"Horrible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... firm; he wounded the animal without being able to arrest his advance. The horns of the bull were buried in the body of the horse, who fell to the ground. A cry of fright was raised on all sides, and the chulos surrounded this horrible group; but the ferocious animal had seized his prey, and would not allow himself to be distracted from his vengeance. In this moment of terror, the cries of the multitude were united in one immense clamor, which would have filled ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... "I remember one horrible case, in which they so tied up three white men at a lonely station, and nobody happened to go near it for three weeks afterwards. It struck someone that none of them had been seen, for some time; and a couple of men rode ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... Jenkins's cockade, but did not abide the crossing of the weapons. "A Frenchman dies, but never surrenders," said Saugrenue, yielding up his sword, and his whole regiment were stabbed, trampled down, or made prisoners. The blood of the Englishmen rose in the hot encounter. Their curses were horrible; their courage tremendous. "On! on!" hoarsely screamed they; and a second regiment met them and was crushed, pounded in the hurtling, grinding encounter. "A Jenkins, a Jenkins!" still roared the heroic ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was in mutiny. The native soldiers, mad with power, were murdering the English in every city. Far up in the interior, at Lucknow, was a garrison of English soldiers, women, and children, hemmed in by thousands of these bloodthirsty Sepoys. To surrender meant a horrible death. To hold the fort meant starvation at last, unless ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the Jutes. Marries Hildeburg. At his court takes place the horrible slaughter in which the Danish general, Hnaef, fell. Later on, Finn himself is slain by Danish ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... lamb in the rhyme. I make no doubt Pussy Hogan would have attempted the Irish mile of distance to the school every day, if there were not pressure brought to bear to keep her at home. However, the child was attacked by that horrible dread of mothers, the croup. She was just the one to succumb, being a little round ball of soft flesh. She only fought it a day and night, lifting up her poor little hands to her straining throat incessantly. In less than thirty-six ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... things—roses, cool airs, far snowy ranges—to build what we like with, and we built Simla—altitude, 7,000, population 2,500, headquarters of the Government of India during the summer months. An ark it was, of course; an ark of refuge from the horrible heat that surged below, and I wondered as I climbed the steeps of Summer Hill in search of I. Armour's inaccessible address, whether he was to be the dove bearing beautiful testimony of a world coming nearer. I rejected the simile, however, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... particulars and sit tight," advised Portlaw. "We've just three now for 'Preference,' and if you go kiting off to town Hamil and I will be forced into double dummy, and that's a horrible mental strain on a man—isn't ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... will benefit, for that the mine-owners have difficulty in getting men with sufficient education to act as overmen and viewers. Get them to agree to keep from drink and from the foul language which makes the streets horrible to a decent person. You can work a revolution in the place. You won't get them to do all this at present, but the first step is to get them to attend a night-school. I have for the last year been thinking over the matter, and was intending to speak to you about it when the strike began, and everything ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... these gallant females know of the horrible properties of the Red Weed. How could they, with our science-teaching ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... "He is long about it," one said to another; and I did not wonder. The place seemed one from which none who entered it could ever go out; and there was no going farther in without plunging into that horrible mire. I stood still, and looked and listened. Some strange noise, "bird or devil," came from the depths of the wood. A flock of grackles settled in a tall cypress, and for a time made the place loud. How ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... I would I were forth of this horrible country! It is peopled with devils. Leonor is not one, methinks; nor assuredly is Rosada, neither this my poor sely maiden Maria; but I should find it hard to write ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... nights—the Burmese brought their bedding. The great midan outside his bungalow was a seething mass of people; whose families were encamped—the place resembled a huge fair. Some were bartering, gambling, or eating horrible-looking refreshment, and altogether thoroughly enjoying themselves; rows and rows squatted motionless on the ground in front of the stage; of course, sleep, with such a fiendish commotion, was out of the question, and so my ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... sinister in his words. A horrible, ridiculous feeling came over me that we were caught in a net, as it were, and doomed to stay at Silberbach for the rest of our lives. But I looked at the man. He was simply stolid and indifferent. I did not believe then, nor do I now, that he was anything worse than sulky and uncivilised. He did ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... English game, and changed the even tenor of its way. Naturally the War had only a devastating effect. No good sprang from it. It is to the everlasting credit of the French and English that during those horrible four years of privation, suffering, and death the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... electricity now sounds the note of danger. In Paris, at the mouth of the Passage des Princes, in the place before the Opera portico, and in the Rue Drouot at the Figaro office, a new sort of urban star now shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly, obnoxious to the human eye; a lamp for a nightmare! Such a light as this should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten horror. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these words, and above all in the voice that uttered them (it grated like a saw), the holy Bishop recognized an evil spirit. He made the sign of the Cross, whereupon the little devil exploded with a horrible noise and a very bad smell, just like a chestnut thrown into the fire without having had its ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... in no prisoners, he did not now witness their horrible mode of torture. Before he left them, however, he saw enough of their awful cruelty in this way. Sometimes the poor prisoner would be tied to a stake, a pile of green wood placed around him, fire applied, and the ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... postmark, stared at the writing again, in a whirl of bewildered dismay. It could not be an ordinary, unimportant letter from the children's aunt at Brighton! It could not! The thing was impossible! Yet why, then, the address to Trix, the well-known writing—most of all, the horrible postmark? ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... occasion, however, I was conscious of neither excitement nor pleasure when I went in to luncheon. Even the mingled chatter of Mimi, the girls, and St. Jerome about the horrible boots of our Russian tutor, the pleated dresses worn by the young Princesses Kornakoff, and so forth (chatter which at any other time would have filled me with a sincerity of contempt which I should have been at no pains to conceal—at all events so far as Lubotshka and ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... preaching in the land of the Moors, and the cruelties of the infidels, who, with big turbans and enormous whiskers, were beating the saint. In the interior of the Mollete doorway was represented the horrible martyrdom of the Child de la Guardia; that legend born at the same time in so many Catholic towns during the heat of anti-Semitic hatred, the sacrifice of the Christian child, stolen from his home by Jews of grim countenance, who crucified ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Never did melancholy madman labouring under the horrors of an inflammation of the brain—never did a wretch fevered with gluttony and intemperance, and writhing under the pressure of the night-mare, dream of more horrible circumstances than those which Mr. Lewis has offered in this prodigious melo-drame, for the ENTERTAINMENT of the British nation. Where will the taste of England stop in its descent? Where will ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... a large ladle. The carriage is supported on helical springs and solid steel wheels. It will readily be understood that very great care and honesty of purpose is required in making these structures. A breakdown might any moment pour ten tons of molten metal on the ground, with the most horrible results. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... to help him pretend that he did not know. "It was I who told that horrible woman about your experience at St. Johnswort. I didn't dream that she was an interviewer, but that doesn't excuse me, and I am willing to take any punishment for my—I don't know what to ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... express their keen perception of it is to say, that they see upon the countenances of the slaves of sin, the marks, and lineaments, and stamp of the evil one; and [that] they smell with their nostrils the horrible fumes that arise from their vices and uncleansed heart," etc. p.78. This introduces St. Sturme and the gambolling Germans; what does it mean but that "the intolerable scent" was nothing physical, or strictly miraculous, but the ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... night made an assault upon her imagination. Abruptly she was numbered among the derelict women whom nobody wants, whom no man thinks of or wishes to be with, whom no child calls mother. She felt physically and morally, "I am solitary," and it was horrible to her. She saw herself old and alone, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... noiseless. Within a yard of the peacefully slumbering man he rose up, crouching on his toes and bending stealthily forward to gloat over his victim. Hampton stirred uneasily, possibly feeling the close proximity of that horrible presence. Then the maniac took one more stealthy, slouching step nearer, and flung himself at the exposed throat, uttering a fierce snarl as his fingers clutched the soft flesh. Hampton awoke, gasping and choking, to find ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Keith Wells roared out the command to retreat above, and his desire to regain a place of safety was so earnest that he made the control room in record time. At once he had felt the tingle of the paralyzing ray. Struck by a horrible thought, he ventured to peer down the ladder—and groaned to see the figures of his comrades, all lying limply on the deck. His portly frame quivered like jelly as realization came to him that he was the only one ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... cried Lucien, "that one day l'Encuerado took a pipe belonging to an officer who was staying with papa and began to smoke it. You should have seen what horrible faces he made." ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... say, Alice was unable to wax enthusiastic about any of these feats, though she loyally accompanied him in his travels. She would sit in the tent gazing at him with a horrible fascination, and month by month grew thinner and more strained. Tristan felt her stress deeply; but was making money so fast that we all felt that in a short time, if not able to finance the discovery ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... drown just as easily in a couple of fathoms of water as in this deep place; but it is perfectly horrible to think of sinking down, down, down into the very deepest water-hole on the ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... refer to these horrible things no further. They are there. God pity me, I have seen them; they will remain in my mind forever—and this is almost the twentieth century. Christ died nineteen hundred years ago, and Spain is a Christian nation. She has set up more crosses in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... dying race. For across those hard features there came something like a flash when the last hour had been breathed out, and we all felt that the dark veil had completely fallen. What secret was there between Bertha and this woman? I turned my eyes from her with a horrible dread lest my insight should return, and I should be obliged to see what had been breeding about two unloving women's hearts. I felt that Bertha had been watching for the moment of death as the sealing of her secret: I thanked Heaven it ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... he carefully brushed his coat, put on a green satin necktie and a purple embroidered waist-coat, and walked briskly towards the house of the widow. But, alas! as he drew near to the dwelling a most horrible stench greeted his nostrils, a sense of great depression came over him, and upon pausing before the house his body began to tremble and his eyes rolled ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... Antoine de Lorraine, Lord of Joinville, infested the country. Throughout the land there was nothing but pillage, robbery, murder, cruel tyranny, the ravishing of women, the burning of churches and abbeys, and the perpetration of horrible crimes. Those were the hardest times ever known to man.[438] But the damsel was not afraid, and said: "In God's name! take me to the gentle Dauphin, and fear not any trouble or ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... a third spectacle, more horrible than the rest, presented itself to the affrighted eyes of Edwin. He saw a figure, larger than the human, that walked among the clouds, and piloted the storm. Its appearance was dreadful, and its shape, loose and undistinguishable, seemed to be blended with the encircling ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... She got up and stood before him, breathing unevenly, in little gasps. "Oh, you mustn't go away! Please don't go! I—there's something terrible happened—oh, Kent, I need you! I can't tell you what it is—it's the most horrible thing I ever heard of! You can't imagine anything ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... sharpened their beaks. He caught a hedgehog and made a playmate of it, went out fishing all day long with the village boys, or listened to the tales about Pugachev told by a half-witted old woman living in a mud hut, greedily drinking in the most singular of the horrible incidents she related, while he looked into the old woman's toothless mouth and into the ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... is not rather tiresome," said Bice, with a roll of her "r," "it is horrible! When we came here I did not know why it was, but I rejoiced myself that there was no band playing. I thought at first it was merely jour de relache: but when morning after morning came and no band, that was heavenly," she said, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... dismally sprained his left ankle, which, to his consternation, was swelled like a door-post, and as blue as his apron. There was also a black ugly lump on his brow, as big as a pigeon's egg, which was horrible to look at in the bit glass. Many a gallant soldier escaped from Waterloo with less scaith—and that they did. Poor innocent sowl! I pitied him from the very bottom of my ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... had dreamed mellowness—where most he had desired the sense of ripe and harmonious surroundings? Oh, the thing was too horrible, too outrageous! Could they possibly understand? Could William Folsom and this Italian wife of his ever be made to see how unavoidable, inevitable it had all been? Badgely, anxiously gnawing his lower lip, shook his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dangerous firebrand in America. I could show you hundreds of letters piled on that desk begging me in the name of law and order and all the forces of civilised society not to interfere with his sentence. Come, you know how I love you. This is horrible cruelty to me. The doors of the White House are opening. You know that what I have, am now, and ever may be, is yours. It will all be ashes without you. I offer you a deathless love, honour and glory, and you come here to tell me ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... These egrets are said to come from the female White Heron, a beautiful bird abounding in Florida. They are a sort of bridal ornament, growing out on the head of the female at pairing time and perishing and dropping off after the brood is reared. So the ornament on the horrible woman's head had cost the lives of eleven of these beautiful birds and very likely in every case the lives of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... That so horrible a road should have so good a bridge as that by which we crossed the broad river Agano is surprising. It consists of twelve large scows, each one secured to a strong cable of plaited wistari, which ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Lat. 83 deg., Scott wrote, 'Started under very bad weather conditions. The stratus spreading over from the S.E. last night meant mischief, and all day we marched in falling snow with a horrible light.... The ponies were sinking deep in a wretched surface. I suggested to Oates that he should have a roving commission to watch the animals, but he much preferred to lead one, so I handed over Snippets very willingly and went on ski myself.' ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... "'Tis horrible! 'tis damnable!" Philibert grew pale with passion and struck his thigh with his palm, as was his wont when very angry. "Rioting in drunkenness when the Colony demands the cool head, the strong arm, and the true heart of every ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... from her horrible fear of the well. "Anne, do you suppose she could have strayed over to Mr. Harrison's? She has always been talking about his parrot ever since that time you ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a religion. And then the good man and Sir Launcelot went into the chapel; and the good man took a stole about his neck, and a book, and then he conjured on that book; and with that they saw in an hideous figure and horrible, that there was no man so hard-hearted nor so hard but he should have been afeard. Then said the fiend: Thou hast travailed me greatly; now tell me what thou wilt with me. I will, said the good man, that thou tell me how my fellow became ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... first joint of the fore-finger of the right hand for the first offence. For the second, the whole hand was sacrificed, and for the third, the head itself was forfeited. Sometimes, in cases of capital punishment, decapitation was performed by degrees! and other refinements too horrible ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... ructions, and especially the day That mother lent our dicky to the sweep, When all of us were weeping and the baby gave up sleeping Because it was impossible to sleep; But all the rows that ever raged in any British home Were never half so horrible as that Which made the coppers rally to the storming of our alley When father threw ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... me, Ethel, by suggesting such a horrible idea. The woman may be dead for anything I know; at all events, she left England before he obtained his divorce, and no one has heard anything of her since. It is extremely improbable that she will ever ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... rock, and been smashed!" shrieked Andy, whose face was undoubtedly the color of a piece of yellow parchment, if the horrible state of ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... Collins is fully justified by what Cicero himself has said although the character thus given to these mysteries is very different from that which was attributed to them by early Christian writers. They were to those pious but somewhat prejudiced theologists mysterious and pagan, and therefore horrible.[50] But Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus, De Legibus, written when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that "of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for the improvement of men nothing surpasses ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... farther from England than Paris, and the French had no cotton to tempt the British statesmen of 1793-4 to strike an account between manufacturing and morality. Distance and time appear to have united their powers to make things appear fair in the eyes of Russell that inexpressibly horrible to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Most patient and most pesible! She never said to me amiss, Whom now hath slain this beast horrible! And for it is an impossible To find again e'er such a wife I will live sole all ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... said Joan. "The horrible hour will come when I shall be an orchid and try and palm myself off ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... verse. I cannot explain it all exactly, but we were taken by surprise in the middle of a perfectly harmless meeting. We succeeded in escaping, but I think perhaps we shall be prosecuted; and if my name comes out, they may write to papa from the court of justice here, and that would be horrible. You will stand by me, won't you, dear aunty? If a letter should come to my father, couldn't you get hold of it and read it and answer it yourself, without letting him know? You can explain to the gentlemen that we were only having a little Swiss celebration ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... she exclaimed, shrinking. "I hate myself in this horrible gown—I feel so mean and hypocritical—though I do mourn for him, Guthrie. You must not think I feel happy because he is dead—no, indeed; I wish I could! But one must conform to a certain extent, mustn't one? And ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... It meant going through a terrible ordeal. They simply remained true in their personal devotion to God. This was the thing God needed, and used. Everything of use to God roots down in the life. The personal plea of the great king, and the prospect of a horrible death fail alike to move them. They probably had quite resigned themselves to the fate of being burned alive for the truth. But God had a different purpose. He was thinking about this ruler with whom He dealt so personally and unusually, time ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... of chains, and surveyed the room with a single furious glance. Queen Victoria's cheeks collapsed and the coronet slid slightly to one side. Then Nikky rose and jerked off the shawl and bowed. Every one looked rather frightened, except the Crown Prince. In a sort of horrible silence he advanced ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... darkness, into the glow of light by the gate. I had the horrible feeling that a shot would greet us. A challenge came, at first in ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... Tom. 'You are the picture of independence. Mr. Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have got myself into - what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she would ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... a man to examine the neighborhood, and then went to our four-legged friend's assistance. With angry growls the dog helped us to throw aside the branches, but long before reaching the last one, we suspected the contents of the pile. A horrible stench had for some time warned us that we were ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the men were evaporating. He stared at the rout, and suddenly stopped fighting the hands holding him. Beside him, the Kid was crying, making horrible sounds of it. He turned slowly back to the car, and felt it get under way. His final sight was that of the Legals and Municipals wildly scrambling ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... Stettin who had been trying to drag a comb through his horrible beard and hair, turned, and he looked like a big red devil, the sun being on his head, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... sentiments, of striving toward the white man's moral ideals. They are creatures of brutal, untamed instincts, and uncontrolled feral passions, which give frequent expression of themselves in crimes of horrible ferocity. They are, in brief, an uncivilized, semi-savage people, living in a civilization to which they are unequal, partaking to a limited degree of its benefits, performing in no degree its duties. Because they are spatially in ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... seeing such teaching as this could not have done so, he has not taken such pains of enquiry as must surely have satisfied a man of his faculty that such was not their teaching; that it was indeed so different, and so good, that even the forced companionship of such horrible lies as those he has recounted, has been unable to destroy its regenerative power. I suppose he will allow that there was a man named Jesus, who died for the truth he taught: can he believe he died for such alleged truth as that? Would it not be well, I would ask him, to enquire what ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... neglecting that rule much greater evils, most dreadful revolutions and wars originated. The history of the so called christian church, when some portions rebelled against the Pope through the course of centuries until this time, is the most horrible theatre under the dominion of the dragon. Therefore, after the destruction of the first Napoleon we read in REVEL. xvii: 13, that the ten horns or monarchs agreed unanimously (in the Congress of Vienna, A.D. 1815,) to give their power and strength unto the beast, ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... it—you did know. You only had to ask me. But instead of doing it in a straight, business-like way, you set that horrible fly to buzzing in my ears, that we could make use of the circumstance to compel Patricia to an immediate consent. And I, like a fool, listened to you. Patricia never meant not to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... a horrible breach of court etiquette by the two officials advancing, bowing low to the rajah, and making a short speech to his highness, who nodded and scowled while the guard of spearmen formed up in a row behind, and Mr Braine saluted in military fashion, and went and stood half ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... a majestic march. The Irish are good monists: they have of course been laughed at for their keener perceptions. So it's a book we're writing, or it's a procession, or it's a museum, with the Chamber of Horrors rather over-emphasized. A rather horrible correlation occurs in the Scientific American, 1859-178. What interests us is that a correspondent saw a silky substance fall from the sky—there was an aurora borealis at the time—he attributes the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... I loved; that I could not give him the love he desired. He was content to accept me on those terms. I don't say he was right; but am I right, are you right, is Garvington right? Is any one of us right? Not one, not one. The whole thing is horrible, but I make the best of it, since I did what I did do, openly and for a serious purpose of which the world knows nothing. Do your part, Noel, and come to The Manor, if only to show that you no longer care for me. You understand"—she ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and ...
— Options • O. Henry
... were surprised and killed. Women and children were not spared; it was hardly sparing them to carry them into captivity, as was often done. The villages which were attacked were set on fire after the tomahawking and scalping were done. Horrible struggles would take place in the confined rooms of the little cabins; blood and mangled corpses desecrated the familiar hearths, and throughout sounded the wild yell of the savages, and the flames crackled and licked through ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... heaven. This bad being had to have a home; and that home was hell. This hell is supposed to be nearer to earth than I would care to have it, and to be peopled with spirits, spooks, hobgoblins, and all the fiery shapes with which the imagination of ignorance and fear could people that horrible place; and the bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil and all these little devils. The bible teaches the doctrine of witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be raised by the power of sorcery. Does ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Percy? or had she been wasting her thoughts on a mere lay-figure, dressed up by her own fancy in attributes not at all belonging to it? Poor child! had she known how many women—and perhaps men also—do the very same, the idea might not have seemed quite so horrible to her. ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... night. All retired in dreadful silence; and I heard the horrible grating of four doors, that were successively locked and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... will cover some fifty or sixty miles of ground, I believe. They'll utterly demolish the city, and every damned Slav in it." His face, in the darkness, went grim and hard. "And it'll damn well pay them back," he rasped, "for the horrible way they massacred San ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... to remain here, the ears rent, and the heart torn by these shrieks of the wounded and dying. How horrible this tumult! It seems as if the world were expiring. There—the gates are swinging upon their hinges; they are ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... convinced by Lair that she was there of her own volition and that therefore he could do nothing for her. It is easy to see why it thus becomes part of the business to break down a girl's moral nature by all those horrible devices which are constantly used by the owner of a white slave. Because life is so often shortened for these wretched girls, their owners degrade them morally as quickly as possible, lest death release them before ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... of those horrible insurrections which sent a thrill of terror into every bosom in Paris. Assembling the multitudinous throng of demoniac men and women which the troubled times had collected from every portion of Christendom, they gathered them around the hall of the Assembly to enforce their ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... existence of such a creature as the blood-sucking bat—even naturalists have gone so far. They can allege no better grounds for their incredulity than that the thing has an air of the fabulous and horrible about it. But this is not philosophy. Incredulity is the characteristic of the half-educated. It may be carried too far, and the fables of the vulgar have often a stratum of truth at the bottom. There is one thing that is almost intolerable, and that is the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the historians tells us that in this period of seditious violence many of the leading plebeians were assassinated (as the tribune Genucius had been), and to this time only can be attributed the horrible story, mentioned by more than one writer, that nine tribunes were burned alive at the instance of their colleague Mucius. Society was utterly disorganized. The two orders were on the brink of civil war. It seemed as if Rome was to become the city of discord, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... happy for her had she never had a second. But her profound love for the Chevalier de Gersay overcame any scruples that might have arisen in her mind against again yielding to the maternal instinct, and another son came to her, one who was destined to meet a most horrible fate and cause her ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... but a true one, I have no doubt. And, as I have no ambition to be hurled headlong into one of those horrible holes, I shall leave town altogether in a few days. And, Ormiston, I would strongly recommend ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... first sensation was of fear, until she realized his tone was not one to be feared. And, responding to that tenderness of tone, sharp compunctions pricked her. Dear father!—it was horrible to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Glimmering gray is the light o' the moon; And under the willows, where waters lie, The torch of the firefly wanders by; They say that the miller walks here, walks here, All covered with chaff, with his crooked staff, And his horrible hobble and hideous laugh; The old lame miller hung many a year: When the hoot of the owl comes over the hill, He walks alone ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... "What means that horrible gleam of laughter?" exclaimed Luke, grasping the shoulder of the man of graves with such force as nearly to annihilate him. "Speak, or I will strangle you. She died, you say, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to describe the horrible noises, and hideous cries and howlings, that were raised, as well upon the edge of the shore as higher within the country, upon the noise or report of the gun, a thing I have some reason to believe those creatures had never heard before: this convinced ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... territorial gain in Servia. Austria-Hungary mobilized against Servia and not against Russia and there was no ground for an immediate action on the part of Russia. I further added that in Germany one could not understand any more Russia's phrase that "she could not desert her brethren in Servia", after the horrible crime of Sarajevo. I told him finally he need not wonder if Germany's army ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... and summoned help. After that all was like a horrible dream to Evadne. She was dimly conscious that friends came with ready offers of assistance, and that Barbadoes' best physicians were unremitting in their efforts to stop the hemorrhage; while she stood like a statue beside her father's bed. She was absolutely ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... place, as far off as ever. East of it, on the sky-line, was a whole fleet of little clouds that hung low over the earth; that rose from it; rose and were never lifted, but as they were shredded away, scattered and vanished, were perpetually renewed. This movement of their death and re-birth had a horrible sinister ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... most northern of the equestrian tribes: their characteristics are intelligence and aptitude for civilisation; yet, in the early history of the country, their fierceness and barbarity in war could not be exceeded, especially in their retaliation on the Blackfeet, of which Ross Cox gives a horrible account. The usual dress of these tribes is a shirt, leggings, and mocassins of deer-skin, frequently much ornamented with fringes of beads, and formerly in the "braves" with scalps; a cap of handkerchief generally covers the head, but the Shoshones twist their long black hair into a natural ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... some drug habit. In addition to this, these men early in their career are apt to become infected with some of the venereal diseases, or perhaps with all of them— gonorrhea, syphilis, and so forth; and these diseases have the horrible characteristics of becoming latent. A man who contracts this kind of a disease can never be really sure that he is cured. All ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... that second of illumination they had seen framed in the torchlit cleft a pair of gleaming light eyes and a cruelly snarling mouth set in a face made horrible by the livid scar that ran from chin to eyebrow ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... daylight in the kitchen turned into black night, and I felt the tiles give way under my feet and drag me down into a bottomless hole. I remember Sister Desiree-des-Anges coming to help me, but an animal had fastened itself on my chest. It made a dreadful sound which it hurt me to hear. It was like a horrible sob which always stopped at the same place. Then the light came back again, and I could see above me the faces of Sister Desiree-des-Anges and Melanie. Both were smiling anxiously, and Melanie's broad, red face looked like Sister Desiree-des-Anges' ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... the great shoulders, bat quickly desisted; there was something horrible, something that touched his nerves, in its irresponsiveness. He remembered that he might probably find matches in the lamp-locker, and staggered there to search. He had to grope in gross darkness about the place, touching brass and the uncanny smoothness of glass, before his hand ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... invariably, but often attacks men without any provocation whatever, and is altogether about the most fierce, vicious, dangerous brute to be met with either in the hills or plains of India. They inflict the most horrible wounds, chiefly with their paws, and generally—as Mr. Sterndale states—on the face and head. I have repeatedly met natives in the interior frightfully mutilated by encounters with the Black Bear, and cases in which Europeans have been killed by them are by no means uncommon. These brutes are ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... hair; boys laid down crying bitterly, with their heads buried in the straw; there was sobbing almost to suffocation, and hysterics and deep agony. One young man clung to the form, crying, "Satan tears at me, but I would hold fast. Help— help, he drags me down!" It was a scene of horrible agony and despair; and, when it was at its height, one of the preachers came in, and raising his voice high above the tumult, intreated the Lord to receive into his fold those who now repented and would fain return. Another of the ministers knelt down by some young men, whose faces were covered ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... perjury, but the miscreant calling God to witness, that if what he had advanced was not true, he wished that his jaws might be locked and his flesh rot on his bones; and, shocking to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and after lingering nearly a fortnight in great anguish, he expired in horrible agonies, his flesh literally rotting ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... is horrible; named, it might leave Byron's memory yet within the range of pity and forgiveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the horrible sensation which I experienced,— never shall I forget it! I felt that our sack was roughly pushed by some one, then suddenly lifted ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... careless, had said a hundred times, with tears in his eyes, that he blessed Heaven for sending his dearest Aunty two such admirable nurses as her attached Firkin and her admirable Miss Briggs. Should the machinations of the horrible Mrs. Bute end, as she too much feared they would, in banishing everybody that Miss Crawley loved from her side, and leaving that poor lady a victim to those harpies at the Rectory, Rebecca besought ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sundown, and every man must wear his new clothes. Ye gods! that was too much! If I could have had a week or ten days to get used to those new clothes, one article at a time, I could have stood it, but to be compelled to put the pants, and jacket, shoes and hat on all at once, was horrible to think of, and if I had not known that a deserter was always caught, and punished, I would have deserted. But the clothes must be put on, and I must go out into the world a spectacle to behold. Believing that it is ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... horrible existence of the needy. She took her part, moreover, all on a sudden, with heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... no possibility of mistake, however, intentional or otherwise, about the destitution of the refugees. It was inconceivably horrible. The winter weather of late December and early January had been most inclement and the Indians had trudged through it, over snow-covered, rocky, trailless places and desolate prairie, nigh three hundred ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... caravan, with the slaughter of the white men who accompanied it; he tells of the retreat of two of them to the cliff, one of whom, by the description, can be none other than Walt Wilder. When he at length comes to describe the horrible mode in which their old comrade has perished, the Rangers are almost frenzied with rage, and it is with difficulty some of them can be withheld from breaking their given word, and ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... space, away from the trees, where the snow lay several feet deep, and he took long, flying leaps on his snowshoes. Behind him came the pack of great, fierce brutes, snapping and snarling, howling and whining, a horrible chorus that made shivers chase one another up and down the boy's spine. But as he reckoned, the deep snow made them flounder, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... always at work; every rough sketch made since we started is reproduced in an enlarged and detailed form, until we now possess a splendid pictorial representation of the whole coastline of Victoria Land.... At home many no doubt will remember the horrible depression of spirit that has sometimes been pictured as a pendant to the long polar night. We cannot even claim to be martyrs in this respect; with plenty of work the days pass ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... follow, hastened to the southern building; he proceeded to the tower, and the trapdoor beneath the stair-case was lifted. They all descended into a dark passage, which conducted them through several intricacies to the door of the cell. Ferdinand, in trembling horrible expectation, applied the key; the door opened, and he entered; but what was his surprize when he found no person in the cell! He concluded that he had mistaken the place, and quitted it for further search; but having followed the windings ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... bomb-throwing and so forth, he remained silent, though his gestures were expressive of infinite hope. He evidently approved that course. The legend which made him one of the perpetrators of the crime of Barcelona set a gleam of horrible glory in his mysterious past. One day when Bache, while speaking to him of his friend Bergaz, the shadowy Bourse jobber who had already been compromised in some piece of thieving, plainly declared that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... The first was buried this morning. My proofs are done; it was a rough two days of it, but done. Consummatum est; ua uma. I believe The Wrecker ends well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four chapters make a good yarn—but pretty horrible. The Beach of Falesa I still think well of, but it seems it's immoral and there's a to-do, and financially it may prove a heavy disappointment. The plaintive request sent to me, to make the young folks married properly before "that night," I refused; you will see what would be left ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should scream and tell you everything. But I was both too proud and too much of a coward. Then I knew I should have to rob the safe, and somehow I hated that part more than anything else. I did it just ten minutes before Rex and Polly called for me to motor down here. It had seemed the most horrible thing in the world to be a gambler, but it was worse to be ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... excitement: England was alone in the struggle against Buonaparte; the mutiny at the Nore had only just been quelled: the 3 per cent. Consols had been marked at 49 or 50; the Gazettes were occupied with accounts of bloody captures of French ships; Ireland may be said to have been in rebellion, and horrible murders were committed there; the King sent a message to Parliament telling it that an invasion might be expected and that it was to be assisted by "incendiaries" at home; and the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven bishops passed ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... has an active mind. I imagine that when he took hold of the management of his concern, after Jim Frary had stepped down and out, he had about as unpromising a job on his bands as a man could have. Frary was a terrible cuss to pile up goods, I'm told, and the stock was in horrible shape. But Landers rode through the storm, and his business has seen some ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... And, as each vile thing had something to say about it, a horrible, screeching dispute arose, while the captive Moon crouched shuddering at the foot of the snag and ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... horrible shape was all about me. I saw the work wrought by shrapnel, by gas, and the mangled red havoc of high explosive. I only seemed unreal, like one that walked in a nightmare. Here and there upon this sea of mud rose the twisted wreckage ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... idea, and remembered how she was vexed to think that even a loach should lose his life. And then I said to myself, "Now surely she would value me more than a thousand loaches; and what she said must be quite true about the way out of this horrible place." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... there I have been ever since in the position of an adopted daughter. Naturally, I have seen a great deal of their nephews, who spend a good part of their time at the house, and I need not tell you that the horrible charge against Reuben has fallen upon us like a thunderbolt. Now, what I have come to say to you is this: I do not believe that Reuben stole those diamonds. It is entirely out of character with all my previous experience ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... enjoined upon him to take care of the book, and in nowise to injure it. My name was on the back, on the cover, and my initial, "F," in two other places on the cover. When the book was returned he had cut the calfskin from the cover, so as to remove my name. The result was a horrible disfiguration of the book, and a serious impairment of its durability. The mere sight of the book angered me, and I found it difficult to retrain from manifesting as much. He undoubtedly did it to conceal the fact that the book was borrowed from me. Such ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Norah faintly; and the next moment it seemed as if the breath were being squeezed out of her body, as Rex pressed her more and more tightly against the wall. A horrible gasp of suffocation, a wild desire to push him off and fight for her own liberty, and then it was all over, and they were standing side by ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong. Such appeals to your legislatures would be irresistible, for there is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion. There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... character, in the different phases of life, from the horrible to the grotesque, the grand to the comic, attest the versatility of his powers; and, whatever faults may be found by critics, the public will heartily render their quota of admiration to his magic touch, his rich and facile rendering of almost every thought that stirs, or lies yet dormant, ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... how many melancholies henceforth arise, with griefs and sadness, with which they pine away and wax so lean as they have scarcely any flesh cleaving to the bones. Yea, at last they lose the life itself, as may be proved by many examples! for such men (which is an horrible thing to think of) slight and neglect all perils and detriments, both of the body and life, and of the soul and ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... gives us life and the earth is cursed with the presence of McNeil we feel it to be our solemn duty to rehearse once every year the story of the most atrocious and horrible occurrence in the annals of ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... Cruelty and Obstinate and all that clumsy rabble, I heed them not. Indeed my cousin Mistrust did go, and as you see returned with a caution; and a poor young school-fellow of mine, Jack Ignorance, came to an awful end. But it is because I owe partly to Christian and not all to myself this horrible solitude in which I walk that I dare not risk a deeper. It would be, I feel sure. And so I very willingly beheld Faithful burned; it restored my confidence. And here, sir," he added, almost with gaiety, "lives my friend ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare |
