"Monstrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from one side only. You have surely been abiding in a city. The interior of your house is all that concerns you or your family. The outside—French roof and fashionable finish, forsooth!—is for the public to admire. They are not to have any intimation what sort of a home is sheltered by your monstrous Mansard; and it never occurs to you that there can be anything out of doors worth building ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. 'I'll show him what money can do!' Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate's—spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name—I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. 'I can guarantee to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... elsewhere is against its whole spirit, and, in the present state of public sentiment, against its very letter. Originally, as is well known, it was not proposed to protect at all, under the General Government, property so monstrous, except as it became necessary as a compromise, in order to secure a union. But the provision of the Constitution that the slave-trade should be abolished, the absolute power given to Congress to make all laws for the Territories, the spirit of the preamble, the principles of the Declaration, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... arabesques! Here at Chateau Desir, in the panelling of the old hall, might you see fantastic scrolls, separated by bodies ending in termini, and whose heads supported the Ionic volute, while the arch, which appeared to spring from these capitals, had, for a keystone, heads more monstrous than those of the fabled animals of Ctesias; or so ludicrous, that you forgot the classic griffin in the grotesque conception of the Italian artist. Here was a gibbering monkey, there a grinning pulcinello; now you viewed a chattering devil, which might have figured in the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... clustering ringlets concealed under a pumpkin-shaped wig, looked so much the lady of fashion that you might have wondered what she was doing in that fantastic rabble. Madame, as the mother, was also dressed with splendour, but exaggerated to achieve the ridiculous. Her headdress was a monstrous structure adorned with flowers, and superimposed by little ostrich plumes. Columbine sat facing them, her back to the horses, falsely demure, in milkmaid bonnet of white muslin, and a striped gown of green ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... than that of many another man, had found him out. He had done wrong. He admitted it, but this monstrous judgment on him was out of all proportion to his offence. And, like some malignant infectious disease, retribution would fall, not on him alone, but on those nearest him, on his innocent mother and sister. It was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... no more regard for him than had he been one of the house's lackeys. She was, he observed, of middle-age, lean and aquiline-featured, with an exaggerated chin, that ended squarely as boot. Her sallow cheeks were raddled to a hectic color, a monstrous head-dress—like that of some horse in a lord mayor's show—coiffed her, and her dress was a mixture of extravagance and incongruity, the petticoat ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Monstrous things are done in Paris. The future of a province depends on the mere signature of men who (through intrigues I have no time to explain to you) often stop the execution of useful and much-needed work; in fact, the best plans are often those which offer most to the cupidity ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the tips of their horns "are sometimes found to be two fathoms asunder,"—and he is particular to tell us that a fathom is six feet,—"and [they are] in height, from the toe of the forefoot to the pitch of the shoulder, twelve foot, both which hath been taken by some of my sceptique readers to be monstrous lies"; and he adds,—"There are certain transcendentia in every creature, which are the indelible character of God, and which discover God." This is a greater dilemma to be caught in than is presented by the cranium ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... what can not be attacked. Thus, for instance, a thing that is evident, you understand me, is unassailable, . . . or else it should be assailed, . . in short, it can not be attacked. That is why it is monstrous to allow the Jewish religion and the Protestant religion in France, because these religions can be assailed, for they have no dogma. I give you this briefly, but in your prayer-book you will find the list of dogmas. I am a rod of iron as regards dogmas. My husband, who, as I said, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... who are so innocent, so exquisite in your spiritual organization, so brave and noble that you can face this awful fear in your devotion to those you love—you by ceasing to breathe merely would sink to precisely the same level and be no different from the lifeless clay of the villain. Such monstrous injustice is impossible; it outrages every instinct of justice, every particle of reason that ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... a "bad spirit" in the form of a monstrous black spider. He inhabits fens and marshes and lies in wait for his prey. At night he often lights a torch (evidently the ignis fatuus or Jack-a-lantern) and swings it on the marshes to decoy the unwary into ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... have had enough of motion, Weariness and wild alarm, Tossing on the tossing ocean, Where the tusked sea-horse walloweth In a stripe of grass-green calm, At noontide beneath the lee; And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth His foam-fountains in the sea. Long enough the wine-dark wave our weary bark did carry. This is lovelier and sweeter, Men of Ithaca, this is meeter, In the hollow rosy vale to tarry, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... acted as she did, though they could not possibly excuse her evil conduct in the eyes of righteous persons like the Senator and others of his class, who would have thought it a monstrous and unnatural thing that a noble Venetian girl should fall in love with a music-master, though he were the most talented and famous musician of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... cellular structure, their laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences. We see this even in so trifling a fact as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak tree. With all organic beings, excepting perhaps some of the very lowest, sexual reproduction seems to be essentially similar. With all, as far as is at present known, the germinal vesicle ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... (Dillingham's own words.) The prisoner is clearly guilty. Why, the fellow practically confesses it. We ought to put some stop to the killing and general rascality up there in the settlement. Our section is fast becoming a monstrous blot on the fair name of the Commonwealth! (Dillingham again.) What is there left for us to do but carry out the law? What is there left for——' My voice died away weakly. Something in the Colonel's face effectually ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... royal mint, and the farming of the revenues of the kingdom. Ingots of gold, pretending to have come from the new Eldorado of Louisiana, were displayed in the shop-windows of Paris. The fever of speculation rose to madness, and the shares of the company were inflated to monstrous and ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... to claim a fraud, especially because the same witnesses who testify to the truth of the tale, also relate such monstrous, incredible stories, that one is almost forced to doubt either their integrity or their sanity. But there is no evidence in support of so serious an indictment. After showing that signs and portents attend every crisis in ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... chief attention, however, to Big Waller. He "caught" that gigantic Yankee in every conceivable action and attitude. He photographed him, we might almost say, with his legs apart, the hatchet high above his head, and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to delineate him tumbling over one of the logs, and hurling a shoulder-load upon the ground; but he failed utterly in the last attempt, being quite destitute of comical perception, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... other measures than those adopted by the wisdom of His Imperial Majesty. Is it then justifiable, to suffer the engagements which produced such results to be evaded and set at nought? Still more monstrous—decrees have been passed, both by the Auditor of Marine and the Court of Admiralty, to punish the captors for the execution of their duty, and by means of pains and penalties to deter them from the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... says that he heard this from trustworthy people whom he was constrained to believe. Satan is pleased when he can deceive us in this manner, by assuming the form either of a young man or a young woman. But that anything may be begotten by a devil and a human being is simply false. We hear of monstrous births of demon-like features, and I have even seen some. I am of opinion, however, that they have been deformed by the devil, but not begotten: or that they are real devils with a human body either simulated or purloined. For if the devil, by divine permission, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... platform, that they are chargeable with an equal and common ignorance: the third, in ignoring the necessity of the presence of the military at the elections referred to, in order that disloyalty and treason might not openly defy the authority of the nation; the fifth, in ignoring two things, first, the monstrous baseness of the rebel treatment of our prisoners, who have been starved alive, with a refinement of cruelty reserved for this Christian age, and practised only by the Christian chivalry of the South; and secondly, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... affairs impossible. Surely somewhere, through some legal form, Judge Beaucaire had guarded the future safety of this young woman, whom he had admitted into his household. Any other conception seemed impossible, too monstrous, too preposterous for consideration. But now the solemn words of the lawyer, his own legal counselor, brought conviction, and for the moment all power of speech deserted me. It was actually true then—the girl was a slave, a thing belonging to Kirby. Nothing broke the stillness ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... an Indian myth: Once on a time Vishnu absorbed in rapture (introversion) bore in this sleep Brahma, who enthroned on a lotus flower, arose from Vishnu's navel and was carrying the Vedas, eagerly reading them. (Birth of creative thought from introversion.) Because of Vishnu's rapture, however, a monstrous flood overcame the world (swallowing up through introversion, symbolizing the danger of entering into the mother of death). A demon profiting by the danger, stole the vedas from Brahma and hid them in the deep. (Swallowing ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... lad,' said Major Trenton, laughing, ''tis a monstrous fine joke, anyway, and, faith, I sent one of the copies to the Governor himself. 'Twill amuse ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... marvelled that the dead woman remained so calm, her eyes so still, when—if indeed Jupiter had been aroused by the monstrous sacrilege—she must now be facing the terrors ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... so terrible as another thing that our startled eyes beheld there," said De Beauxchamps. "Coiled round the upper part of the arch, with its head resting directly upon that of the figure of which you speak, was a monstrous, ribbon-shaped creature, whose flat, reddish body, at least a meter in width and apparently thirty meters long, and bordered with a sort of floating frill of a pinkish color, undulated with a motion that turned ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... stupid, mischievous, evil and cunning in Saxo's eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, monstrous in extravagant vitality. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... BELIN. O monstrous filthy fellow! good slovenly Captain Huffe, Bluffe (what is your hideous name?) be gone: you stink of brandy and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... replied Miss Jennett, 'how can you say so? when you know that you struck me first, and that yours was the great blow, and mine the little tap; for I only went to defend myself from your monstrous blows.' ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurp The dominations, royalties, and rights Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's son Infortunate in nothing but ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... two or three days from her loved friend. Even to her eyes they looked beautiful. The girl of the period, when she writes to her friend, usually dips the handle of her sunshade in a basin of ink, and scrawls characters monstrous in size and form, an insult to the paper-maker's art and shocking to man's aesthetic feelings. Now from the first Fan had spontaneously written a small hand, with fine web-like lines and flourishes, which gave it a very curious ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... a tragedy, the sardonic humor, which caused the German General Staff to impose this monstrous fine upon Belgium for its "violation of neutrality," would have the tragi-comical aspects of Bedlam. It recalls the fable of the wolf who complained that the lamb was muddying the stream and when the lamb politely called the wolf's attention to the fact that ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... passage, which they saw ended in a big hall lit with lamps. Now they were in it and Alan became aware that they had entered the treasure house of the Asiki, since here were piled up great heaps of gold, gold in ingots, gold in nuggets, in stone jars filled with dust, in vessels plain or embossed with monstrous shapes in fetishes and in little squares and discs that looked as though they had served as coins. Never had he seen so ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... this gallant prince who had won the affection of such great guests as Apollo and Heracles, and yet went round asking other people to die for him; who, in particular, accepted his wife's monstrous sacrifice with satisfaction and gratitude? The play portrays him well. Generous, innocent, artistic, affectionate, eloquent, impulsive, a good deal spoilt, unconsciously insincere, and no doubt fundamentally selfish, he hates the ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... their villages were destroyed, and the inhabitants fled to regions at that time unexplored; and there are traditions among the existing Pueblos that the canons were these lands. The Spanish conquerors had a monstrous greed for gold and a lust for saving souls. "Treasure they must have—if not on earth why, then, in heaven—and when they failed to find heathen temples bedecked with silver they propitiated Heaven by seizing the heathen themselves. There is yet extant a copy of a record made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the boy; "it's a monstrous big wood they've got to pass through before they can come here, so we have time to look at some of ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... a slight noise behind him. Somewhat startled, he turned around to find himself face to face with a monstrous ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... Murphy. "We're going through the gate." He punched the button on his camera and passed under the monstrous portal. ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... name. Yet if there were no other remedy but eyther thou must lacke the one or the other, whether had you rather haue a fowle and deformed face or elles for Boniface be called Maleface or horner? Boni. Beleue me I had rather be called fowle Thersites then haue a monstrous or a deformyed face, whether I haue a good face or no ||I can not tell. Bea. And euen so had I for yf I were ryche and there were no remedy but that I must eyther forgoo my rychesse, or my name I had rather be called Irus whiche was a ...
— Two Dyaloges (c. 1549) • Desiderius Erasmus
... noticed Gulliver coming wading through the water towards their ships, the Blefuscan sailors all jumped overboard and swam ashore in a terrible fright. Never before had any of them seen or dreamt of so monstrous a giant, nor had they heard of his ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... of Beauty, Bride is she of thine hereafter, Fit companion of thy fireside, Help and joy of all thy lifetime." On the floor a child was sitting, And the babe this tale related. "There appeared within this dwelling, Came a bird within the castle, From the East came flying hither, From the East, a monstrous eagle, One wing touched the vault of heaven, While the other swept the ocean; With his tail upon the waters, Reached his beak beyond the cloudlets, Looked about, and eager watching, Flew around, and sailing, soaring, Flew away to hero-castle, Knocked ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... (Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.) The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year, The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear. He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery; They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark; And above ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... man, calmly making plans for a cruise in his society? I'm sure that if a palmist had contrived to capture Phil's virtuous little hand, and foretold any such events, my stepsister would have considered them as impossible as monstrous. Nevertheless, she now accepted the arrangements Fate made for her, as quietly as the air she breathed; for was not the figure of our future chaperon already hovering in the background, title and old Scotch blood and all, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... greatest effort this monstrous injustice was in some degree remedied last winter, by getting the facts before the Legislature, in spite of a most determined opposition from those who had fattened for years on the spoils of poor Marshpee. In all but one ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... then a more enlarged constituency, for the borough system of England, the idea of Lafayette would be completely fulfilled. The reform in England, itself, is quite likely to demonstrate that his scheme was not as monstrous as has been affirmed. The throne of France should be occupied as Corsica is occupied, not for the affirmative good it does the nation, so much as to prevent harm from its being ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... deputation to the Romans requesting that a new land might be given them, as they were quite driven out of their country by these animals, being no longer able to stand against their vast multitudes." The seacoast on the Atlantic side abounds in fish, says Strabo. "The congers are quite monstrous, far surpassing in size those of Our Sea. Shoals of rich fat tunny fish are driven hither from the seacoast beyond. They feed on the fruit of stunted oak, which grows at the bottom of the sea and produces very large acorns. So great is the quantity ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... The skiff had entered a narrow creek, arched over by huge trees, and looking as dark and gloomy as the rest of the lake was fair and smiling. It was closed in by a high overhanging bank, crested by two tall trees, whose tangled roots protruded through it like monstrous reptiles, while their branches cast a heavy shade over the deep, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... were lying on our backs thus, Madame, when we heard the nightingale. "Duke," says I, "it is early yet for the nightingale." His Flutiness removes his cap from his face, takes a squint at the sun, and says "Monstrous early, good Master Johannes," and claps his cap back again. "What says you, Fiddler," says I, "in this matter of nightingales? Is it possible," says I; "the sun being where it is, and nightingales being what they are—to wit, nightingales?" "It's not a nightingale," says Fiddler dreamily, "it's a ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... this perverted wretch speaking as if he had been cheated out of love was so remarkable, so pitiful, so monstrous, that for a moment ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... an idea so monstrous, so inconceivable, that of Leonard Astier-Rehu 'taking his fling,' that his wife could not help smiling in spite of herself. No, on that point she thought there was no need for uneasiness. 'Only, you know, he has turned suspicious and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... 'Oh, monstrous slander on the human race!' Then read conviction in Ortuno's case. By Nature fashion'd in her happiest mood, With learning, fancy, keenest wit endued; To what high purpose, what exalted end These ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... moccasins—seemed to increase his size. His vast shoulders, chest and arms were covered with paint, and the scars of old wounds, the whole giving to him the appearance of some primeval giant, sinister and monstrous. He carried a fine, new rifle of French make and two double barreled pistols; a tomahawk and knife ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of your mind Shows only faint disturbing images, Things passing strange, as if enchanted seas Kept their great swell upon it, and strange fish Played in its oily depths. Some monstrous wish, The shadow of some unspeakable desire, Strikes my heart cold, and sets ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... the air and emitting Toad-whoops that chilled them to the marrow! "Toad he went a-pleasuring!" he yelled. "I'll pleasure 'em!" and he went straight for the Chief Weasel. They were but four in all, but to the panic-stricken weasels the hall seemed full of monstrous animals, grey, black, brown and yellow, whooping and flourishing enormous cudgels; and they broke and fled with squeals of terror and dismay, this way and that, through the windows, up the chimney, anywhere to get out of ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... rules the state of things, Reward goes backwards, Honor on his head, Who is not poore is monstrous; only Need Gives forme and worth to every humane seed. As cedars beaten with continuall stormes, 5 So great men flourish; and doe imitate Unskilfull statuaries, who suppose (In forming a Colossus) if they make him ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... have shown the doctrine of matter to have been the main support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreligion. All these monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on this supposed material substance that, when this cornerstone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the effort of memory. So my eyes went back to my grandfather in the window. His face was now become black as Scipio's, and he wore a red turban and a striped cotton gown that was too large for him. And he was sewing. This was monstrous! ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... natives had leaped up into the trees and discharged their spears from above, while others, crouching behind fallen trees or bushes, threw them from below, so that in a few seconds dozens of spears entered their bodies at every conceivable angle, and they appeared as if suddenly transformed into monstrous porcupines or hedgehogs. There was something almost ludicrous in this, but the magnitude and aspect of the animals were too terrible, and our danger was too imminent, to permit anything like comic ideas to enter our brains. I observed, too, that the natives were ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... convenience. It won't last long now; there is talk in the committee of "mending or ending it." It shows the long-suffering nature of the poor blind players at this compulsory game of national football that they should ever for one moment permit so monstrous an assumption—permit the idea that one single player may wield a substantive voice and vote to outweigh tens of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the guests happened to have a particularly large nose, the fool said out loud: 'What a terrible nose that gentleman has got!' So all the family pretended not to hear, and were rather uncomfortable, and when the fool saw that, he said: 'How I lied when I said that gentleman's nose was monstrous; now I come to look at it I really think it's rather a small nose!' Well, of course, no one could help laughing after that, and they all went off into peals of merriment, even the poor ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... part of it I had turf underfoot; but where this ended and the rock began, I had to leave the barrow behind. It was ticklish work, climbing down; for footing had to be found, and Lydia was a monstrous weight. Pah! how fat she was and clumsy—lolling this way and that! Besides, the bag hampered me. But I reached the foot at last, and after a short rest clambered out along the ridge as fast as I could. I was sick ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 105.—The Afrite, for it was one of those dread beings. Beings of a monstrous form, the most terrible of all the orders of ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... support any religion; and it has, in fact, been cheerfully undergone by enthusiasts and zealots of all religions, in testimony of the firm belief of the sufferers not only in the absurdities of Popery, and Brachinanism, but of every, even the most monstrous system that ever disgraced the human understanding. There have been martyrs for ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... external began to intrude. She pictured to herself what the darkness was hiding. Her feelings when first she came down into the place returned on her memory. The tide of terror began again to rise. It rose and rose, and threatened to become monstrous. She reasoned with herself: had she not been brought in safety through its first and most dangerous inroad?—but reason could not outface terror. It was fear, the most terrible of all terrors, that she feared. Then again woke her faith: if the night ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... to want such a monstrous house as that! Well, 'tis a fine place. See, there's the carpenters' shops, the timber-yard, and everything, as if it were a little town. Perhaps Berta may hire me for a job now ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... while to our class a good-looking boy is a most decided asset as a boy to us means a heavy increase of our incomes and of our comforts, and now you tell me that you are anxious to find jobs for these lads whom I could easily train into first-class Road Kids." Slippery, dumfounded at the almost monstrous proposition his comrade made, who was ready and willing to spoil the youngsters' futures by transforming them into common beggars, failed to find an immediate answer, and now Kansas Shorty, abusively speaking, continued: "You, Slippery, have ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... thousand wings, that nearly two thousand years had gone to build, had been tumbled into ruins in a day, and out of the monstrous confusion no fair ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... proposition that Ireland shall manage English affairs, while Ireland is to manage her own without any interference. I should have expected the British workman to processionise about this. I should have thought the British middle-classes would have been up in arms at the bare thought of so monstrous a proposition. And so they would if they thought it would become law. But, like us, they know there will never be any Home Rule. Then, they are not so nervous as we in Ireland are, because they don't know as we do ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... my lord, vary true—and it is monstrous that a mon of your lordship's condition is not entitled to run one of these mechanics through the body, when he is impertinent about his money; but our laws shamefully, on these occasions, make no distinction of persons ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... reading at the other end of the car, gave a nervous start, and looked up in alarm. King and Forbes promptly opened windows, but this gave little relief. The trombone pumped and growled, the trumpet blared, the big brass instrument with a calyx like the monstrous tropical water-lily quivered and howled, and the drum, banging into the discord, smashed every tympanum in the car. The Indians looked pleased. No sooner had they broken one tune into fragments than they took up another, and the car roared and rattled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... thou descend into the depths? An immeasurable abyss is yawning before thee." And the Kabbalists, from whom the above is taken, also speak of four Rabbis; and these four Rabbis sought the secret path to the divine. The first died; the second lost his reason; the third caused monstrous evils, and only the fourth, Rabbi Akiba, went in and out of the ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... against the spheres; swept them over and down into the depths. Hundreds fell, broken—but thousands held their place. I saw them twine about the pillars—writhing columns of interlaced cubes and globes straining like monstrous serpents while all along their coils the open disks and crosses smote with the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... shone on the clearing. And there he saw what seemed to be a troop of monstrous cats, who like huge phantoms marched across the open space in front of the temple. They broke into a wild dance, uttering shrieks, howls, and wicked laughs. Then they all ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... every day from the inn where he lodged to the chateau, towering over the valleys of the Crume and of the Sevre, facing hills excoriated with blocks of granite and overgrown with formidable oaks, whose roots, protruding out of the ground, resembled monstrous ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... familiar one; and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... be a more ridiculous appearance than to see a smart fellow within the compass of five feet immersed in a huge long coat to his heels with cuffs to the arm pits, the shoulders and breast fenced against the inclemencies of the weather by a monstrous cape, or rather short cloak, shoe toes, pointed to the heavens in imitation of the Lap-landers, with buckles of a harnass size? I confess the beaux with their toupee wigs make us extremely merry, and frequently put me in mind of my favorite monkey both in figure and apishness, and were ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as it may, it is certain that the great, fat, short-legged creature, who in her humble and touching ugliness passes a chemise over her lumpy shoulders, is a triumph of art. Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is terrible; Velasquez knew this when he painted ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... reached the habitations of Muhanda, where we no sooner appeared than the poor villagers, accustomed only to rough handling, immediately dispersed in the jungles. By dint of persuasion, however, we induced them to sell us provisions, though at a monstrous rate, such as no merchant could have afforded; and having spent the night quietly, we proceeded on to the upper courses of the M'yombo river, which trends its way northwards to the Mukondokua river. The scenery was most interesting, with every variety of hill, roll, plateau, and ravine, wild ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... upon the east, 220 And sometimes looks on the forbidden west. The horses' names he knew not in the fright: Nor would he loose the reins, nor could he hold them tight. Now all the horrors of the heavens he spies, And monstrous shadows of prodigious size, That, decked with stars, lie scattered o'er the skies. There is a place above, where Scorpio, bent In tail and arms, surrounds a vast extent; In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines, And fills the space of two celestial ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... money and took care to let nobody know what he did with it. To put an end to this reproach Mr. Martin asked that the accounts of the Association should be published. "Publish the accounts!" shrieked the well-paid gang that marred the influence and traded in the politics of O'Connell: "Monstrous!" and they silenced the troublesome purist by suppressing his letters and expelling him from the Association. In the ranks of the Confederates, however, Martin found more congenial society; amongst ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... unfold the awful mysteries of this charnel-house!—Ye must not behold the murdered man who lies rotting in the cellar, nor open the dark dungeon of the deformed child of crime!—'tis the hideous offspring of hideous parents—my child and the Dead Man's! 'Twas a judgement from Heaven, that monstrous being; we dare not kill it, so we shut it up from the light of day. Go hence—go hence, or I will fly at thee and ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems, as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is often treated, both by those who applaud ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... he replied, "A monstrous beast of sorts. But that (meaning the mural on the dome), my friend, is the genetics of history, its code that dictates what it is and what it ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... to see not only Goldilocks but also the Three Bears and they took a remarkable journey through the air to do so. Tommy even rode on a Rocket and met the monstrous Blue Frog. When they arrived at Goldilocks' house they found that the Three Bears had been there before them and mussed everything up, much to Goldilocks' despair. "We must drive those bears out of the country!" said Pa Flyaway. Then they journeyed underground ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... clad in his peasant garb, listened gravely but, glancing distrustfully at the sleeves of my traveling gown which unfortunately at that season were monstrous in size, he took hold of an edge and pulling out one sleeve to an interminable breadth, said quite simply that "there was enough stuff on one arm to make a frock for a little girl," and asked me directly if I did not find "such a dress" a "barrier ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... them, and they settled down to their duty in content. It was agreed upon that in case of any danger or any attack, whether by savages or by wild beasts—for in those parts of the world there might well be monstrous and warlike creatures—they were to make an alarm by blowing upon a horn which we had with us, and by firing a shot. It was to be their task while we were away to prepare a fire for our evening meal. We had our supply of provisions ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... it was necessary to watch this man all the time, and keep him within bounds; it would not do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H., 'knew to his sorrow.' Said he, 'I will not deceive you; he told me such a monstrous lie once, that it swelled my left ear up, and spread it so that I was actually not able to see out around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles to see ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of monstrous, scaly, strange and queer, Has come from out the womb of earliest time, Thou hast, O Barnum, in thy keeping here, Nor is ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... trio Markham had not moved, but his eyes followed the two figures through the rose garden. The moon was suddenly snuffed out and the sea grew lead-color—like a passion that has gone stale. Markham's silhouette loomed monstrous against the sky, and the silence was abruptly broken by the rough laughter of Crosby Downs from somewhere in the distance. Olga ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; 5 while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honor of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired and yearned to show his 10 linen in the fashionable parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... drunken and licentious ecclesiastics really believers? The Prior had blasphemed the Sacrament, and given the prelate a dispensation from hearing confession and celebrating mass in consideration of a fee. That was monstrous, heathenish, and a Satanic abomination. Certainly, but faith itself was a gift bestowed by grace, and if these men had not obtained grace they were guiltless. But they were hardened sinners! Paul again gave the answer ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... by a tubular device, aided by a ratchet apparatus for the strings, assumed gigantic proportions. Petit Patou prevailing, after an almost disastrous fall, perched his great height on chair superimposed on table, and, with his long lean legs and arms, looking like a monstrous and horrible spider, began to work the heavy bow across the long strings. He had rehearsed it to perfection. In performance, something happened. His artist's nerve had gone. His fingers fumbled impotently for the stops. His professional ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... hold each individual soul Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose? Or does thine inextinguishable will Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space With mixing thought—drinking up single life As in a cup? and from the rending folds Of glimmering purpose, do all thy navied stars Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, Hung like a dewdrop ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... to-day is before me, with the printed sheet of the 'Great Metropolis Condsened,' inquiring whether the figures in the paragraph marked 'Licentiousness' can be verified. I have to say that I have nothing in my possession to sustain such monstrous statements. During the past fall I had a careful examination made of the concert saloons in this city, for the purpose of using the result in our annual report; which you will find in the leading dailies of Friday, January 5th, instant. At that time we found eleven hundred and ninety-one ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... about the 'mulligrubs,' in the old yellow letter which contains a lively account of the skirmish, my breath was fairly taken away, and I could see nothing else for more than a minute; and so soon as I was quite myself again, I struck my revising pen across the monstrous sentence, with uncompromising decision, referring it to a clerical blunder, or some unlucky transposition, and I wondered how any polite person could have made so gross a slip. But see how authentication waits upon truth! Three years afterwards, I picked up in the parlour ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... stature of Maximin exceeded the measure of eight feet, and circumstances almost incredible are related of his matchless strength and appetite. [37] Had he lived in a less enlightened age, tradition and poetry might well have described him as one of those monstrous giants, whose supernatural power was constantly exerted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, {131} Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world." ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... a man could bite the giant hand That catches and destroys him, As I was bitten by a rat While demonstrating my patent trap, In my hardware store that day. But a man can never avenge himself On the monstrous ogre Life. You enter the room that's being born; And then you must live work out your soul, Of the cross-current in life Which Bring honor to the dead, who lived ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... the monstrous rent which he made in the robe of common sense, by declaring that he had committed the vilest act of cruelty due to excessive sensitiveness since it represented a murderous act ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... the snowy forest, and a suggestion for a story or two. A few days later, on a commission from McClure's, I was in Pittsburg writing an article on "Homestead and Its Perilous Trades," and the clouds of smoke, the flaming chimneys, the clang of steel, the roar of blast-furnaces and the thunder of monstrous steel rollers made Wisconsin lumber camps idyllic. The serene white peace of West Salem set Pittsburg apart as a sulphurous hell and my description of it became a passionate indictment of an industrial system which could so work and so house its men. The grimy hovels in ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... descended from beast ancestors, but the application of this belief to the explanation of abnormal cannibal cravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The werewolf of the Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man,—he was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the machinations of the Devil, showed its power over his physical organism by changing the shape of it. The barbaric werewolf is the product of a lower and simpler kind of thinking. There is no diabolism about ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... announcing his solicitor's clerk. "Why does not Mr. Harrison come himself?" he was on the point of asking, but amazement at the clerk's appearance took away his breath. He was a shriveled little object, slight, bony, crooked and hideous, with a monstrous head and round eyes, a bald skull, a flat nose, a mouth from ear to ear, and a little jutting paunch that looked like ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... Thus your Buddhism seems to me more mesmeric than satisfying. It is a way men have of murdering themselves, while continuing to live, into peace and oblivion. There is a surrender, a negation of life, a denial of total responsibilities, or human obligations, which to my mind indicates a monstrous selfishness, none the less real because its manifestations are passive and dignified by a philosophic pose. You see I am reading your last two letters by the ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... certain, inevitable, unavoidable; Great Britain would enforce her demands, and the Boers would "never" give way to them. So much was agreed. But the idea of the Free State joining hands with the Transvaal—to stand or fall with it—was ridiculed as a monstrous proposition. England had no quarrel with the Free Staters, and they were not such "thundering fools" as to pick one with England, or to be influenced by shibboleths bearing on the relative thicknesses of blood and water. When, however, we learned how very ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... concerned we are just fodder, something to be eaten as we eat vegetables and cereals or the flesh of domesticated animals. Perhaps they have watched us for years, watching life on the world increase, lapping their monstrous jowls over the fattening of the Earth. They have awaited the proper setting of the banquet table and ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... 'Monstrous, though! monstrous!' pursued the butcher. 'The boys of this town be gettin' past all control. Proper young limbs, I call some ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... abstraction; and spoke to empty space. I cannot help claiming some pity and even respect for the class to which I belonged. I have heard them called all kinds of hard names, hacks, drudges, and something even more contemptible, but the injustice done to them is monstrous. Their wage is hardly earned; it is peculiarly precarious, depending altogether upon their health, and no matter how ill they may be they must maintain the liveliness of manner which is necessary to procure acceptance. I fell in with one poor fellow whose ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... to stay a little girl," cried Primrose eagerly. "I hate a big hoop and a monstrous topknot that pulls my hair, and a bunch of feathers that makes one ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... on you. You will know what I has done on your birthday. You are going to get a most 'licious present, and it will be I who has gived it to you. Sometimes I does wish I was two years older; but Aunt Sophy has got monstrous fond of me, Paulie, and of you, too. I know it. Shall I tell you how I ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... the most monstrous to the most puerile, from that which is hideous to that which is laughable, are stamped with this twofold scheme. For instance, national solemnities bore him. The 24th of February and the 4th of May: these are disagreeable or dangerous reminders, which obstinately return at fixed periods. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... particularly mystical in the effect of the grey, dreamy atmosphere of an arctic night, through whose uncertain medium mountain and headland loom as impalpable as the frontiers of a demon world, and as I kept gazing at the glimmering peaks, and monstrous crags, and shattered stratifications, heaped up along the coast in cyclopean disorder, I understood how natural it was that the Scandinavian mythology, of whose mysteries the Icelanders were ever the natural guardians ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... art lovers. Franz, the son of the house, was the composer's intimate friend. The mother had all possible graciousness and charm, but with it also a passionate pride in her family and her rank, a hauteur that would have caused her to regard an alliance between Therese and Beethoven as monstrous. Therese was an exceptional woman. She had an oval, classic face, a lovely disposition, a pure heart and a finely cultivated mind. The German painter, Peter Cornelius, said of her that any one who spoke with her felt elevated ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In their case the physical distortion is accomplished beneath the whip of interests, beneath the scourge of ambitions which torture the educated portion of this monstrous city, just as in the case of the proletariat it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of the material elaborations perpetually required from the despotism of the aristocratic "I will." Here, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... Leonard," rejoined Grant. "And now to my proposal. I have another plan for your aggrandisement that cannot fail. I am in possession of a monstrous design, the revelation of which will procure you whatever you desire. Ask a title from the king, and he will give it; and when in possession of that title, demand the hand of the Lady Isabella, and her proud brother will not refuse you. Call in ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... this Government the instrument for planting slavery upon soil now free, is regarded by a few at the North as so improbable and monstrous, that they have refused to believe that it is seriously entertained. Startling as the proposal is, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... I withdraw the charges and petition of this Hearing. This is why I reject rejuvenation, and declare that it is a monstrous thing which we must not allow to continue. This is why I now announce that I personally will nominate the Honorable John Tyndall for President in the elections next spring, and will promise him my pledged support, ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... If by some monstrous cataclysm the sun was suddenly extinguished, it is impossible to conceive the misery that would follow. In the event of such a fearful calamity it would require but a very short time to depopulate the earth. We repeat, light is a necessity of ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... was Mary of Guise, a French woman discreetly married to King James of Scotland. Knox always bore a terrible hatred toward Mary of Guise, and all French people for that matter, for his little term in the galleys. Hisbook, "The Monstrous Regiment of Women," had Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, and Mary, Queen of Scots, in mind. Queen Elizabeth paid a compliment to the worth of the author by outlawing him for "his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard |
