"Shocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Josephus, it was any such crime, I am not satisfied. In the mean time, their making their father drunk, and their solicitous concealment of what they did from him, shows that they despaired of persuading him to an action which, at the best, could not but be very suspicious and shocking to so ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Gervase, "it's all too shocking to be a laughing matter. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Dixon? The sinful extravagance that went on at Pentre always frightened me. You remember that ball they gave last year? Mr. Gervase assured ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... so shocking to poor Jack, that he was ready to go mad. He ran to the window, and saw the two Giants coming along arm in arm. This window was right over the gates ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... youngsters, eat buns in the street, and join the haymakers. They do not want the truth. Without knowing anything of Freud, they can add to their new and dreadful knowledge of this world all they want of the subconscious by reading the warlike speeches of the aged, one of the most obscene and shocking features of the War. The soldiers who are home on leave turn in revolt from that to hop-scotch. Yes, the truth about our own day will hardly bear looking at, whether it is reflected from common speech, or from the minds of artists like Mr. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... father. It isn't her way of working. Why couldn't she have known that when a title is to be had for the asking, the owner must be a shocking ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... think of him as drowned, you know, though even that they put against him," she went on hurriedly, "for they say he was probably drowned in some drunken fit—fell through the wharf or something shocking and awful—worse than suicide. But"—she turned her frank young eyes upon him again—"YOU saw him on the wharf that night, and you could tell how ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hair, and dress, like any ordinary gentleman. But when I was here last year his wardrobe was in a shocking condition." The immaculate Englishman sighed deeply. "He is totally demoralised. Fortunately we are about the same figure. If all his clothes are gone to seed I can supply him till he can get a box out from England. For the matter of that there is ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... am out of humanity's reach, I must finish my journey alone, Never hear the sweet music of speech; I start at the sound of my own. The beasts that roam over the plain My form with indifference see; They are so unacquainted with man, Their tameness is shocking to me. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are the social doctrine of, a mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New England idea of social life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall have a reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.'" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... betel-nut. A Jain Baniya drinks dirty water and shrinks from killing ants and flies, but will not stick at murder in pursuit of gain. As a druggist the Baniya is in league with the doctor; he buys weeds at a nominal price and sells them very dear. Finally, he is always a shocking coward: eighty-four Khatris will run ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the god. And Mowgli had not the faintest idea of the difference that caste makes between man and man. When the potter's donkey slipped in the clay-pit, Mowgli hauled it out by the tail, and helped to stack the pots for their journey to the market at Khanhiwara. That was very shocking, too, for the potter is a low-caste man, and his donkey is worse. When the priest scolded him, Mowgli threatened to put him on the donkey, too, and the priest told Messua's husband that Mowgli had better be set to work as soon as possible; and the village headman told Mowgli that ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... for lunch my men were in a shocking condition. I could not quite understand what had happened. Most of them seemed to suffer from violent internal inflammation accompanied ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... I detest them! views of battles, murders, and death! Shocking! shocking!—I shrink ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... struggled between disapproval, curiosity, and a shocking mingling of something else, which was not, could not possibly be, envy of such adventures! The lingering doubt served to ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I'm afraid in shocking lodgings—it must be, so unhealthy—just to become acquainted with the life of poor people, and be helpful to them. Isn't it heroic? He seems to have given up his whole life to it. One never meets him anywhere; I think ours is the only house where he's seen. A noble life! He never talks ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... each other in church, except at a wedding. At weddings people do speak to friends sitting near them, but in a low tone of voice. It would be shocking to enter a church and hear a babel ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... about the soul, sir, I beg," said Miss Betty, firmly. And then she added in a conciliatory tone, "Won't you look at the little fellow, sir? I have no doubt his relations are shocking people; but when you see his innocent little face and his beautiful eyes, I think you'll say yourself that if he were a duke's son he ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... rest, except Demetrius and Apollonides, to whom when they were left by themselves Cato begun to speak in milder terms, and said, "I suppose you too have resolved by force to keep alive a man of my age and to sit here in silence and to watch him, or are you come to prove that it is neither a shocking nor a shameful thing for Cato, when he has no other way to save his life, to wait for mercy from his enemy? Why then do you not speak and convince me of this and teach me a new doctrine, that we may cast away those former opinions and reasons in which we lived together, and being made wiser ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... is found! Well, young lady, this is a pretty performance! What do you mean by shocking your fond relatives and friends almost into catalepsy? I happened to drop in at the studio just as Joyce got your message, and she and Betty were at their wits' end ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... preamble we should have some adequate machinery provided for the enforcement and security of these rights; that we should have the matter put to the courts, and if the courts could not accomplish it, that we should have the aid of the military power, thus shocking the sensibilities of my honorable friend from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] again. I do not know what good it does to merely provide by law that the provisions of the Constitution shall be enforced, without ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... it!" she said suavely. "I know nothing about teachers. Shocking, isn't it? They alarm me too much. I have a horror of clever women. You don't look at all clever. I mean that as a compliment—far too pretty and smart, but I suppose you are dreadfully learned, all the same. What are you going ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... write a new volume, which shall witness to a changed life, and be inscribed no longer with all that is selfish, and of the earth earthy—"without God or Christ in the world." Let it be so, I beseech of you, my reader. Have done, now and for ever, with this shocking mutiny against your God. End the weary, shameful strife. Be, then, at peace with God, and remember that for you, if you believe in Jesus, there is free pardon, restoration to favour, a new heart, a new life, which is ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... behaved abominably last year, and it was shocking that you should bear the brunt of it. I'll do my best to control myself in the Cabinet—although that man rouses all the devil in me; but not to fight at the head of my party. Oh! Can the leopard change his spots? I fear I shall die with my back against the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... were hard to bear, hard to let pass unchallenged. I heard them, however, without dissent, for my self-command is wonderful; and we might have parted as we met, had she not proceeded, in an evil hour, to criticise the rector's missing daughter, and with the most shocking perversions, to narrate the story of her flight. My nature is so essentially generous that I can never pause to reason. I flung up my hand sharply, by way, as well as I remember, of indignant protest; and, in the act, the packet slipped from my fingers, glanced between the railings, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... is really shocking!" exclaimed the chaplain as he tossed one of the bottles of wine over the rail. "How can a parent permit his son to drink wine, when he knows that more men are killed by intemperance than by war and pestilence? ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the conventional ideal of womanly innocence "A Glove" will seem a very shocking book, for it fearlessly discusses, and, what is more, makes a young girl discuss—the standards of sexual purity as applied to men and women. The sentiments which she utters are, to be sure, elevated and of an almost Utopian idealism; and the author obviously means to raise, not to lower, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... survived for generations in Rome. Dining on one occasion, as an invited guest, at a table where the servants had inadvertently, for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse lamp-oil, Caesar would not allow the rest of the company to point out the mistake to their host, for fear of shocking him too much by exposing what might have been construed into inhospitality. At another time, whilst halting at a little cabaret, when one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use the sole bed which the house afforded. Incidents as trifling as these ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... inconsiderate to the verge of cruelty; but he was not, she had convinced herself, consciously cruel, nor yet selfish, nor radically bad-hearted in any way. In her opinion, at least, he was courageously sincere, to the verge of shocking people who mistook his frankness for impudence. He was recklessly generous: he would have given the coat off his back to a beggar at the instigation of a sudden impulse, provided he could have got into a cab before any of his friends ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... could work the trigger of the dispenser Forepaugh dropped the potent little pellets down the bellowing throat. He managed to release about thirty before the bellowing stopped. A veritable tornado of energy broke loose at the foot of the tree. The giant maw was closed, and the shocking silence was broken only by the thrashing of a giant body in its death agonies. The radiant heat, penetrating through and through the beast's body, withered nearby vegetation and could be easily felt on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... two days, they had passed, on an average, from sixty to ninety skeletons each day, but the numbers that lay about the wells at El Hammar were countless; those of two young women, whose perfect and regular teeth bespoke them young, were particularly shocking; their arms still remained clasped round each other as they had expired, although the flesh had long since perished by being exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and the blackened bones only left; the nails of the fingers, and some of the sinews of the hand ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... it?" she asked. "Did my Bible say it? Much she doubted it, for she had sometimes, especially since her blindness, clear and beautiful thoughts of heaven that could not be sinful, they rendered her so happy, and took away from her all fear. It was so shocking, too," she thought, "to think so ill of men—our fellow-creatures, and the creatures of a perfect Father. She loved her brother—he was so simple-minded, and so kind to her, too; how could she call ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... annually entombed by it? and that it proves ruinous to your government? You go to Africa to purchase slaves for foreign markets, and lose the advantages of all the proper articles of commerce, which that country affords. You bury your seamen upon the pestiferous shores; and, shocking to humanity! make monsters of all ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... for the motive. The next question is, Who was the perpetrator of this shocking crime? And the answer to that question is given in a very singular and dramatic circumstance, a circumstance that illustrates once more the amazing lack of precaution shown by persons who commit such crimes. The murderer was wearing a very remarkable pair of shoes, and those ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... release, a matter on which all were decided, whatever might be the upshot of the question respecting Gerald. To leave a poor girl to circus training, even if there were no interest in her, would have been shocking to right-minded people; but when it was such a circus as O'Leary's, and the maiden was so good, sweet, and modest as Lida, the thought would have been intolerable even without the connection with Gerald, who had been much taken with all he ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... decent, Mr Keene, and don't be shocking my modesty, and taking away my appetite. Did you mention the mustard, as I desired you? Upon my faith, but you're a nice boy and do justice to the representations of your grandmother, and when you see her you may ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... thefts of public funds, the successive cliques in control of the Erie Railroad continually plundered its treasury, and defrauded its stockholders. So little attention was given to efficient management that shocking catastrophies resulted at frequent intervals. A time came, however, when the old locomotives, cars and rails were in such a state of decay, that the replacing of them could no longer be postponed. To do this ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and under the curious eyes of a stranger, Sterne breathed his last. His wife and daughter were far away; the convivial associates "who were all very sorry and lamented him very much," were for the moment represented only by "John;" and the shocking tradition goes that the alien hands by which the "dying eyes were closed," and the "decent limbs composed," remunerated themselves for the pious office by abstracting the gold sleeve-links from the dead man's wrists. One may hope, indeed, that this last circumstance ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the edifying and the shocking, are closer together in the psyche than most persons imagine. The one, in fact, depends upon the other: without some definite notion of the improving it is almost impossible to conjure up an active notion of the improper. All salacious ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... men who have just missed greatness, whom society brands with a hot iron and designates by the term "mauvais sujets"; men who are for the most part misunderstood; whose existence may become either noble through the smile of a woman lifting them out of their rut, or shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of some damnable reflection ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look after me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I tell you the very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and that you'd have to be mine? Imagine Nancy Olden without a chaperon—Shocking! ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... arrow-stricken youth, the comely St Sebastian. Nothing can exceed the grace of the bronze Apollo; but, on looking from his form into his face, you are surprised to find him literally stone-blind; a shocking case of double cataract, produced by adopting for eyes two sardonyxes, whereof the second layer, representing the iris, is dark, while the white centre of the orb, corresponding to the pupil, exhibits a hopeless opacity. We pause in succession before those weird ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... be pleased to hear of this arrangement, as it gives your old masters a better chance of getting their money, for, between ourselves, they'd never have got it out of me. At the risk of shocking your feelings, I must confess that your revolution only postponed the ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... him then a thought that was very disagreeable to him, namely, that he dare not trust his wife alone with any bird or she would kill it. And this was the more shocking to him to think of since it meant that he durst not trust her as much as a dog even. For we may trust dogs who are familiars, with all the household pets; nay more, we can put them upon trust with anything and know they will not touch it, not even if they be starving. But things ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... notice, but I see the tears come in her eyes, and one of them dropped on my hand when she leaned over me and looked so sorry because I was in pain. It's a pity she ain't English and lived somewhere at home where one might expect to see her again. It is very sad and shocking to have to live in ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... the extreme horizon. The air was very quiet and he thought that he could hear her sigh. Then she turned and re-entered the House, while Heritage by his side began to curse under his breathe with a shocking fervour. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Gerard. "Many circumstances of oppression have doubtless gradually disappeared: but that has arisen from the change of manners, not from any political recognition of their injustice. The same course of time which has removed many enormities, more shocking however to our modern feelings than to those who devised and endured them, has simultaneously removed many alleviating circumstances. If the mere baron's grasp be not so ruthless, the champion we found in the church is no longer so ready. The spirit of Conquest ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... a shocking scene presented itself that night. The signal for a secret carouse had been given, and the orderlies and nurses crept stealthily from their posts by the sick, and came through the midnight darkness towards the shanty. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... them widely from the gums and allowing them to fall outwards upon the face; thus producing a horrible deformity. Besides this, the author states, that a deep fissure usually extended down each half of the inside of each lip; thus adding four deep and ghastly ramifications to the ulcer. This shocking affection is stated to have prevailed extensively, both in England and Ireland; in which latter country the author practised and held several important offices. It occasionally became epidemic, and then destroyed great numbers of children. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... directly to the heart and to the eye? It is one thing to call art to the assistance of art, it is quite another thing to call art to the assistance of nature. And this is what both Gray and Tennyson do, and this is why their artificiality, so far from shocking us, "passes in music out of sight". But this cannot be said of Tennyson without reserve. At times his strained endeavours to give distinction to his style by putting common things in an uncommon way led him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have "the knightly growth ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the persistent and not always sufficiently restrained use of this category that made much of his writing just a trifle shocking to sensitive minds. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... find Mr. Lewis confined to bed in consequence of a shocking accident he had lately met with, his right hand being blown off by the accidental ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... country, if the marriage of Eleazar and Rose was irrevocably fixt; and that he would readily forgo his promist fortune, if Balthasar would only afford him some degree of support in his plans for his future life. He again however called upon him as a father to consider the unsuitable, nay the shocking nature of the projected match. He conjured him to look at the happiness of his child with a steadier, more impartial eye. At the same time he begged for another, a last interview, and said he had a request which the old man must needs grant him, if he would have him leave the mountains with ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... fight in the convention. The anti-machine element, repudiating Whitman under the leadership of a shrewd and honest young man named Joe Bannister, had attacked Hull in the most shocking way. Bannister had been reading Victor Dorn's New Day and had got a notion of David Hull as man and mayor different from the one made current by the newspapers. He made a speech on the floor of the convention which almost caused a riot and nearly cost Davy the nomination. That catastrophe ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Shocking tales I hear of you; Chirp, and tell me, are they true? Robbing all the summer long; Don't you think ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... She had fancied a girl. It was a shock, indeed, to her ardour. It was so much of a shocking disappointment that Pattie Batch might easily have wept. A boy—a boy! Oh, shoot! But still, she reflected, considering the scarcity, a boy—this boy, in fact, cleaned up—Pattie Batch was all the time running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes—yes, the child ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... we went down to the canoe, the poor fellow was not only dead, but his whole body was swollen almost out of human semblance, presenting in that and other respects a most shocking and revolting spectacle. We took the corpse with us until we had reached the main channel of the river, and there flung it overboard. We had scarcely left it fifty fathoms astern when there arose a sudden violent commotion in the water about it, and a second or ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... partner. Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the natives; natives too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the forest, where he finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking death. Ojeda afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at that; cannot govern his own temper, poor fellow. Quarrels with his crew, is put in irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great poverty and eclipse. One of the many, evidently, who need a strong guiding ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... trifling the subject, the more he has to say.'—'Yes,' cried Olivia, 'he is well enough for a man; but for my part, I don't much like him, he is so extremely impudent and familiar; but on the guitar he is shocking.' These two last speeches I interpreted by contraries. I found by this, that Sophia internally despised, as much as Olivia secretly admired him.—'Whatever may be your opinions of him, my children,' ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... great zeal and unction, often to very large audiences, and sometimes with such unsparing denunciation of common sins as to awaken opposition. He considered it his duty to rebuke iniquity, and on one occasion severely reproved a student for shocking levity,—reading a play with some young ladies while their father lay dying. He feared the result of this might be estrangement from his friend, but prayed earnestly that it might lead to his awakening. This prayer was ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... to that shocking little bounder of a husband of hers! What a creature! Did it ever occur to you that ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like to see the marabou stork on his nightly ran-tan, if only to gloat over his lapse of dignity, just as one would give much to see Benjamin Franklin with his face blacked, drunk and disorderly and being locked up. But, as a shocking example, the marabou is quite bad enough with his awful head in the morning; his awful head and his disreputable nose, that looks to want a good scraping. I respect Billy, the adjutant, for his long service and the Tangerine at the back ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... true to himself and true to his wife; and, at the risk of shocking our young lady readers, we must betray that, after the wedding-ring, Hasen's first gift to Mary was—"The Principles of Physiology applied to the Preservation of Health, and the Improvement of Physical and Mental Education; by Andrew Combe, M. D." This book (which should be ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being, which naturally made the astrologer hate Father Peter and wish to ruin him. It was the astrologer, as we all believed, who originated the story about Father Peter's shocking remark and carried it to the bishop. It was said that Father Peter had made the remark to his niece, Marget, though Marget denied it and implored the bishop to believe her and spare her old uncle from poverty and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so hearty and natural in this sad place. Sime saw something coming out of a far corner. It was a man in the blouse and trousers of civilian wear; a bald and good-natured man, with a shocking growth of beard. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not too handsome, like some of our friends that look rather too much of professional beauties to be anything else; but no more of that; we have said it, it is shocking! Well, he was a crack shot, and sat a horse to admiration; he had fought a duel for a trifle, and had ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... than that now," says Miss Priscilla, who seems specially hard on the Fitzgeralds. "She is a shocking old woman, with a nose like a flower-pot. I won't say she drinks, my dear Penelope, because I know you would object to it; but I hear she does, and certainly ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... knew full well that both McCoy and Quintal were in the habit of flogging their slaves, Nehow and Timoa, and otherwise treating them with great cruelty. Indeed, there had reached him a report of treatment so shocking that he could scarcely credit it, and thought it best at the time to take no notice of the rumour; but afterwards he was told of a repetition of the cruelty, and now he seemed about to witness it with his own eyes. Burning indignation at first fired his ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... like many more fortunate men, was not blind to the possibilities of a change of luck. The death of his partner in a successful business had at first seemed to betoken that change, but his successful, though hasty, courtship of the inexperienced widow had restored his chances without greatly shocking the decorum of a pioneer community. Nevertheless, he was not a contented man, and hardly a determined—although ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... pulled himself together, and attempted to carry Mrs. Stuart off for the waltz, but for once in her life that lady had lost her head. "It is shocking!" she said, "outrageously shocking! I wonder if they told Mr. McDonald before he married her!" Then looking hurriedly round, she too saw the young husband's face—and knew ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... miscellaneous literature, suddenly finds himself reformed out of knowledge, his pamphlets tucked away into pigeonholes and corners, and his slippers put in their place in the hall, with, perhaps, a brisk insinuation about the shocking dust and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of preaching is getting superannuated. It lags superfluous in the pulpit. Our people are outgrowing the cruelties and absurdities of the ancient Jews. The idea of hell has become shocking and vulgar. Eternal punishment is eternal injustice. It is infinitely infamous. Most ministers are ashamed to preach the doctrine, and the congregations are ashamed to hear it preached. It is the essence ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ingratitude that can lead them to do such a wicked thing, and I have no doubt that He purposely let all these difficulties and terrors fall in Elsie's path in order to punish her. Children, even big ones, have little idea of the dreadful dangers there are waiting for them to fall into, or how soon some shocking disaster would happen to them if they had not such careful, kind protectors. I am afraid, too, that people who write books often hide such things, and only tell of the wonderful escapes and marvellous adventures that runaway children encounter, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... beautiful quilt. There was visible almost all of the bureau, an old-fashioned walnut affair with a small, dim, wavy glass, and drawers which you pulled out by sticking your fingers under the bunches of flowers that served as knobs. The fireplaces in both rooms were in a shocking state of disrepair, but one didn't mind that, as in winter a fire burned in them, and in summer they were boarded up with fireboards covered with cut-out pictures pasted on a background of black calico. Those gay cut-out pictures were a source of never-ending ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the scheme settled. There will be a large and flourishing school in your midst, for his Grace would only do things in first-rate style. Now I consider the matter accomplished. The school will be opened in September, and as I really cannot stand any more of your fidgeting—such shocking style!—I will wish you good-night. Of course, not a word of thanks on your part. I overlook all those little politenesses. The righteous look for their reward on High! Good-night, good-night! No arguments to-night, pray. I do not wish to listen ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... a blanked choral society, he wanted to know? Though he had tried hard not to, he had been forced to admit that It was d——d disgraceful. He had never, he reflected aloud, seen anything like it during an active army existence that had provided many shocking sights. And he opined that there would be fatigues and C.B.s and court-martials and shootings-at-dawn if It continued. He was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... war, and that government is only a contrivance of men for their own gain, a strong chain thrown over the citizen,—organized, despotic, unprincipled power. To this faithless and impious work, which at least did good by shocking the world and rallying many of the best minds to develop and defend the true principles of society and the state, he put a fit frontispiece, a picture of the vast form of Leviathan, the Sovereign State, the Mortal God,—a gigantic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... his arms in evidence; and he snarled out: "There, now; 'cause I'm supposed to have saved a trifle, I ain't to sit as I like. It's downright too bad! It's shocking!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... anger of malignity, until their unhappy carcasses are covered with ghastly wounds and frightful contusions? Who can reflect on these things when applying the case to himself, without being chilled with horror, at circumstances so extremely shocking?—Yet hideous as this concise and imperfect description is, of the sufferings sustained by many of our slaves, it is nevertheless true; and so far from being exaggerated, falls infinitely short of a thousand circumstances ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... or children. When the massacre was completed they either made a horrid banquet of the slain on the spot, or carried off as many dead bodies as they could, and devoured them at home, with acts of brutality too shocking to be described. As they never gave quarter nor took prisoners the defeated party could only save their lives by flight. More powerful chiefs made war in the same barbarous way, on a larger scale, and depopulated ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... accompaniment such as a chorus garbed as birds or frogs? But we reserve fuller discussion of this point until later. We might suggest an interesting comparison to the nonsense verse of W. S. Gilbert, which represents the most shocking ideas in a style even nonchalantly matter-of-fact. Does Gilbert by any chance actually wish us to believe that "Gentle Alice Brown," in the poem of the same name, really assisted in "cutting up ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... uncommonly the case with young ladies at East Point, of an uncontrollable passion for things military. Manhood and brass buttons were with her interconvertible terms, and the idea of uniting her young life to a plain civilian seemed to her nothing less than shocking. The pleasures of her first two or three summers at East Point and of her first half-dozen engagements had partaken of the bliss of heaven. The engagements had never been broken off, they had simply dissolved one into the other, and she ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... place, and distinguish the numerous churches of all sizes, and heights, and shapes, and varieties of outside and inside adornment. The chief, called the Cathedral, has its walls painted with subjects taken from Scripture, which to the purer taste of Protestants appear shocking and blasphemous. However, our travellers did not then attend to the details of the strange occupants of the Kremlin. Their object was to obtain a comprehensive view of the city from the summit of that gaunt old monster, the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... Aunt Emily. He read it to you and a stray soldier. Afterwards you told me. You said, 'Really it is shocking, his ingratitude. She ought to know about it' She does know, and I should be glad of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... was very shocking, you know. Lady Dighton says the best French plays always are. I cried a little, and I was so ashamed of myself; only I saw some other people crying too, so then I did not ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Edward's harshness and distrust. He—who had brought him there—who ought to have known him better! Moreover, there was the crushing sense of the guilt of his brothers; guilt most horrible in its sacrilegious audacity, and doubly shocking to the feelings of a family where the grim sanctity of the first Simon de Montfort, and the enlightened devotion of the second, formed such a contrast to the savage outrage of him who now bore their name. Richard, as with bare feet and ashes whitening his dark locks he knelt on the cold ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wouldn't have thought it of him—she wouldn't really. But it was always the way when a plain practical woman married on the quality. Imperence and dis-respeck—that's the capers! Imperence and disrespeck from the ones that's doing nothing and behoulden to you for everything. It was shocking! It ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... which he rode, and was round instantaneously—It was really dreadful!—The highwayman saw, or rather heard him coming, for it was prodigiously dark, and fired. Poor Frank was shot!—In the shoulder—But he says he did not feel it at first—He returned the fire; and the highwayman exclaimed, with a shocking oath, 'I am a dead man!' He rode away however full speed; and his associate, who stood to guard the post-boy, rode after him. Frank imagines that, owing to the darkness of the night, and his being so close under the chaise, they had not perceived him ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... inhuman beyond permissible warfare. Not war, annihilation. In fact, they shelved it because it was too efficient. There was great need of means for fighting Napoleon just then, so they gave it up reluctantly, but it was a bit too shocking. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... They hastily produce anything they have—anything to conciliate the contemptuous cassowary. And as he takes it, an expression steals across the cassowary's face which seems to admit that perhaps the fellow isn't such a shocking outsider after all. When a man has nothing more nutritive about him, this form of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... exclamation was so shocking that his only friend checked him by asking if his pistol was ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... into the Prisons and the Ragged Schools, and form their own conclusions. They will be shocked, pained, and repelled, by much that they learn there; but nothing they can learn will be one- thousandth part so shocking, painful, and repulsive, as the continuance for one year more of these things as they have been for ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... not have known. Could not have known that this thing he wrought spelled at once Beginning and End: that no such shocking departure remains long sole-possessed, either shaft or fire or mushroom-shape: that with each great thing of man's devising comes question and doubt and challenge ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... time the people of Maine were as much addicted to the use of strong drinks as those of any other part of the country; and the effects of this shocking habit were seen everywhere in shabby buildings, neglected farms and in wide-spread poverty. There were, in this State, magnificent forests of the best pine timber in the world. The manufacture of this timber into "lumber" of various descriptions, and the sale of it, were the leading ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... a shocking state of things, Oh, my goodness, Mrs. GRUNDY! There's a man that plays and sings In a Blackpool ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... 'What shocking indignity is this you are dreaming of?' said a very soft voice near him, and turning he saw Nina, who was moving across the grass, with her dress so draped as to show the most perfect instep and ankle with a very ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Few cared. It was a "corrupt and contented" city. The corruption grew worse. Lower and meaner grafters rose to take the place of the earlier and more robust good fellows who trafficked in the city o' shame. Graft lost class, and lost caste. It was ultimately exposed in all its shocking indecency. The light and licentious town developed a conscience. Public indignation arose and reached its height, when the grafters ventured too far in the shooting of the attorney charged ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... and the terrorism exercised by the Royalists in 1815 has been compared, as a whole, with the Republican Reign of Terror twenty-two years earlier. But the comparison does little credit to the historical sense of those who suggested it. The barbarities of 1815 were strictly local: shocking as they were, they scarcely amounted in all to an average day's work of Carrier or Fouche in 1794; and the action of the established Government, though culpably weak, was not itself criminal. A second and more dangerous stage of reaction began, however, when the work of popular vengeance ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... 'Dear me, how shocking! I think he must be the most interesting person that ever lived. I should so like to know him! They say he is so ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... deed reached the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of mind, to protest. They took up a collection out of their poverty with which to defray a funeral. The residents of Hull-House were then comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. In their crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every attention from a skilled physician and ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... seemed so shocking that the noble-looking lady and gentleman he had seen that day should be in league with a gang of smugglers, and have lent their out-of-the-way house to be a ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... you?" said Edith, with a look of disgust at this ravenous conduct on the part of her friend. But Edith had said, "Oh! how can you?" and "Oh! shocking!" and "Oh! why don't you give up eating it raw?" and "Oh! why won't you have it cooked?" nearly every day for the last two weeks, without producing any other effect than a gleeful laugh from the little Esquimaux; for, although they did not comprehend her words, they clearly understood ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... were aimed at a young man who came briskly into the room, and as he kissed her, and shook hands with the Earl, answered in a quick, bright tone, 'Shocking, aye. All owing to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to do, yet are my expenses large. I drink and eat and smoke in plenty—it costs much, I know. I do not pay for the playing of billiards, for I play on your table; but still the money goes. Fishing on the reef is only a rich man's pleasure. It is shocking, the cost of hooks and cotton line. Yes; it is necessary that we be partners by the law. I need the money. I shall get it from the head clerk ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... remarked another lady. "But what shall we do when our clothes wear out? It will be shocking not to be able to get any of the new fashions. I am afraid our polite captain and Monsieur Gerardo will not think half as ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... had both been wounded, and concluded by recommending that as soon as puss shewed symptoms of hydrophobia, Winifred should be smothered between two feather-beds, to prevent further mischief. Everyone laughed, except Dora, who thought the proposal exceedingly shocking; and Rupert argued very gravely with her on the expediency of the measure, until she was called away ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... advisable systematically to disparage them—to declare our Pianos "gouty" structures—"mere wood and iron;" our Calicoes beneath the acceptance of a British servant-girl; our Farming Tools half a century behind their British rivals; our Hats "shocking bad," &c., &c.,—all this, in the first months of the Exhibition, while the Jurors appointed to judge and report upon the merits of rival fabrics were making the requisite investigations. Their verdict is thus substantially forestalled, and the millions ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... their female domestics, and many of them acquire the affection and confidence of their superiors. The price of a slave in Sarawak is from thirty to sixty dollars, but as the trade is being as quickly repressed as possible, without too much shocking the prejudices of the inhabitants, they have of late become very scarce, and difficult to be bought. The price of a girl varies from thirty to one hundred dollars, but at Sarawak they are even more difficult than men to obtain." Thus wrote Mr. Low in the year ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... ships for some time swinged alongside of each other; for ours being a fire-ship, our grappling-irons caught the Lynne every way, and the yards and rigging went at an astonishing rate. Our ship was in such a shocking condition that we all thought she would instantly go down, and every one ran for their lives, and got as well as they could on board the Lynne; but our lieutenant being the aggressor, he never quitted the ship. However, when ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the discolored mark on his temple, showing where his head had come in contact with the hearthstone, his body presents an appearance of natural robustness, which makes his sudden end seem all the more shocking. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... to have done me good, but I had a wretched night; shocking pains in my head, occiput, and teeth, and found in the morning that I had two blood-shot eyes. But almost immediately after the receipt and perusal of your letter the pains left me, and I am bettered to this hour; ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... besides, he takes such a lot of trouble to know the real truth about things, and tells them to you so calmly and carefully—and our own John—well, of course, he is everything that's good and great, but he makes a shocking fool of himself at times, particularly ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... news, we must imagine, must be extremely shocking, and add a new sting to his former affliction; and here it was that he began to exercise the philosopher, and to demonstrate himself both a wise and a good man. All these things, thinks he, are the will of Providence, and must not be disputed; and so he bore up under them with an entire ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... carcasses, and similar objects, if they strike upon the view too much, will be as disgusting in a picture as they are in nature; and that grimaces, hideous or monstrous deformities, whether moral or physical, will be as shocking in the one as the other. Events which are sufficiently unnatural, barbarous, and cruel, to shake violently the soul, and cause it to tremble with insurmountable horror, create an agitation too frightful for it to resist, much less to be pleased with. Subjects of so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... are pieces of treachery, which in themselves appear base and detestable to every one. There are actions, which perhaps can scarce have any other general name given them than indecencies, which yet are odious and shocking to human nature. There is such a thing as meanness, a little mind, which as it is quite distinct from incapacity, so it raises a dislike and disapprobation quite different from that contempt, which men are too apt to have, of mere folly. On the other ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... was exactly what he expected, yet he did not see the grim, stern old man present himself thus suddenly without emotion; especially when he recollected, what to a youth of his pious education was peculiarly shocking, that the grizzled hypocrite was probably that instant arisen from his knees to Heaven, for the purpose of engaging in the mysterious transactions of a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... disapprove," she said with pretence of carelessness. "How easily I succeed in shocking you to-day! Really, a stranger might imagine I was under particular obligations to ask your permission for the mere privilege of living. We have known each other by sight for all of two weeks, and yet your face ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... interest in the market yonder. Accordingly the old maid had recourse to stronger measures. "I think," said she, addressing herself to Madame Lecoeur, "that you ought to advise your brother-in-law to be careful. Last night they were shouting out the most shocking things in that little room. Men really seem to lose their heads over politics. If anyone had heard them, it might have been a ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... enter it more; over and over again she was assured that the stranger's frantic assertions were regarded by everybody about her as unworthy of a moment's serious attention. She persisted in doubting whether they were telling her the truth. A shocking distrust of her friends seemed to possess her. She shrunk when Lady Janet approached the bedside. She shuddered when Lady Janet kissed her. She flatly refused to let Horace see her. She asked the strangest questions about Julian Gray, and ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... crisis undoubtedly arises out of the Edgar incident. But that incident merely precipitated a struggle which was certain to come. It is possible to make too much of the killing of Edgar. It was a shocking and, in my judgment, a criminal blunder, such as would have caused a popular outcry anywhere. It was made much worse by the light way in which it was first dealt with by the Public Prosecutor and then by the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... dreadful, frightful, grewsome, horrible, shocking, heinous, flagrant; awe-inspiring, majestic; (Slang) immoderate, great, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of that character unstable as water which shall not excel, this duke would at once supply it: if we had to warn genius against self-indulgence—some clever boy against extravagance—some poet against the bottle—this is the 'shocking example' we should select: if we wished to show how the most splendid talents, the greatest wealth, the most careful education, the most unusual advantages, may all prove useless to a man who is too vain or too frivolous to use them properly, it is enough to cite that nobleman, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... how many thousands of men have led such a life, shocking, indeed, to the feelings of worldlings, but in reality devoted to the contemplation of what is above Nature—a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to discover that it was quite respectable. That is where the English playwright always seems to improve upon the French. In London, a heroine may be volatile, and saucy, and unconventional, and iconoclastic, and spicy, and shocking, and quite horrible, but in the last act the adapter allows you to discover that she is really a very good, nice, whole-hearted woman; that she loves her husband in a faithful, wifely way, and that she ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... some shadow of countenance to the tyranny of the Stuarts, was the first of our princes, under whom any gravity or equity was allowed in cases of treason. To judge impartially therefore, we ought to recall the temper and manners of the times we read of. It is shocking to eat our enemies: but it is not so shocking in an Iroquois, as it would be in the king of Prussia. And this is all I contend for, that the crimes of Richard, which he really committed, at least which we have reason to believe he committed, were more the crimes of ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... his really shocking rudeness. Rachel bit her lip and began to fold up the cloth. Mrs. Maldon's head slightly trembled. Louis alone maintained a perfect equanimity. It was ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... answered quietly, kneeling and lifting Glass's head, and resting it across his thigh. "My humour may be of a primitive sort, but I confess it tickled by shocking a murderer into a fainting fit." He felt in his breast-pocket and drew forth a small phial. "No, sir,"—he turned to Captain Branscome, who had stepped forward to offer his help—"let me alone, please. I prefer to treat ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... don't know what Marianne's to do at all. She has a shocking lot to contend with. Can anything be got from the old man, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... still retained something of a pleasing expression, and might have been termed beautiful, had it not been for that repulsive freshness of lip denoting the habitual dram-drinker; a freshness in her case rendered the more shocking from the almost livid hue of the rest of her complexion. She could not be more than twenty; and though want and other suffering had done the work of time, had wasted her frame, and robbed her cheek of its bloom and roundness, they had not extinguished ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... yet I know not whether it has not happened to him as to others, to be praised most, when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied. But some parts are trifling, others shocking, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson |
