"Horror-stricken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains around it; the figure frequently turned towards him with the same arch smile; and when she came to the side of the bed, she drew the curtains, and, by the light of the lamp, which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror-stricken painter, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Vanderhausen. Schalken had hardly seen him, when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... extreme ill-humor. They were incensed against the French by the ill-usage which some of their tribe had lately met with when on a trading-visit to Montreal; and they received the faith with shouts of derision. The priest was horror-stricken at what he saw. Their lodges,—each, containing from five to ten families,—seemed in his eyes like seraglios; for some of the chiefs had eight wives. He armed himself with patience, and at length gained a hearing. Nay, he succeeded so well, that when he showed them his ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... house, and her own execution. I fancied her as she appeared that day—a smile upon her face, a wild enthusiastic joy in her eyes, as if she had executed her task, and was willing, glad, to leave such a horror-stricken land. No man can doubt the purity of Charlotte Corday's character. She was no ordinary murderer. She did not act from the promptings of anger, or to avenge private wrongs. She felt it to be her duty to rid France of such an unnatural monster, and undoubtedly thought ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... I ran horror-stricken to his side, and attempted to take his hand. He started instantly into an erect position, and thrust me from him furiously, without uttering a word. At that fearful moment, in that fearful silence, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... saw from Marguerite's horror-stricken face that he was making a marked impression and he recklessly continued: "The keepers at the Canine Gardens understand this perfectly. When funds begin to run low they put the dogs in the outside pens on short rations, ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... cautiously amongst the ruins, until we saw fifty or sixty horsemen cross the wooden bridge which the Danes had left uninjured, and advance with horror-stricken faces. ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the doctor, dad. I'm glad he is here again." He turned about to look at the clear-cut face. He was horror-stricken: the eyes were closed, the hand had dropped limply, and already the fine firm mouth had opened weakly, with a piteous weakness. He rushed forward, dropping again by ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... woman," cried Stubbe, horror-stricken, "what are you thinking of? The Herr Doctor only means ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... died in my cabin, and their stark and ghastly bodies lay there day and night, seemingly gazing at me with their glazed and staring eyes. I was too weak to move them had I tried. The relief parties had not removed them. These parties had been too hurried, too horror-stricken at the sight, too fearful lest an hour's delay might cause them to share the same fate. I endured a thousand deaths. To have one's suffering prolonged inch by inch, to be deserted, forsaken, hopeless; to see that loathsome food ever before my eyes, was almost too much for human endurance. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... He was too horror-stricken to return to Corinth, and as he travelled the other way, he met Laius going from Thebes to Delphi. The travellers quarrelled and the son killed his father, but knew not whom he had slain. He went ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... I was horror-stricken at his tale, as is easy to guess, for we in our own trouble had not yet heard of it, there being little or no traffic between one village and another; and thinking on Jerusalem, and sheer despairing because the Lord had visited us, as of old ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... There was a horror-stricken silence in the crowd—even the lowest journeyman butcher realized the solemnity of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... I don't know you," he stammered, gazing horror-stricken at this old, lean woman, who was taking possession of him before everybody, taking possession of him who cared only for plump little things, sultan that he was. "I don't know her, I ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... vent her feelings in bitter or retaliatory speech—that is the weakness of fairer-faced women—but through her brain rushed like a swift stream a vivid recollection of the tragic tale as it fell from the lips of her Huron mother upon her young horror-stricken heart. ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the two armies were advancing upon each other, and the eyes of Roderic fell upon the men in the first ranks, he was horror-stricken, and was heard to exclaim: "By the faith of the Messiah! These are the very men I saw painted on the scroll found in the mansion of science at Toledo;" and from that moment fear entered his heart; and when Tarik perceived Roderic, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... a little frightened sigh behind me from Andrey Vassilievitch, whom the events of the day had frozen into horror-stricken silence. We hurried, bumping along; at the bottom of the hill there was a farmhouse. From behind ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... tomb, entered from behind the party at the open door, silent and white, with rigid features and fixed eyes, Hugh. He stumbled in, leaning forward with long strides, and dragging something behind him. He pushed and staggered through them as if he saw nothing before him; and as they parted horror-stricken, they saw that it was Margaret, or her dead body, that he dragged after him. He dropped her at her mother's feet, and fell himself on the floor, before they were able to give him any support. David, who was quite calm, got the whisky bottle ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... or you will vex madame," said Therese, hurrying him away; and Eugene was too horror-stricken by ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... on retributive justice which the fate of this unprincipled man excited, were interrupted by the return of Humphreys, who ushered in some of his divines. The change which his wife described was visible in his horror-stricken countenance. He had been formerly a man of a sordid worldly disposition and hard unyielding temper, on whom the mild Christian persuasions of Dr. Beaumont had occasionally made good impressions, though these were as often blunted by the power of long ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... mystery, as a darkness within a darkness, withdraws itself into a secrecy unapproachable by eyesight, or by filial love, or by guesses of the brain—and that is the death of dipus. Did he die? Even that is more than we can say. How dreadful does the sound fall upon the heart of some poor, horror-stricken criminal, pirate or murderer, that has offended by a mere human offence, when, at nightfall, tempted by the sweet spectacle of a peaceful hearth, he creeps stealthily into some village inn, and hopes for one night's respite from his terror, but suddenly feels the touch, and hears the voice, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the beginning, and not even the worst. The worst will come by and by. But Seward is great before Allah! The truth is, that Mr. Seward and the Department are as innocent of any familiarity with international laws, as can be. The people, the intelligent people would be horror-stricken could they suddenly be made acquainted with all the shameful ignorance which is corrosively fermenting ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... actually comes up to Newport, and follows you about, and makes you give him money!" said Candace, horror-stricken at this glimpse of the hidden suffering endured by these two prosperous, cared-for girls, who were supposed to be without a sorrow ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... would have struck her that morning, if the hands of his own friends had not held him back. And Sir Patrick had never thought of it! Absorbed in the one idea of Blanche's future, he had never thought of it, till that horror-stricken face looked at him, and said, Think of my ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of steps, now; no play at divinity. Panting, horror-stricken, frenzied with rage, bleeding, they ran. It was a hunt—the hunt of the last two humans by ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... mechanical and hopeless ministration to one whom it seemed of no use to go on loving any more; for what was nature but a soulless machine, the constant clank of whose motion sounded only, "Dust to dust; dust to dust," forevermore? But I was roused from this horror-stricken mood by a look from my husband, who, catching a glimpse of my despair, motioned me to him with a smile as of sunshine upon snow, and whispered ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... standing on her balcony and staring down into the valley, beheld the pilgrimage and had thus her first knowledge of it. She was incredulous at first, and stood gazing, gripping the stone railing with tense hands. She watched, horror-stricken. The Crown Prince, himself, come to Etzel to pray! For his grandfather, of course. Then, indeed, must things be bad with the King, as bad ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stared horror-stricken and yet fascinated at the stirring scene before them. Now Sadie and her aunt were sobbing together. The Colonel had turned to them with some cheering words when his eyes fell upon the face of Mrs. Belmont. It was as white and set as if it were carved from ivory, and her large grey eyes were ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... last, and every one is so rejoiced!) and forgetting entirely that I had left open both the door of this room and that of the sitting-room also, until I heard the flutter of Don Juan's wings behind me. I turned, and was horror-stricken to find him perched on the boxes, and pecking away at the poor snails, as if they were strawberries! I screamed, and ran to drive him off, but I was too late,—for, just as I caught him, the greedy fellow picked up and swallowed the last one of the entire ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... "Menecreta!" cried Dea Flavia, horror-stricken as she felt the feeble body stiffening against her with the approaching rigidity ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for a moment horror-stricken. Then they blazed with anger. And so suddenly that Jim and Dennis hardly saw her leave her chair. She sprang over to Sara's couch and struck him across the mouth with her open hand. The stillness in the room for a second was complete, except that Sara ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... revolted from the very thought of herself for having such a feeling towards her mother. Every instinct of loyalty in her deeply loyal nature rose up indignantly against her. She would reiterate to herself the word, "Mother! mother! mother!" as she sat gazing with a species of horror-stricken fascination into the meaningless face. But she could not shake off the feeling. Her nerves were fast giving way under the strain, and no one could help her. If she left the room or the house, the consciousness that the helpless creature was lying silently weeping for lack of the sight ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... world at the opposite pole of the universe, in the lowest depth of Chaos, the place prepared by Eternal Justice for the rebellious, he unfolds to our horror-stricken gaze the terrors of this infernal region; its fiery deluge of ever-burning sulphur; its 'regions of sorrow;' its 'doleful shades'—the unhappy abode of fallen angels who 'in floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,' alternated by exposure to unendurable cold and icy torment, experience ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... and horror-stricken. I flung myself on my horse, and cast not a look behind as I rode from the towers and domains of which I had been despoiled. Never from that time would I trust myself to meet or see the despoiler. Once, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It seemed to her as though her senses were leaving her. The vision of her father standing before her, pale-faced and horror-stricken, was a blurred one. Nothing was real except ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... died, and had been carried to "the rich, the beautiful, the dreadful tomb" of her proud family. In the night she wakened from her trance and made her escape. Chilled and terrified, she had made her way to her husband's door, only to be driven away brutally as a restless ghost by the horror-stricken inmates. A similar reception awaited her at her father's. Then she had wandered blindly through the streets of Florence until she had fallen exhausted at the door of the lover of her girlhood. He, unafraid, had taken her in and ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mocked them like a demon— A demoniacal demon Who delights to be a demon For the sake of sin alone; And with fondly false embraces Did I weave my mystic laces Round their horror-stricken faces Till ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... differences between France and England. Imagine a nude statue of Tennyson in St. James's Park! You cannot! But, assuming that some creative wit had contrived to get a nude statue of Tennyson into St. James's Park, imagine the enormous shindy that would occur, the horror-stricken Press of London, the deep pain and resentment of a mighty race! And can you conceive London officially devoting a week to the recognition of the fact that fifty years had elapsed since the publication of a work of poetic genius! Yet I think we know quite as much about poetry in England as they ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... modernity—this spirit is condemned to live apart, banished from its inheritance. But when its slow, painful tones of woe resound through the desert of the present, then the overladen and gaily-decked caravan of culture is pulled up short, horror-stricken. We must not only astonish, but terrify—such was the philosopher's opinion: not to fly shamefully away, but to take the offensive, was his advice; but he especially counselled his companion not to ponder ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... rifle leveled apparently directly at her. She quickly sprang to one side and ran through the woods in a course at right angles with the point of danger, expecting every moment to be pierced with a rifle ball. Casting a horror-stricken glance over her shoulder as she ran, she saw her husband hastening on after her, but directly under the Indian's rifle. Shrieking loudly, she pointed to the savage just in time to warn her husband, who stepped behind a tree as the report of the rifle rang through the forest. In an instant he ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... straight under the clumsy hoofs.... You never heard such ki-yi's. You'd think he was being vivisected. There was a shrieking streak of white and he disappeared under a culvert. The old mare stopped, wide-awake and horror-stricken, and the boy—a pitiful little person with his head held tautly back, almost a hunchback—and the driver and I flew to the spot and all the village Hectors laid their helmets by and gave themselves to the hour. The sweetest old man in rusty black laid right down flat on his stomach and peeked into ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... natures—from the building. But on the threshold the party came face to face with Murazov, and in Chichikov's heart the circumstance revived a ray of hope. Wresting himself with almost supernatural strength from the grasp of the escorting gendarmes, he threw himself at the feet of the horror-stricken ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to the horror-stricken questioners, "they were five,—rushing out from the dark of the convent wall against him when he came alone down the steps of the Ponte della Pugna,—the villains held the others down. And Fra Paolo lay dead on the Fondamenta—stabbed in many places, as ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... house at the foot of the side garden. Maizie consented, but Peter preferred not to move. He wished to stay with his dog as long as possible. In the cottage might be a lady who would look with the same horror-stricken eyes upon his friend as ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... rocky path. But, as in that fatal moment when she had paused in the Burwood lane, her mind was not more than vaguely conscious of her immediate surroundings. It had become the prey of swarming recollections—captured by sudden agonies, unavailing, horror-stricken revolts. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... great trenches—fully a mile of them—at which the country people were working in such haste, to keep the plague from completing the work war began! I saw them, too, from the top of the hill of Kaya, and turned away my eyes, horror-stricken. Russians, French, Prussians, were there heaped pell-mell, as if God had made them to love each other before the invention of arms and uniforms, which divide them for the profit of those who rule them. There they lay, side by side; and the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... you!" she repeated vaguely; "you mean—" a crimson wave dyed her skin to the temples and she leaned toward him in horror-stricken contrition; "I didn't mean that, Mr. Siward! I—I never thought of that! It had no weight, it was not in my thoughts. I meant only that you had assumed what is unwarranted—that you—your question humiliated me, knowing that I am engaged—knowing me ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... cheerfully when at a distance—not at all: the bishop's meaning is—that Judas recoiled from his own acts at the very instant when he began to understand their real consequences now solemnly opening upon his horror-stricken understanding. He had hoped, probably, much from the Roman interference; and the history itself shows that in this he had not been at all too sanguine. Justice has never yet been done to the conduct of Pilate. That man has little ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... mother comes to her son and says, 'My son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; say you will not desert us in this hour of our great need.' Then the little sister comes, and the whole family kneels down and appeals to the horror-stricken boy.... ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... his nearness. He followed her, horror-stricken. Emmy, a new Ophelia, was about to seek a watery grave for herself and her love sorrow. Again came the problem which in moments of emergency Septimus had never learned to solve. What should he do? Across the agony of his mind shot a feeling ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... by the forearm, he delicately abstracted from his clasp the huge knife, and, folding it up gravely, handed it back to him; then deliberately he turned his back on the Signor and pushed his way through the delightedly horror-stricken emotionalists who had gathered at the fray, and strolled over to where Signorina Caravaggio had stood an interested and ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... "Oh! she was perfectly horror-stricken when I told her about the wine we drank and Mrs. Glossop's party. I wish I had not said a word ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... by, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold. Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I said, turning round horror-stricken; for close beside me was a miserable man, apparently in the last stage of disease. He was pale as death, yet eaten up with sores. His body was agitated by a nervous trembling. He seemed to shuffle along on hands and feet, as though the ordinary mode of locomotion ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... arrived too late—the Law led Mercy about twenty minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled again that night before the sheriff's domicile and expressed its indignation in groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was afterwards paraded ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Salisbury, and another brother Lord Mayor of London. He was a great hunter, as were most ecclesiastics at that time, and in 1621, when shooting at a buck, his arrow accidentally pierced the arm of a gatekeeper, who soon bled to death. The archbishop was horror-stricken, settled an annuity upon the widow, and to the close of his life observed Tuesday, the day of the accident, as a weekly fast. This occurrence raised a hot dispute in the Church as to whether the archbishop, by having blood on his hands, had become incapable of discharging the duties of his ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... cloth, that native was smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot to shed the loin cloth. He started for'ard, the fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen. He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty shillings advance. They went over the side along with the shore-dwelling folk and followed by him who trailed ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... concealed by her blanket. I expected to see Tommy run and embrace her: but he walked coolly by, without giving her any greeting whatever; and she remained perfectly imperturbable, never stirred, and her expression did not change in the least. I was horror-stricken, but afterwards altered my views of her, and came to the conclusion that she was a good, kind mother, only that it was their way to refrain from all appearance of emotion. When we started the next morning, she ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... realised. An audience familiar with Italian novels through Belleforest and Painter, inflamed by the long struggle of the Reformation against the scarlet abominations of the Papal See, outraged in their moral sense by the political paradoxes of Machiavelli, horror-stricken at the still recent misdoings of Borgias and Medici and Farnesi, alarmed by that Italian policy which had conceived the massacre of S. Bartholomew in France, and infuriated by that ecclesiastical hypocrisy which triumphed in the same; such an audience were at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... century, who are under the impression that "Don Quixote" flowed from the fertile pen of Mr. Marion Crawford, and who are not aware that a gentleman named James Boswell wrote a most entertaining life of another gentleman named Samuel Johnson, we need not lift up horror-stricken hands to Heaven, but call to mind how many other things there are in this world to know. That a girl student should mistake "Launcelot Gobbo" for King Arthur's knight is not a matter of surprise to one who remembers how three young men, graduates of the oldest and proudest colleges in ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the moment when a high tide was at its highest point, and the north-west wind was blowing with fury, accumulating the waters at the head of the bay, three monstrous waves came rolling in from the sea upon the devoted town, following each other at a short distance. The horror-stricken inhabitants had scarcely time to note the fact of their approach, when the first wave, sweeping everything in its passage, carried several feet of water into the town. The second swept still further ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... thrown to the ground; and then Guir's heart sank, never to rise again. Stepping across the threshold of the room, candle in hand, a vision of blood swam before his eyes, and the dimly-burning light revealed the horror-stricken faces of his murdered family. Not one was left to tell the tale, but the story pictured before him was unmistakable in every detail. The treacherous natives had first tortured and then butchered them. For a time he stood transfixed with horror, unable to ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... out by his finger, think better of it, and tacitly schedule it among those who, though blessed with all recognized good qualities, he did not think suitable for his purpose. But as he drew near to the end of the list, he was horror-stricken to observe how many names he had been obliged to pass over in silence, and drops of honest sweat began to congregate on his forehead as the index finger left ever more and more names behind it—the names of people whom he always treated with the most awful ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... this outburst shrank back from before it. The kneeling candidates bowed lower. I myself stood as one in a fearful dream, while the horror-stricken people half rose within their pews, bending forward as they gazed at ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... her arm roughly through his, never noticing how pale the girl's face was, how horror-stricken were her eyes. He wanted to bathe himself, and her, and Valentine, in this crowd that influenced him and that he helped to influence. He felt as the diver feels, who, when he plunges, has a sacred passion for the depths. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... tried to wash off a bloodstain!" said the young Count, in a horror-stricken whisper. "The guilty man had polluted the pure water. The nymph might have comforted him in sorrow, but could not cleanse ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Burt was so horror-stricken at the sight of the girl whom he imagined that he had murdered, that he lay grovelling on the railway lines by the side of his victim, moaning with terror, and incapable of any resistance. He was ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... delegation, Bravida, Pascalon, Excourbanies, piled upon the back seat, pale, horror-stricken, ghastly, and two gendarmes in front of them, muskets in hand! The sight of all those profiles, motionless and mute, visible through the narrow frame of the carriage window, was like a nightmare. Nailed ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... of it," she said. "Poor old Jernington! He is horror-stricken. Bury St. Edmunds has been his farthest beat till now except for his year in Germany. Claudie, he loves the opera or he would never have consented to come. I felt it was a test. The opera, the child, has stood it triumphantly. I love old Jernington. And he is a first-rate ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... his head silently. Then, turning his face to the door, he beckoned Tufnell to approach. The old servant advanced tremblingly into the room, vainly endeavouring to compose his horror-stricken face into a semblance of the impassive mask ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... on, till, one night, Agnes was horror-stricken to find that Miss Glenn was endeavoring to climb out of the window. As I have said, they were in the third story of the building; and the distance to the ground being very great, the unfortunate girl would inevitably have been dashed to ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... words came with a shriek of anguish from the lips of the elder woman and were echoed by a scream from beyond. In an instant, wild-eyed, horror-stricken, Emilie Lascelles had sprung to her ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... but I am not quite sure that I should have noticed it if I had not known his story. He spoke not a word, and met nobody's eye, but kept staring upward into the smoky vacancy towards the ceiling, where, it might be, he beheld a continual portraiture of his victim's horror-stricken agonies. I rather fancy, however, that his moral sense was yet too torpid to trouble him with such remorseful visions, and that, for his own part, he might have had very agreeable reminiscences of the soldier's death, if other eyes had not been bent reproachfully ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... came a minister of God, whose youthful face, pale and horror-stricken, yet all alight with heavenly pity and love, I can never forget. Tenderly he bent above these dying men, his trembling lips touched by divine inspiration, whispering words precious to parting souls. Unshrinkingly he performed his mission ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... since their examination was conducted in a harsh and unfeeling manner, and many of them were accused and constantly being punished, one of the pontifices, Helvius Agrippa, could not endure it, but, horror-stricken, expired there in the senate where he sat. [Domitian also took pride in the fact that he did not bury alive, as was the custom, the virgins he found guilty of debauchery, but ordered them to be killed by some ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... at all the light in which the archdeacon wished that the matter should be regarded. He had been desirous that Lady Lufton should be horror-stricken by the tidings, but it seemed to him that she regarded the iniquity almost as a good joke. What did it matter how young or how old the girl might be? She came of poor people,—of people who had no friends,—of disgraced people; and Lady Lufton ought to feel that such a marriage would be a terrible ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Poor Jingo! and we may add, poor Mrs. Jingo! for a favorite brood of the finest fowls in the country had been exterminated by the chivalrous young Triangle, and in the bloom of his heroic act he dropped the dead game at the feet of his horror-stricken mother, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... regard as the greater: The only-begotten Son of God, or that helpless image?" And he flung the pieces of the broken crucifix down on the table round which they were sitting. Then, as though horror-stricken at his own daring act, he fell on his knees, raised his eyes and hands in prayer, and gathering up the broken image, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... terrible than they had even shown toward De Launay, or the guards at Versailles. They tore his body to pieces, and, having cut off his head, compelled his wife to kiss the scarcely cold lips, and then left her fainting on the pavement still covered with his blood. Even La Fayette was horror-stricken at such brutality. It was the only occasion on which he did his duty during the whole progress of the Revolution. He came down with a company of the National Guard, dispersed the rioters, seized the ruffian who ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... greatness and productivity when men should have learned how to subdue it, was broken or changed. His mind was of the same bent, but circumstances had revised his plans. There was with him always, even in his dreams, a white, horror-stricken face looking at him in the pain of accusation, repulsion, complete abhorrence, where he stood ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... presently a servant admitted them, and, whispering something in Sarah's ear, drew her downstairs into the kitchen. The other Ruggleses stood in horror-stricken groups as the door closed behind their commanding officer; but there was no time for reflection, for a voice from above was heard, saying, ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... which the savages waged with each other, the hostile parties would pursue their victims even into the houses of the English, and cut them down before the eyes of the horror-stricken women and children. In a very dry time the Indians set fire to the woods all around the town of Milford, hoping thus to set fire to the town. With the greatest difficulty the inhabitants rescued their ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... over-practising when they weren't fit to practise, and that if I didn't stop, all I'd ever be able to do would be to play in the second row of violins—(not even the first!)—at a pantomime. That shrivelled me up into silence. Horror-stricken silence. Then he got kind again, and said I had this precious gift—God, he said, alone knew why I had got it, I a woman; what, he asked, staring prawnishly, is the good of a woman's having such a stroke of luck?—and ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... night. From out of the gloom the tents gleamed ghostly white. It was so still that she could hear the footsteps of the sentries as they made their rounds. With the faint streaking of the dawn came a sound that caused her to flee, horror-stricken, to her room. For the sound was that of hammering. The gallows was ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... emotions; he had opened the door which was nearest to the entrance and he had beckoned to the sergeant to follow him. At that moment there arrived Dr. Wood, a brisk and capable general practitioner from the village. The three men entered the fatal room together, while the horror-stricken butler followed at their heels, closing the door behind him to shut out the terrible scene ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand. Even though they knew nothing ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... the king stood where he was, horror-stricken at what he had heard; but, being of a hopeful nature, he began at once to invent plans to save the prince from the dreadful doom that awaited him. He instantly sent for his master builder, and bade him construct ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... as quietly as possible, and then his glance meeting Theo's, she broke into a little burst of horror-stricken self-reproach. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to make some appropriate remarks. Sanin, who always says exactly what he thinks, and abhors all forms of hypocrisy, delivers the following funeral oration—heartily endorsed by the reader—in one sentence: "The world has now one blockhead the less." The horror-stricken consternation of his friends fills Sanin with such scorn that he leaves the town, and we last see him in an open field in the country, giving a glad shout of recognition ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... collapse of the balloon bag. It seemed to shrivel like a bit of burned paper, and the structure below it fell like a stone into the ocean, carrying with it the man who had remained on it. Of the other, the one who had climbed the bag, not a trace could be seen. Even as the onlookers gazed horror-stricken at the sudden blotting out of the dirigible before their eyes the loud roar of the explosion of its superheated ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... this that one of his legs was shorter than the other. Yet, in spite of everything, this fraction of a man was so agile that he anticipated all the others and was the first to courteously kiss the hand of the descending lady, who shrank back horror-stricken at the contact ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... edge of this inferno. He was cold, famished, horror-stricken. Like a flash in a pan the mechanism which had rocked the earth and dislocated its axis had blown out; and there was now nothing left to tell the story, for its inventor had flashed out with it into eternity. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... pass. At Argentine, Winton's speed was a mile a minute over a track rougher than a corduroy wagon-road; yet the octopod held the rail and was neck and neck with the runaway. Whisking past the station, Winton had a glimpse of a white-mustached old man standing bareheaded on the platform and gazing horror-stricken at the tableau; then man and station and lurching car were left behind, and the fierce strife to gain the needed mile of ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... was begging him not to be very angry with her; and then when he said her name she gave that little cry as if she had recognized herself, and stole away. He lived that moment over and over again, and she never seemed to be horror-stricken until he cried "Grizel!" when her recognition of herself made her scream. It was as if she had wakened up, dazed by the terrible things that were being said, and then, by the light of that one word "Grizel," suddenly knew who had been listening ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... exposed him. Although he did not allude to the matter to us with whom he was not familiar, the powerful impression made upon him by these events in Berlin was very obvious, and I felt that in William II. I saw a man who, for the first time in his life, with horror-stricken eyes, looked upon the world as it really was. He saw brutal reality in close proximity. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he felt his position on his throne to be a little insecure. He forgot his lesson too quickly. Had the overwhelming ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... mercy on my daughter!" exclaimed Haviland, in a piteous burst of anguish, as he sprang out of the sleigh among the company, who, with horror-stricken looks, stood on the bank mutely gazing on the fast receding form of the luckless maiden, thus left behind, to be borne away, in all ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... forward horror-stricken, and although she tried to call she did not hear her voice above the confusion; Oliveta clutched ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... addressing the smith and two horror-stricken ploughmen, "I hef seen him, and he hass withstood me on the road. It wass late, and I wass thinking on the shepherd and the sheep, and Satan will come out from the wood below Hillocks' farm-house ('Gude preserve us,' from Hillocks) and say, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... forward, however, the woman divined his purpose and leapt wildly to her feet. She sprang straight in front of him, screaming and gesticulating. She was plainly horror-stricken at the thought that the two men should venture into the perils from which she had so hardly escaped. To Grom's keen intelligence her gestures were eloquent. She managed to convey to him the idea of great numbers, and the impossibility ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... lift our hearts to God in prayer before venturing to lift the curtain and disclose even a faint outline of the reign of terror now instituted over poor, horror-stricken Chinese women of the humbler ranks of life at Hong Kong. But, in order that we may understand the conditions under which the slave women coming to our Pacific Coast have lived in times past, the recital is necessary. Happy for us if we never needed ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... jumped at the bar and the prison which had haunted him for long. Somehow it felt natural that such a Nemesis should come to him after the morning's triumph. He stood looking after the Curate, guilty and horror-stricken, till it occurred to him that he might be remarked; and then he made a circuit past Elsworthy's shop-window as far as the end of Prickett's Lane, where he ventured to cross over so as to get to his own house. His own house!—the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... whirled him towards the sala. The man would have fallen but for Kit who caught him, but could not save the crash of his head against the door. Blood streamed from a cut in his forehead, and thus he staggered into the room where Dona Jocasta stood, horror-stricken and poised ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... reached, Eve hastens to Adam, and volubly explains that the tree is not what God depicted, for the serpent, having tasted of its fruit, has been endowed with eloquence so persuasive that he has induced her to taste it too. Horror-stricken, Adam wails his wife is lost; then he wonders how he will be able to exist without her, and is amazed to think she should have yielded to the very first onslaught of their foe. But, after this first outburst ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... heard Don Diego's outcries; at close quarters now they beheld with horror-stricken eyes his plight. From amongst them a comely, olive-skinned stripling, distinguished in bearing and apparel from his companions, started forward with an anguished ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... had set, and the twilight of evening was closing around them, when some sixty sailors, under the officer second in command, landed, and, without opposition, entered the Fort. The veteran sailors, accustomed to blood and carnage, were horror-stricken as they viewed the scene before them. They were accompanied, however, by some twenty slaveholders, all anxious for their prey. These paid little attention to the dead and dying, but anxiously seized upon the living, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... fifteen miles," said Mrs. Bradley, glancing horror-stricken at her cousin. "How dreadful! And to think Jim could have sent you a horse to Lone Pine. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... of this, he felt horror-stricken with himself at allowing the idea of his becoming a suitor to another to dwell for an instant on his mind, and looking up with all the resolution which he was able to summon, he said—'It's impossible, Alaric, quite impossible! I couldn't ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... public-school boys. To find that her protege was an uneducated working man, who had entirely misconstrued the nature of her interest in him, and evidently imagined that she had written him a love-letter, made poor Marjorie turn hot and cold. She was essentially a thorough little lady, and was horror-stricken at the false position in which her impulsive act had ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... came from Cressingham. With dilated, horror-stricken eyes and panting breath he was turned into stone. The wretched man's silence at last broke up the depths of his maddened tormentor's hatred, and with a bound he sprang to his feet and raised his ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... searched the dark, high-boned face with horror-stricken eyes, but could see no sign of death on it, or any great change after seventeen years, except a more unearthly mournfulness in the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... was half-way through the addition of a column of figures when I heard some one say, "Well, by time!" with such anguished fervor that it was almost like a prayer for help. I looked up. Lute Rogers was staring in at me, open-mouthed and horror-stricken. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... been accomplished, the good-will of the people themselves has been secured. They are outspoken in their appreciation of what has been done for them and in their expression of the wish that American rule should continue. They would be horror-stricken at the thought of being turned ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... earth; when I saw that I was writing a discord instead of a harmony, I threw down my pen and shut up my Bible. The shock of doubt was, however only momentary. I quickly recognised it as a temptation of the devil, and I shrank back horror-stricken and penitent for the momentary lapse of faith. I saw that these apparent contradictions were really a test of faith, and that there would be no credit in believing a thing in which there were no difficulties. Credo ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... Mum," called Mr. Coffin to the horror-stricken woman, who stood contemplating the spot where a convulsive floundering and heaving beneath the snow showed that the frozen element had not yet extinguished the fire of passion in the breasts of the buried heroes,—"come right along, and don't be scaart of them young uns. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... While I gazed horror-stricken, scarce understanding what had taken place, a man rushed past me in his bathing clothes, running out to where the water was deep enough to float him, and striking out rapidly from there. I could not recognize him in that dress, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... stood with my eyes riveted on the horror-stricken face on the floor, Kennedy had been quietly going over the furniture and carpet about ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... was found there anon by those who so tardily rode after their leader, and his dismayed troopers bore those poor remains to Viana. The king, arriving there that very day, horror-stricken at the news and sight that awaited him, ordered Cesare a magnificent funeral, and so he was laid to rest before the High Altar of Sainte ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... work of a few seconds: a few more and Caracas would have been a heap of ruins, as in the earthquake of 1812. But even in these short moments we had time, horror-stricken and pallid with terror as we were, to cry out, "An earthquake! an earthquake!"—to seize upon our European friend, who did not seem to realize the danger, to drag him from the chair which he was just about to take, I pushing him before me, while my sister pulled him by the arm down the long drawing-room ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... a few yards of the side of a fat sleek animal, and slowly raised his pistol. The trappers held their breath, and Bertram uttered a low groan of anxiety. One moment more and a white puff was followed by a loud crack, and a bellow, as the horror-stricken buffaloes tossed up their heels and fled wildly from the spot, leaving one of their number in the agonies of death upon ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... The door stood half open, but drifted full of snow to within little more than a foot of the top. Into the low opening the child dived head first, like a rabbit, crept behind the door, and fell upon the snow, gasping, too horror-stricken to make any outcry. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... table, and holding him upright turned to the door. He saw "the pretty girl" leaning over the banister and gazing with horror-stricken eyes into the room. Sylvia drew back on the instant. With a gesture of his hand, Archie Parminter stopped Barstow on ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Rees only after a further useless struggle. Dredlinton, who had been speechless for the last few seconds, gazed with horror-stricken eyes at the third chair. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never would, if she were free to-morrow. "What means your letter, then?" said the despairing lover. "I will show you!" replied Ambrosia, who immediately uncovered her bosom, and exposed to the eyes of her horror-stricken admirer, a large cancer, which had extended to both breasts. She saw that he was shocked; and, extending her hand to him, she prayed him once more to lead a religious life, and set his heart upon the Creator, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... work for it. So then she would give a great sigh of relaxed nervous tension and go back to her heroine and the Indians and the mysterious footsteps that marched on moonlight nights up and down a long porch just outside windows that frequently framed white, scared faces with wide, horror-stricken eyes which saw nothing of the marcher, though the steps still ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... he muttered in a thrilling whisper that penetrated to every part of the vast hall—"Wilt force me to drink blood?" He paused,—and in the same low, horror-stricken tone, continued. "Blood ... Blood! It stains the earth and sky! ... its red, red waves swallow up the land! ... The heavens grow pale and tremble,—the silver stars blacken and decay, and the winds of the desert make lament for that which shall come to pass ere ever ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... wholly gone; and they were unseeingly, staringly set with horror. Her breast heaved with a sharply drawn breath; her hands groped and felt for something to hold; her body trembled. Suddenly she sat up. She was not weak. Her motions were violent. The dazed, horror-stricken eyes roved around, but ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... a horror-stricken little cry of fear and stood motionless. She could not run. The fascination of terror held her paralyzed. Her heart died away in her while the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... Horror-stricken, she saw the king of beasts open his mighty jaws and seize the screaming creature by the back of its neck. The great jaws closed, there was an instant's struggle as Numa shook his prey. She could hear ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of sorrow and perplexity, and Meta, as she went down before him, asked, in a low, horror-stricken whisper, "Did Preston really—" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... of faults, but untruthfulness isn't one of them. I confessed everything—at least, almost everything. I didn't tell about the telescopes and deaf-mute alphabet, and Aunt was too horror-stricken to think of asking how I first made Mr. Shelmardine's acquaintance. She listened in stony silence. I had expected a terrible scolding, but I suppose my crimes simply seemed to her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hope beamed within my heart, but in a second, like a scene beheld by the light of heaven's fire, the sight of that horror-stricken, blood-stained face was with me. I could read again every line and tint of it, and I knew it too well to ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... girl rose, her hand upon her breast, wide eyes staring horror-stricken into the snarling face of the beast scarce ten feet from her. At her feet lay the prostrate form of the Negress. If she could but arouse her, their combined efforts might possibly avail to beat back the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fallen in ages past from the cliffs above, blocked her path, and mechanically the girl reined Freckles around it. An instant later the horse stopped of his own accord, and the girl found herself staring down with horror-stricken eyes at the body of a man stretched out on the further side of the boulders. Motionless he lay there, a long length of brown chaps and torn, disordered shirt. His face was hidden in his crooked arms; the tumbled mass of brown ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... turn the high priest's question in another direction: 'What further need have we of witnesses?' These horror-stricken judges, rending their garments in simulated grief and zeal, and that silent Prisoner, knowing that His life was the forfeit of His claims, yet saying no word of softening or explanation of them, may teach us much. They are witnesses to some of the central facts of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various |
