"Vilely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in January. But when he who sells goods on the road groans and tosses in the clutches of a dreadful dream, it is, strangely enough, never of canceled orders, maniacal train schedules, lumpy mattresses, or vilely cooked food. These everyday things he accepts with a philosopher's cheerfulness. No—his nightmare is always a vision of himself, sick on the road, at a country hotel in the middle of a ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... house. The steps were crowded with his own followers, who warmly welcomed him, and congratulated him on the safety of his father, his sister, and his property; but he said very little to them; he was thinking of the friend whom he had loved so well, who had so vilely disgraced himself, and whose life he now feared he should ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... there are two ways of holding converse with Nature. The one is egotistic and sentimental, an imposing of personal tastes and emotions which betrays the latent categoric belief that the existence of external things is limited to man's apprehension of them—a vilely conceited if not actually blasphemous doctrine! The other is that of the seeker and the seer, who, approaching in all reverence, asks no more than leave to listen to the voice of external things—recognizing their independent existence, knowing them to be as ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Pelton swore vilely, in a lifeless monotone, cursing Literacy, and all Literates back to the invention of the ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... her into eating more, and occasionally essayed his talents as a chef, and cooked weird looking things in his rooms over a vilely smelling English oil stove, but the Jewess in Arithelli found him wanting in the "divers washings" she required of the saucepans, and they generally ended these Bohemian repasts ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as if he had ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... what came over me. I said it in all honest simplicity, meaning only to excuse myself for the disrespect I had shown to the Duke; but I phrased the sentence most vilely, for I said: ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Mr. Clarkson, as they surrounded him; "rise up, Daniel Drake Nelson Farragut Finnegan. You are small potatoes and few in the hill; you are shamefully drunk, and your nose bleeds; you are stricken with Spanish mildew, and you smell vilely—but you are immortal. You have been a disgrace to the service, but Fate in her gentle irony has redeemed you, permitting you, in one brief moment of your misspent life, to save to your country the command of the seas—to guide, with your subconscious ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... crave thee cup-comrade to be * And hearten my heart of its malady; Nor pass me the bowls for I sorely dread * when drunken all dolours of Love- lowe to dree, To be vilely reviled in the sittings of men, * To be frowardly treated where zephyrs play free. God-blest is the Lute for her melodies * Which pain me with painfullest penalty, With the jewels of speech whose transcendent charms * Like fires of Jahim[FN290] burn the vitals of me. By Allah, show ruth, be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the German, had been his first victim. Bewildered and protesting, he had succumbed to Jonah's novel methods of attack as a savage goes down under the fire of machine-guns. His shop was closed years ago, and he lived in a stuffy room, smelling vilely of tobacco-smoke, where he taught the violin to hazardous pupils for little more than a crust. He always spoke of Jonah with a vague terror in his blue eyes, convinced that he had once ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to Venice, he needed our help till he could find some means of living on his talents or through his profession as a priest. I asked him what his talents were, and he said he could teach Italian; but as he speaks it vilely, and doesn't know a word of French, we laughed at him. We were therefore reduced to seeing what we could do for him in his character of priest, and the very next day my wife spoke to M. de Sauci, the ecclesiastical commissioner, begging him to give my brother an introduction to the Archbishop ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... erect, and stilt-like legs, it may be seen every now and then popping from one bush to another with uncommon quickness. It really requires little imagination to believe that the bird is ashamed of itself, and is aware of its most ridiculous figure. On first seeing it, one is tempted to exclaim, "A vilely stuffed specimen has escaped from some museum, and has come to life again!" It cannot be made to take flight without the greatest trouble, nor does it run, but only hops. The various loud cries which it utters when concealed ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... As a matter of fact, in his own opinion, Lord Parham was behaving vilely. A measure of first-rate importance for which he was responsible was already in danger of being practically shelved, simply, as it seemed to him, from a lack of elementary trustworthiness in Lord Parham. But as to this ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... position of her fingers, and stretched them over the keys, she nearly fainted. She was fearful of playing badly for him; but in vain did she practise until she nearly made herself ill, and evoked impatient protests from her cousin: she always played vilely when Christophe was present: she was breathless, and her fingers were as stiff as pieces of wood, or as flabby as cotton: she struck the wrong notes and gave the emphasis all wrong: Christophe would lose his temper, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph! Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew nor rain upon you, neither fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil! From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were lovely ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... all can see What the tax hath done for thee, And thy children, vilely led, Singing hymns for shameful bread, Till the stones of every street Know their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... to be the exception. Why I was spared, I do not know. It just so happened. At first I was vilely treated, beaten by the women and children, clothed in vermin-infested mangy furs, and fed on refuse. They were utterly heartless. How I managed to survive is beyond me; but I know that often and often, at first, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... evening dress were hidden behind the screen. They commenced a waltz. Mr Baffy did not start with the others; he was set going by a kick from Mr Cheadle. He played without music, seemingly at random, vilely, unconcernedly. Mr Baffy seemed to be ignorant of when a figure was ended, as he went on scraping after the others had ceased, and only stopped after receiving a further kick from Cheadle; he then stared feebly before him, till again set going by a ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the top plank, which was painted light blue. In the boat were the various bits of equipment needed for shark-fishing, including a thick wooden beam to which were attached four hooks of wrought iron, a keg of shark-bait which stank vilely, and barrels for the shark's liver. There were shark knives under the thwarts and huge gaffs hooked under the rib-boards. The crew had put the boxes containing their food and provisions in ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Vilely smelled the wine-skin too, Fashioned from a black goat's hide. But the old man drank and drank And grew jubilant ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... being an eminent divine. The wicked carry their own hell about with them during life—here, somewhere between the gullet and the pit of the stomach, and it prevents their enjoyment of herrings which smell vilely ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... attitudes of some picture that she had seen of Roman gladiators about to die. Lastly she looked at the delicately shaped Noie by her side, with her sweet, inscrutable face, the woman whose parents and kin this outcast had brought to a bloody death, the woman whom to forward his base ends he had vilely striven to murder. Slowly she looked at them all and ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... points, it will be a grand argument in favour of the actuality of migration; but not finding them will not, in my eyes, much diminish the probability of their having thus migrated. My pen always runs away, in writing to you; and a most unsteady, vilely bad pace it goes. What would I not give to write simple English, without having to rewrite and rewrite ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... sacredly proclaimed to the nation in Parliament. If we would be a great power we must accept certain obligations; one of them is war in order to keep us a great power. If we do not want to be a great power any longer, we deliberately and vilely betray ourselves. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... D'Oyly and Mant's Bible:—"'Thirty pieces of silver.' Thirty shekels, about 3l. 10s. 8d. of our money. It appears from Exod. 21 c. 32 v., that this was the price to be paid for a slave or servant, when killed by a beast. So vilely was HE esteemed, who shed his precious blood for man; and so true it is, that Christ took upon him the form of a servant." Now, the Jewish shekel being valued at 2s. 4-1/4d. and the coin of the next superior denomination, (the maneh) being set down in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... is much nearer the Flemish than the Dutch; though it is to be presumed that there must have been some colonists from Holland, in a province belonging to that nation. I listened to-day to a fellow vending quack medicines and vilely printed legends, to a song which, tune and all, I am quite sure to have heard in Albany, when a schoolboy. The undeviating character and habits of the people, too, appear to be very much like those ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... extraordinary too what a jolly business housework can be when two people go at it together and get all the possible fun out of it. On the other hand, when it is all done by lonely people it can be vilely tedious. Thousands of husbands have no idea of this. If they searched their own minds they would find that their idea of their own homes is that they are places to be kept clean and comfortable for them, and their idea of their own wives is ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... Queen and her bishops and clergy, and that the arch offender in this bad business was known to be a certain—he would not say who—at Oxford. He told me how he would give a finger off his hand to have the rascal laid by the heels, ay, and the printer too, who had vilely lent himself to the business. He waxed so fierce and eloquent in defence of the good bishops, that I promised him, should my urgent errand in any way permit it, he might count on me to assist him in his righteous ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... it down. This hulking bully! I know him better than you do." She pointed a quivering finger at her cousin. "He insulted me as vilely as he could only a few months ago on Music Mountain. And if this very same Henry de Spain hadn't happened to be there to protect me, you would have found me dead next morning by my own hand. Do you understand?" she cried, panting and ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... needed. It felt much better, the swelling had materially decreased, and the cap seemed descending into its proper place. Also, the three days' rest brought the trouble I had foreseen. It was plainly Thomas Mugridge's intention to make me pay for those three days. He treated me vilely, cursed me continually, and heaped his own work upon me. He even ventured to raise his fist to me, but I was becoming animal-like myself, and I snarled in his face so terribly that it must have frightened him back. It is no pleasant picture I can conjure up ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... not shown you the malice of their propagators. The prisoner and his counsel have referred to Dow's History, who calls this Nabob "the more infamous son of an infamous Persian peddler." They wish that your Lordships should consider him as a person vilely born, ignominiously educated, and practising a mean trade, in order that, when it shall be proved that he and his family were treated with every kind of indignity and contempt by the prisoner at your bar, the sympathy of mankind should be weakened. Consider, my Lords, the monstrous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the labourer, are all of the same nature, born with the same propensities and subject to similar influences. They are, it is true, born in different positions, but it rests with themselves whether they shall live their lives nobly or vilely. They may not have their choice of riches or poverty; but they have their choice of being good or ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... with questions and conjectures and comments. "What a slump!—what a slump! That blessed, short-legged little seraph has spoilt the best sport that ever was. Why, he's sent that fool of a Gerrish home with the conviction that he was right in the part of his attack that was the most vilely hypocritical, and he's given that heartless scoundrel the pleasure of feeling like an honest man. I should like to rap Mr. Peck's head up against the back of his pulpit, and I should like to knock the skulls of Colonel Marvin and Mr. Wilmington together and see which was the thickest. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... departed they, leauing one of their ships behind them, which they sunke for lacke of men to cary her. [Sidenote: The death of Pinteado.] After this, within 6 or 7 dayes sayling, dyed also Pinteado for uery pensiuenesse and thought that stroke him to the heart. A man worthy to serue any prince, and most vilely vsed. And of seuenscore men came home to Plimmouth scarcely forty, and of them many died. [Sidenote: Pinteado first perswaded our men to the voiage of Guinea.] And that no man should suspect these words which I haue saide in commendation of Pinteado, to be spoken vpon fauour otherwise then trueth, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... more degraded than ever. The industrious classes, if such could be said to exist, were esteemed every day more and more infamous. Merchants, shopkeepers, mechanics, were reptiles, as vilely, esteemed as Jews, Moors, Protestants, or Pagans. Acquiring wealth by any kind of production was dishonourable. A grandee who should permit himself to sell the wool from his boundless sheep-walks disgraced his caste, and was accounted as low as a merchant. To create was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ZAP. O, title vilely purchas'd!—by the blood Of innocence—by treachery and murder! May heav'n, incens'd, pour down its vengeance on him, Blast all his joys, and turn them into horror Till phrensy rise, and bid him curse the hour That gave his crimes their birth!—My faithful Othman, My sole surviving prop, canst ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... bad where there were only men or else only women; it was when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was some shame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor—it was some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It was dirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate than any actual hardship moulded of mire ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... gentleman; he was not a workman; he was not a servant. He was vilely dressed, in glossy black broadcloth. His frockcoat hung on him instead of fitting him. His waistcoat was too short and too tight over the chest. His trousers were a pair of shapeless black bags. His gloves were too large for him. His highly-polished boots creaked ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... public sentiment is drawn in grand oudines, magnified many times, but not in the least caricatured. The patriotic prejudice goes everywhere. It lives at the very roots of life. Truthful men will tell you that London is vilely supplied with cabs in comparison with Melbourne. They believe it. They will tell you that the flavours of English meats, game, fruits and vegetables are vastly inferior to those they know at home. And they ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... consideration, precedence, honours, and every delight; all eyes and tongues and attentions were yours—my gifts; and if flatterers abused you, I am not responsible for that. It is I who should rather complain; you prostituted me vilely to scoundrels, whose laudations and cajolery of you were only samples of their designs upon me. As to your saying that I wound up by betraying you, you have things topsy-turvy again; I may complain; you took every method to estrange me, and finally ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... head of the Gulf of California. It moved in a cloud of alkali dust and sand, its ore-sacks coated white. The animals straggled along, wandering out of the line incessantly and thrust back into place by muleteers who cracked long whips and addressed them vilely. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to parents," says John Foster, in his Journal, "that to throw vilely-educated young people on the world is, independently of the injury to the young people themselves, a positive crime, and of very great magnitude; as great, for instance, as burning their neighbor's house, or poisoning the water in his ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... His torch burnt vilely and smoked copiously. But what faint light it afforded was sufficient. Step by step he went down until feet and legs and then entire body were lost to Betty above; she had set the rifle aside and was kneeling, her hands clasped in ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... in America—and here was shown the really smart folk of the city. I grieve to say I laughed, because when an American wishes to be correct he sets himself to imitate the Englishman. This he does vilely, and earns not only the contempt of his brethren, but the ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... us and repeated the accusation which had been made. S—— gave a full explanation of the whole incident, but the upstart who considered that his pride had been vilely outraged would not listen to it. Then and there he ordered that we should be tied up to the trees for four hours to give us something to laugh about. I can assure you that we trembled in our shoes: our fate hung in the balance. The ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Roxanne these things were secondary; her eyes were caught and held in uncanny fascination by the wrapper. It was vilely unclean. From its lowest hem up four inches it was sheerly dirty with the blue dust of the floor; for the next three inches it was gray—then it shaded off into its natural color, which, was—pink. It was dirty at the sleeves, too, and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... engaged to her, the case would be different—I should blush for her then, if she is vulgar. But merely as a guest, how can her dress or manners affect me. My position is not to be altered by my happening to visit a girl who dresses vilely, and flirts ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... me at once that, as the paper in question had vilely slandered me, I could redress myself by an action of law, and that I could prove the magnitude of the evil done me by showing the grave importance which your lordship had attached to the words. In this way I could have forced an answer from your lordship to the questions which I now ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... on, so that we have hardly had time to rest and eat. And all the day, as he rides or tramps, he mutters to himself. When I ask him what he is saying, he replies, 'You'll find out quick enough!' and curses more vilely ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Askelon, Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph, Ye mountains of Gelboa, let there be no dew, Neither let there be rain upon you! For there the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, The shield of Saul, the anointed of the Lord. From the blood of the slain, From the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan turned not back And the sword of Saul returned not empty, Jonathan and Saul Were lovely and pleasant in their lives And in their deaths ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... morning, he was lurking on the borders of the Siddon clearing, spying on the movements of the family. He even witnessed Plutina's confession to her grandfather, of which he guessed the purport, and at which he cursed vilely beneath his breath. When Plutina set forth for the Cherry Lane post-office, he followed, slinking through the forest at a safe distance from the trail. He was not quite certain as to where or when he should attack the girl, but he meant to seize the first ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... aghast at the licentious tyrannies of our newspapers. England has freedom of the press, but she also has a law of libel which is not a cipher. Our law of libel is so horribly effete that the purest woman on our continent may to-morrow be vilely slandered, and yet obtain no adequate form of redress. This is what our extolled "liberty" has brought us—a despotism in its way as frightful as anything that Russia or the Orient can parallel. Is it ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... did not seem worth while. The taste had gone from his mouth; his bock was water vilely coloured; his cigarette was a hot stench. And yet a full moon was peeping in the trees along the path, and not far away, where the countryside bowed in silver quietude, the rivers ran through undistinguishable fields chanting ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... as their neighbours far to the south of the forty-ninth parallel, such as the Sioux and Apaches, and naturally were so innocent of the value of the furs and skins they brought into the trading ports and forts as to be vilely cheated, in accordance with all the best traditions of white men dealing with ignorant and commercially unsophisticated savages. Guns and rifles being the objects most desired by the Indian, he was made to pay for them, and to pay an almost incredible price, as it seems to us now, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris's poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before the furniture of 'the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name,' as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I don't complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... can I behold him, With smiles of vengeance, butcher'd in his age? The sacred fountain of my life destroy'd? And canst thou shed the blood that gave me being? Nay, be a traitor too, and sell thy country? Can thy great heart descend so vilely low, Mix with hir'd slaves, bravoes, and common stabbers, Nose-slitters, alley-lurking villains! join With such a crew, and take a ruffian's wages, To cut the throats of wretches ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... and jamming back the plank into its place, I produced from my pocket a bottle of brandy which I had brought for the purpose. Half of it had been already sprinkled over my clothes, so that when the man approached he found me in a state of drunkenness, smelling vilely of spirits, and profuse in my offers to him to ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial. Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from the too palpable artificial. Dear Poodie, don't sigh. I only let off steam in words—that is safe. I am still a slave to this disgusting civilization and always your very ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... nature, and look upon that thing called Love through a multiplying glass, it is somewhat pardonable: But that those who are once come to the years of knowledge and true understanding should be drawn into it, methinks is most vilely foolish, and morrice fooles caps were much fitter for them, then wreaths of Lawrel. Yet stranger it is, that those who have been for the first time in that horrible estate, do, by a decease, cast ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... in which the name of religion was so vilely prostituted, roused Wickliffe's inclination, even in his declining years. He took up his pen once more, and wrote against it with the greatest acrimony. He expostulated with the pope in a very free manner, and asks him boldly, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... remonstrating and eating for more than an hour, his bill would amount to seventy or eighty centesimi, wine included. Every day he threatened to withdraw his custom; every day he sent for the landlady, pointed out to her how vilely he was treated, and asked how she could expect him to recommend the Concordia to his acquaintances. On one occasion I saw him push away a plate of something, plant his elbows on the table, and hide his face in his ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... from one of his domestics, tells me, that his tenants hate him: and that he never had a servant who spoke well of him. Vilely suspicious of their wronging him (probably from the badness of his own heart) he ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... she turned and left the camp again and the man followed her with eyes that glowed with admiration. As he lay there he thought to himself that however she might shudder at the thought of a vilely unpleasant task, she would not shirk it, and as he reflected on the events of the past few days, there was in his heart a surge of feeling that he could not repress. He loved this delicately-nurtured girl who adapted herself to the harsh ways of the wilderness ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... all this incomprehensible journey. He became possessed by an irresistible desire to hurry. Once more Dorn attempted to control the far-flinging of his thoughts—to come down to earth. The earth was there under his hand, soft, sticky, moldy, smelling vilely. He dug his fingers into it, until the feel of something like a bone made him jerk them out. Perhaps he had felt a stone. A tiny, creeping, chilly shudder went up his back. Then he remembered, he felt, he saw his little attic room, in the old home back among the wheat-hills ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... were not so strong as mine, caught me in her arms. 'My dearest, dearest husband,' cried she, 'the bible is the only weapon that is fit for your old hands now. Open that, my love, and read our anguish into patience, for she has vilely deceived us.'—'Indeed, Sir,' resumed my son, after a pause, 'your rage is too violent and unbecoming. You should be my mother's comforter, and you encrease her pain. It ill suited you and your reverend character thus ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... the commissions at only half the price, and that was about the usual division of labour between them. The two men were born to it. Sam's art took the lucrative shape of portrait-painting; Will's the side of flower and fruit and landscape painting, which was vilely unremunerative then, and allegorical painting, which no one will be at the pains to understand, or, what is more to the purpose, to buy, in this enlightened nineteenth century. Sam, who was thriving already, fell in love with Clarissa Gage, with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... in Modern Oxford, attempts to re-establish those local connections, which the wisdom of our ancestors established, and which the self-complacency of Victorian reformers "vilely cast away." ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... face, but so vilely made. She would make a splendid picture if, like the goddess Laverna, she could be painted as ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... repair towards her, and hear what she will say unto you. She is possibly, quoth Epistemon, some Canidia, Sagana, or Pythonissa, either whereof with us is vulgarly called a witch, —I being the more easily induced to give credit to the truth of this character of her, that the place of her abode is vilely stained with the abominable repute of abounding more with sorcerers and witches than ever did the plains of Thessaly. I should not, to my thinking, go thither willingly, for that it seems to me a thing unwarrantable, and altogether forbidden in the law of Moses. We are ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of judgment. Such appear His days and nights whom hope has ceased to cheer But grov'llers know it not. The supple slave Whose worthiest record is a nameless grave, Whose truckling spirit bends and bids him kneel, And fawn and vilely kiss a patron's heel— Even he can cast the cursed suspicious eye, Inquire the cause of this—the reason why? And stab the sufferer. Then, the tenfold pain To feel a gilded butterfly's disdain!— A kicking ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... read Plutarch's morals, now, or some such tedious fellow; and it shews so vilely with thee! 'fore God, 'twill spoil thy wit utterly. Talk me of pins, and feathers, and ladies, and rushes, and such things: and leave this Stoicity alone, till ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... instigation of the Bishop of Geneva, the ecclesiastic, and the sisters at Gex, stirred up all the persons of piety against me. I had but little uneasiness on my own account. If I could have had it at all, it would have been on account of Father La Combe, whom they vilely aspersed, though he was absent. They even made use of his absence, to overset all the good he had done in the country, by his missions and pious labors, which were inconceivably great. At first I was too ready to vindicate him, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... if she consents to an exchange of letters—shameful indeed, but not such a feeling of deadly sickness as comes with the humiliating view of an object of admiration degraded. Bad she may be; and she may be deceived, vilely treated, in either case. And what is a woman's pride but the staff and banner of her soul, beyond all gifts? He who wounds it cannot be forgiven—never!—he has killed the best of her. Aminta found ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... together what property he possessed, to embark for Canada. Encouraged by the advice of a friend in this country, he purchased a lot of wild land in the western district; "but sir," said he, addressing my husband with much vehemence, "I found I had been vilely deceived. Such land, such a country—I would not live in it for all I could see. Why, there is not a drop of wholesome water to be got, or a potato that is fit to eat. I lived for two months in a miserable shed they call a shanty, eaten up alive with mosquitoes. I could get ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... of its year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by collecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sung exceedingly ill. We had been going through the solo soprano parts of the "Paradise Lost." I believe I sung vilely that morning. I was not thinking of Eva's sin and the serpent, but of other things, which, despite the story related in the Book of Genesis, touched me more nearly. Several times already had he made me sing through Eva's stammering answer ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... rather admirable. He could not help smelling like that, for he was full of rubber drains and of gauze drains, and if the doctor was too busy to dress his wounds that day, and so put him off till the next, it was not his fault for smelling so vilely. He did not raise any disturbance, nor make any complaint, on certain days when he seemed to be neglected. Any extra discomfort that he was obliged to bear, he bore stoically. Altogether, after some four months ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... alluring to admit of my remaining longer in discussion with him. I strode forward, therefore. The Auberge de l'Etoile was not an imposing hostelry, nor one at which from choice I had made a halt. This common room stank most vilely of oil, of burning tallow—from the smoky tapers—and of I know not ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... mother, the cold partner who hath brought Destruction for a dowry—this to see And feel and know without repair, hath taught A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free: I have not vilely found nor basely sought, They made an exile not a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... friars come in for their share of strong words—chiefly because the Pope made use of them so vilely, and not less because they set themselves above their betters—us, to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... do you know, then, whether they ever uttered these simple 'utterances'? or whether they are not part of the corruptions? or how can you separate the one from the other? or how can you ascertain these men meant what you mean, when you thus vilely copy their language?" ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... principal incidents, the loss and recovery of wife and children, occur in the Story of the Knight Placidus (Gesta Romanorum, cx.). But the ecclesiastical taleteller does not do poetical justice upon any offenders, and he vilely slanders the great ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the duc de Villeroi. My letter was a thunderbolt to the duke. He better than any one knew the extent of my credit, which he dreaded, lest I might employ it to his injury; he therefore hastened to reply to me in the following words:— "MADAME LA COMTESSE,—I am a most unhappy, or rather a vilely calumniated man; and my enemies have employed the most odious means of making me appear despicable in your eyes. I confess, that not daring to aspire to you, I stopped at the footstool of your throne, but I wholly deny the words which ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... I should tip; only this I found my soul desire, even to cast itself at the foot of grace, by prayer and supplication. But, oh! it was hard for me now to bear the face to pray to this Christ for mercy, against whom I had thus most vilely sinned; it was hard work, I say, to offer to look him in the face against whom I had so vilely sinned; and, indeed, I have found it as difficult to come to God by prayer, after backsliding from him, as to do any other thing. Oh, the shame that did now attend me! especially when I thought I am now ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... self and pity for thy Lord That One so sweet should e'er have placed Himself At disadvantage such, as to be used So vilely by a being ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... affairs. The meeting of the Kings was cordial, or seemed so. King Philip came out of his pavilion to meet his royal brother, and Richard, kissing him, asked him how he did. 'Very vilely, Richard,' said the young man. 'I think there is a sword in my head. The glaring sun flattens me by day, and all ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the corner of the house, past a vilely smelling rain barrel, toward the west. A gray-haired woman was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, her hands in her lap, her eyes fixed on the faintly yellow sky, against which the hills stood dim purple silhouettes and the locust trees were ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... instigate you to sectional strife for the purpose of sectional dominion and the destruction of the rights of the minority. Do they mean treason to the Constitution and the destruction of the Union? Or do they vilely practice on credulity and passion for personal gain? The latter is suggested by the contradictory course they pursue. At the same time they proclaim war upon the slave property of the South, they ask for protection to the manufactures of the staple ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... better opinion of his sincerity, and desired to know what he had done to forfeit my charity. I mention this only to let you see how far I had gone in my measures of quitting him—that is to say, how near I was of showing him how base, ungrateful, and how vilely I could act; but I found I had carried the jest far enough, and that a little matter might have made him sick of me again, as he was before; so I began by little and little to change my way of talking to him, and ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... before they were out of sight over the ridge, Malcom Porter had turned on his heel and started back toward the cluster of buildings. He was swearing vilely in a rumbling monotone, and had ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... very thing I wished and managed so vilely. If Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish. But I ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She'd swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut: If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... cinnamon dress, with coral pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached stone—and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. To overcome desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the innermost deeps of the heart? Ah, if the Bodhisat had only seen ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... guineas to Gainsborough, who asked sixty, for his "Girl and Pigs," thus—"Reynolds was commonly humane and tolerant; he could indeed afford, both in fame and purse, to commend and aid the timid and needy."—P. 304. This is qualifying vilely a generous action, while it contradicts his assertion of being sparing of "a kindly word and a guinea." Nor are the occasional criticisms on passages in the "Discourses" in a better spirit, nor are they exempt from a vulgar taste as to views of art; their sole object ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... invested. Occasionally, too, an exclamation of disgust would be heard from some officer, more excited or less philosophic than his comrades, as with his head half-buried in some broad, ill-printed, vilely-smelling sheet, he would declaim from its columns, for the edification of the mess, paragraph after paragraph of abuse of the vessel and her officers, and withering denunciations of the barbarity with which their unfortunate prisoners were treated while on board. Among those who ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... work to do—some notes that I wanted to transcribe before I forgot myself what they meant; I write vilely. I have had a hard week, too, so I begged a day off. I may stay? You are sure I do ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... a plain answer to what you have had to allege against me. Now, sir, let me ask you a plain question. Who invented this cock-and-bull story? You don't reply—readily? Shall I assist you by a suggestion? Was it that man who sits by you—Burchill? For Burchill knows that he has lied vilely and shamelessly this morning—Burchill knows that he did see Jacob Herapath sign that will—Burchill knows that that will was duly witnessed by himself and by me in the presence of each other and of the ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... would hold himself that he was not as other men, and then gives thanks to God for this: but the conclusion was most vilely false, and therefore the praise for it could not but be foolish, vain, and frivolous. Whence I infer, that if to use such language in prayer is dangerous, then to affect the use thereof is yet more dangerous. ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... last. Now you shall not escape me: in your eyes I see the horrible huddlings of your past,— All you remember blackens, utters cries, Reaches far hands and faint. I hold the light Close to your cheek, watch the pained pupils shrink,— Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely think . . . Now all the hatreds of my life have met To hold high carnival . . . we do not speak, My fingers find the well-loved throat they seek, And press, and fling you down . . . ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... fill it, but her hand shook so, that she entangled it (and yet her hand was small enough to have come out easily, I am sure), and bungled terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it, those little offices in which I have commended her discretion, were vilely done, from first to last. During the whole process, Tackleton stood looking on maliciously with the half-closed eye; which, whenever it met hers—or caught it, for it can hardly be said to have ever met another eye: rather being a kind of trap to snatch it up—augmented her confusion ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... nearly dawn now, and I walked to the only house in sight, a long, low building of logs and, being very tired, I sat down on the veranda and soon fell asleep. It was not long after sunrise that a sinister, evil-looking person, smelling vilely of rum, woke me up roughly and asked me what I did there. When he learned that I was traveling to New Mexico and had lost my way, he grew very polite and invited ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... was, in the early days of our merchant marine, too often barely fit to keep life in men's bodies. The unceasing round of salt pork, stale beef, "duff," "lobscouse," doubtful coffee sweetened with molasses, and water, stale, lukewarm, and tasting vilely of the hogshead in which it had been stored, required sturdy appetites to make it even tolerable. Even in later days Frank T. Bullen was able to write: "I have often seen the men break up a couple of biscuits ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... good ruler; and I verily believe that the President of France is that man. My only doubt being whether the people are worthy of him, fickle as they are, like all great masses,—the French people, in particular. By the way, if a most vilely translated book, called the "Prisoner of Ham," be extant in French, I should like to possess it. The account of the escape looks ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway, up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold room vilely hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a table and my draft of the SOVEREIGN's scrollwork. Here he leaves me. Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... in the liquor traffic is the increasing consumption of porter, for that at least has some nourishment in it, and is reasonably wholesome, whereas the whisky is vilely adulterated, not only by the publicans before it reaches the consumer, but also in some ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... self-condemnation that must overtake her father if he did nothing, urged her to find Cornelius. But if she found him, what would come of it? Was he likely to go home with her? How would he be received if he did go home? and if not, what was she to do with or for him? Was he to keep the money so vilely appropriated? And what was he to do when it was spent? If want would drive him home, the sooner he came to it the better! We pity the prodigal with his swine, but then first a ray of hope begins to break through the darkness of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... position of having been commissioned, at great expense, to make the Mexican journey especially for the "Excelsior." This, with Mrs. Saltillo's somewhat precise preraphaelite drawings and water-colors, vilely reproduced by woodcuts, gave quite a sensational air to her production, which, divided into parts, for two or three days filled a whole page of the paper. I am not aware of any particular service that it did to ethnology; but, as I pointed out in the editorial column, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... been the small quarto in black letter from which a quotation has just been made. This composition, named an "Anatomy" in imitation of several then recent popular treatises of a similar title, is only to be pardoned on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college. It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment; the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, and Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied the matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract is extravagant living ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... uses, some of which are referred to in Nos. 1, 3, and 11. In Nos. 3 and 18 reference is made to the Rush-ring, a ring, no doubt, originally meant and used for the purposes of honest betrothal, but afterwards so vilely used for the purposes of mock marriages, that even as early as 1217 Richard Bishop of Salisbury had to issue his edict against the use of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Captain he takes, in a gold-ballast'd ship, Each summer to Terra damnosa a trip, For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get, And runs his poor Owners most vilely in debt. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... only the failing powers of a great empire conscious of its old dignity but not fully able to display it. In the barbaric night which succeeded, we find art sunk to the most childish attempt at imitating simple nature; which was "copied most vilely." In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we trace the latent wish for the delineation of beauty struggling again into life; but it was simply the wish rather than the power to delineate the graceful, that we find displayed in the contorted figures which the artists of ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... unfortunate men, with minds far elevated beyond the officers who are placed here to guard, and to torment them, submit to their confinement with a better grace than one could have expected. When these men have eaten their stinted ration, vilely cooked, and hastily served up, they return to their hammocks, or sleeping births, and there try "to steep their senses in forgetfulness," until the recurrence of the next disgusting meal. On the other hand, some have said that they never before eat with such a keen appetite; ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... lonely, so lonely," she murmured, "I don't know what to do. If you would only help me. I know I behaved horribly to you, vilely; but surely—surely you have some pity for me in my misfortune. I have no one to turn to—no one—no one. If you would only help me to understand—if you would only talk the matter over with me, it would be ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... merciful and holy in our nature revolts: a gray-haired old woman, so debased by drink and an evil life that all sense of shame and degradation had been extinguished, fighting with a policeman, and for a time showing superior strength, swearing vilely, her face distorted with passion, and a crowd made up chiefly of women as vile and degraded as herself, and of all ages, and colors, laughing, shouting and enjoying ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... the maid, "how vilely you have been handled, to be sure! Why, your knees are all cut, and your clothes ruined! Do you know the wretch who used ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edge beyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist's part at poetic breadth and selection. She had been much worried about the "values," whatever they might be. "They're quite vilely wrong!" she had said, impatiently. "And I don't know how to get them right." And all he could do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain. Nor could he ignore the fact—so new and strange to a princeling!—that her perplexities were ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the big-bellied clouds which bad been keeping the sun off us most considerately emptied out upon us a perfect torrent of rain. It filled the cavity in the whale's side in a twinkling; and though the water was greasy, stained with blood, and vilely flavoured, it was as welcome a drink as I have ever tasted. Thus fed, and with our thirst slaked, we were able to take a more hopeful view of things while the prospect of our being found seemed much more probable than it had ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... a different thing from giving the energies and wishes and visions of youth, as Emma has done. I could only offer the worn-out. But that is speculation. There is present duty at home and in the village, and brightness in your children, and my hopes are on John. I have used him vilely, because he tried to teach me to take to you, and I do long to see him and ask his pardon, and you will help me, so that he shall believe in my sorrow, and we will be a sober old ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge |
