures had been inflicted on all well-to-do persons who had fallen into their hands, to extract from them the secret of buried hoards or bonds, entailing upon them the loss of their ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... which you could hardly conceive possible. The account comes from a very respectable and rational quarter. The most respectable characters are most violently persecuted, and the persons arraigned are confined in dungeons, no communication permitted; and persons convicted of the most atrocious acts ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... offered his life by the Puritan colonel, Hewson, on the very steps of the scaffold, if he would inculpate the late King Charles in the rising of 1641. This he "stoutly refused to do," and the execution proceeded with all its atrocious details. Whatever may have been the excesses committed under his command by a plundered people, at their first insurrection—and we know that they have been exaggerated beyond all bounds—it must be admitted he died the death ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... son-in-law, a kind of gentlemanly valet!" And, "That, I trust, will be the end. Maud as a mother would be atrocious." ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... act by the master of the caravan was the cause of a long war, causing hundreds of atrocious murders and the destruction of a great deal of property along the whole ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... elements and to force them "to come into the street." In this manner the agitators and leaders are brought to the front, where at one stroke they may all be shot. Furthermore, the police agents themselves commit or provoke such atrocious crimes that the people are terrified and welcome the strong arm of the Government. Literally scores of instances might be given where, by well-planned work of this sort, the active leaders are cut down, the sources of agitation destroyed, and through ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... nun was still in the room, and, with her, Sander, talking the most atrocious French. A queer contrast. One of the world worldly, a moth that battened on the seamy side; the other far above ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... 'Atrocious,' returned Cilly, disconcerted, but resolved that Phoebe should not perceive it; 'so we are both under a severe infliction,—both ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him as easily as she manages her poodle, is a favorite character in English comedy. Every one knows some truculent gentleman who loudly proclaims that one half of mankind are knaves and the other half would be if they dared, but who would go mad with despair if he really believed the atrocious principles he loves to announce. Jefferson was not so constituted as to make the proper allowance for this kind of insincerity. Though undemonstrative, he was thoroughly in earnest. In fact, he was something of a precisian in politics. He spoke of kings and nobles as if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Returning at the time appointed, the dwarfs delivered to him the famous sword Tyrfing; then, standing in the entrance of their cavern, spoke thus: "This sword, O king, shall "destroy a man every time it is brandished; but it shall "perform three atrocious deeds, and it shall be thy bane." The king rushed forward with the charmed sword, and buried both its edges in the rock; but the dwarfs escaped into their recesses.[A] This enchanted sword emitted rays like the sun, dazzling all ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... thousands of minds which apprehended the downfall of the 'peculiar institution.' There were a prophetic few, who clearly perceived that it would be purged away by no milder scourge than that of war. But there were none who dreamed that the slaveholder would be the Samson to bring down the atrocious system of human slavery by madly taking arms in its defence! Yet so it was; and the Divine penalty is before us. The wrath of man has worked out the retributive justice of God. The crime ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Testament contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his special command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a preference, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... revolutionary forces and was captured and taken prisoner by the Austrian army and ordered to be shot. I remember well the night of the ninth of February when the atrocious deed was committed. We had a great public meeting. The hall was crowded to suffocation. I looked for Karl, but he was nowhere to be seen. He was a very busy man, you see, and had to write a great deal for his ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... continued. "How is it that the wittiest and most satirical people on earth will consent to wear upon their heads a bit of stove-pipe?—as one of our great writers has called it. Here are some of the infections I have been able to give to those atrocious lines," he added, pointing to a number of his creations. "But, although I am able to conform them to the character of each wearer—for, as you see, there are the hats of a doctor, a grocer, a dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth—the ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... skins, marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara would have liked to have seen him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable death ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... injured by the couple obtaining this information? And if nobody was injured, and everybody concerned was benefited, then why should the imparting of such information be considered a felony, punishable like the most atrocious ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... go where he could breathe. Surely self-preservation, that was the first law; surely no known code of human practice called upon him to share the daily crimes of any living soul—it was a daily repetition of his crime for this traitor to carry on the atrocious lie of patriotism. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... clear, hard little mind the moment she heard Olga talk, that she was utterly impossible for the sextette. "Really, my dear man," she told Galbraith after the first rehearsal, "you'll have to find some one else. American audiences will stand a good deal, I know, in the way of atrocious speech, but positively she'll be hooted. They'll all sound frightful enough, especially because that Dane girl, if that's her name, talks like a lady, but this one ...!" She gave a cruelly adequate little imitation of Olga's delivery of one ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... he thought the chase was growing tame, and that the farther east he could arrest me the nearer I should be to a British consul and tide-water. I went ahead of him into the station and out to the Pittsburg sleeper. I dropped my bag into my section—if that’s what they call it in your atrocious American language—looked out and saw him coming along the platform. Just then the car began to move,—they were shunting it about to attach a sleeper that had been brought in from Louisville and my carriage, or whatever you call it, went skimming out of the sheds into a yard where everything seemed ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... of the previous week, during which we were forced to see our fellow-beings hounded out of their homes, and the homes broken up; their lifelong earnings frittered away by a law of the land, their only crime being the atrocious one of having the same colour of skin as our own, and finding ourselves suddenly landed on an oasis, the farm of a kind Dutchman and his noble wife, on whose property, and by whose leave, little black piccaninnies ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of the skilful and most learned man, {203a} On account of the fair corpse, which fell prostrate upon the ground, Thrice six officers judged the atrocious deed {203b} at the hour of mattins, And Morien lifted up again his ancient lance, And, roaring, stretched out {203c} death Towards the warriors, the Gwyddyl, {203d} and the Prydyn; {203e} Whilst towards the lovely, slender, blood-stained body of Gwen, ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... which had already been filled; no remedy was possible. Only a dentist could alleviate the pain. He feverishly waited for the day, resolved to bear the most atrocious operation provided it would only ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Bugis) Malays. Those who escaped got on board the vessels in the harbor, and reached the island of Labuan, near the mouth of the Borneo river; while the booty obtained by the pirates was estimated at 375,000l. From that time to this these atrocious pirates have never been punished, and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... rests with us to trace, with the aid of authentic documents, and reliable evidence, the most atrocious, treacherous, and cowardly domestic crime of which the record has come down to us. The murder whose circumstances we are about to relate can only be compared to that committed on the night of the 9th March, 1449, on the person of Guillaume de Flavy, by his wife Blanche d'Overbreuc, ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... and, given time, could smite an enemy with almost any physical malady you selected. She could not kill outright, to be sure, but even so, these lesser mischiefs were not despicable accomplishments in a young girl. Anyhow, she said in peroration, it was atrocious to discourage her by laughing at the ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... activity? What was the mournful vision that dissolved him in tears, and extorted from him tokens of inconsolable distress? What did he seek, or what endeavour to conceal, in this fatal spot? The incapacity of sound sleep denotes a mind sorely wounded. It is thus that atrocious criminals denote the possession of some dreadful secret. The thoughts, which considerations of safety enable them to suppress or disguise during wakefulness, operate without impediment, and exhibit their genuine effects, when the notices of sense are partly excluded and they are shut ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... departing from orders. But he was so eager to take a hand in proceedings that he felt it would be torture to stay behind. He was dressed in Von Arnheim's clothes. And his build was that of the German aviator. If he were observed, he would not be suspected. Even his atrocious Spanish would not betray him, as the German spoke the language almost as horribly ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... your eyes from the atrocious metamorphosis, exclaim it is chance—it is fate; arbitrary sounds and sterile syllables, with which no distinct idea can ever be associated. Alas! are there not imperceptible threads by which a regulating hand guides us through a crooked ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... that I and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican government, and every ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... rail crowded hundreds of boys in khaki, demanding in English and atrocious French ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Mr Bennett proceeds from error to error, abounding in reckless misstatements, atrocious imputations, and scattering charges void of truth. As briefly as possible, I will deal with his accusations. One of his first deliverances is as follows:—"It is, of course, an open secret that in all our Soudan battles the enemy's wounded have been killed. The practice ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. In the manner ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... This atrocious pun turned the laugh against the learned James, and then, the telegram to News and News having been dispatched, they all went ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... boats as they went up and down the river, and who sometimes shifted the scene of their robberies to the shore, waylaying travellers as they returned by land from New Orleans with the proceeds of their downward voyage, plundering them of their money and effects, and often perpetrating the most atrocious murders. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... away up on the hill of Wawel, above the river Vistula (Wisla) I prowled about among the crypts with a curious specimen of beadledom who ran off long unintelligible histories in atrocious Viennese patois about every solemn tomb by which we stood. So far as I was concerned it might just as well have been the functionary who herds small droves of visitors in Westminster Abbey. I never listen to these people, because (i) I do not care to be informed; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... man, who had an atrocious face, "we are in search of a witch to hang her; we were told that you ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... trade. Tirau's eye here displayed a faint interest. Charley threw her, with the air of a prince, a whole piece of turkey twill, 12 yards—value three dollars, cost about 2s. 3d. Tirau put out a little hand and drew it gingerly toward her. Tibakwa gave us an atrocious wink. ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... letters. There was one for her from Allister, and she tore it open first, while Ellen eagerly opened one she had received. Allister had enclosed a valentine for Christina, a horrible picture of a tall, thin, frowsy woman sweeping a house, and beneath an atrocious rhyme about the cross old maid who always stayed at home and swept and scrubbed. Christina remembered with glee that she had sent him one, quite as ugly, a fat old farmer, mean and tight-fisted, growing rich out of his ill-gotten gains. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... action would be astonishing to any one unacquainted with his extraordinary recklessness. In October 1837 he gave up the rooms at the Rue Cassini, which he had kept during the time of his residence at Passy; and in order to escape what he termed "an atrocious law" on the subject of his abhorrence the Garde Nationale, he bought a piece of land in the Ville d'Avray, at Sevres, on which he began to build a house, planned by himself. This soon acquired celebrity as "Les Jardies," and gave much amusement to the Parisians, who were never tired of inventing ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... don't believe you know her. Well, you see she's always making the most atrocious puns, and is very proud of them—thinks she's quite a wit. So, you see, when anybody makes an ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... because I bring evidence to show that this principle, as being the expression of the natural instinct due to the economic situation of the working classes, is properly to be designated as the principle of the working classes,—this is what the public prosecutor has construed into an atrocious crime, and has accused me of urging the working classes to aim at making their own class the masters of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... me. "Why not?" she repeated. "Why, the audacity of the wretch! He brings me out into the country in winter to play in his atrocious play, strands me, and then tells me to walk twenty miles a day and smile over it!" She came over to me and shook my arm. "Not only that," she said, "but he has cut out my cigarettes and put Arabella on dog biscuit—Arabella, who can hardly ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a mere accident gave to the world one of the most gruesome and remarkable pieces of literature that has ever perhaps been seen. A convict named Fury confessed to having committed a murder of an atrocious character. He was brought from prison, put on his trial at Durham, and condemned to death. Every chance was given him to escape his doom; but he persisted in providing the authorities with the most minutely accurate chain of evidence against himself; ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... revolvers. And Nelson showed up. And I met others, including the Vigy brothers, who ran the place, and, chiefest of all, Joe Goose, with the wicked eyes, the twisted nose, and the flowered vest, who played the harmonica like a roystering angel and went on the most atrocious tears that even the Oakland water-front could conceive of ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... were uncovered, ready for seizing or tearing an enemy, though there may be no intention of acting in this manner. Mr. Dyson Lacy has seen this grinning expression with the Australians, when quarrelling, and so has Gaika with the Kafirs of South America. Dickens,[10] in speaking of an atrocious murderer who had just been caught, and was surrounded by a furious mob, describes "the people as jumping up one behind another, snarling with their teeth, and making at him like wild beasts." Every one who has had much to do with young children ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... absolute ownership and authority, the former declares abject submission. So Simeon takes these two words to express his relation and feeling towards God. 'Thou art the Owner, the Despot, and I am Thy slave.' That relation of owner and slave, wicked as it is, when subsisting between two men—an atrocious crime, 'the sum of all villainies,' as the good old English emancipators used to call it—is the sum of all blessings when regarded as existing between man and God. For what does it imply? The right to command ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... remember well, somewhere far back in the late seventies, that the crew of that ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame, as if they had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in their association with an atrocious creature. We, belonging to other vessels moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used to shake our heads at her with a great sense of the unblemished virtue of our own ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and enter on a new contest, where he was sure to be overthrown. The execution of Madame Roland was a scene, as far as she was concerned, of intense and unmitigated suffering; but when Brutus dared to despair of virtue, the atrocious sentiment was dictated, not by the spirit that had dared to plan the liberties of the world, but by the demon of ennui, which in an evil hour had possessed ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... sincere, her effort was real. Harassed and embittered as she was, Olive Chancellor still proposed to herself to be rigidly just, and that is why she pitied Verena now with an unspeakable pity, regarded her as the victim of an atrocious spell, and reserved all her execration and contempt for the author of their common misery. If Verena had stepped into a boat with him half an hour after declaring that she would give him his dismissal ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Africa which are still described as the Dark Continent—wild, desolate stretches where a man can disappear without leaving the faintest trace of the manner of his presumed death, while in German East there were unscrupulous despots—the disciples of atrocious kultur—only too ready to condemn an Englishman without even the farcical ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman |
