"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air, Hot thunder-bolts and flames, the fiery darts Of Jove; and in the midst of either host They bore upon their blast the cry confused Of battle, and the shouting. For the din Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof Wreaked there its deeds, till weary sank the war. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... reply being, according to Serjt. Diggle, "No go"—according to the Swede, "No no." The Captain preferred to believe the latter, and as there were no orders continued his course, though we could see the remainder of our little fleet turn round and sail back. The weather was appalling, the sea very rough, and long before we had reached half way we were all very ill. This was not surprising, as our transport was built for pleasure work on the Clyde, and, though fast, was never ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... the midst of these good people, so peacefully assembled there, would not have produced a more appalling effect. It was a horrible thing at that period to be imprisoned by the enmity of the king. Louvieres sprang forward to snatch his sword, which stood against a chair in a corner of the room; but a glance from the worthy Broussel, who in the midst of it all did not lose his presence of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hopes of water communication precarious and uncertain. Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be; however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it—there is always a heart appalling shock accompanying the account of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations. The probable cost of this contemplated railroad is estimated at $290,000;—the bare statement of which, in my opinion, is sufficient to justify the belief, that the improvement of the Sangamon ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... were filmed by a growing drowsiness when Wapi drew silently away and slunk suspiciously into the night. There was no yapping foxes here, forty miles from the coast. An almost appalling silence hung under the white stars, a silence broken only by the low and distant moaning the wind always makes on the barrens. Wapi listened to it, and he sniffed with his gray muzzle turned to the north. And then he whined. Had Dolores ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... peculiarities even to-day. They might have been of considerable interest as geological specimens to a scientific man under happier conditions. As ballast they were useful. As weights to be moved about in cramped quarters they were simply appalling. They spared no portion of our poor bodies. Another of our troubles, worth mention here, was the chafing of our legs by our wet clothes, which had not been changed now for seven months. The insides ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... volumes a perfect forest of Duffs. I know now exactly how Macbeth felt when he saw Birnam Wood descending on Dunsinane. No wonder he exclaimed, "The cry is still, They come." When I looked at all these genealogies and lifelike portraits I had an appalling vision of this great army of Duffs of Clunybeg and Hatton and Fetteresso and the rest advancing towards me solemnly waving their family-trees. In the van, with his Dunsinane honours thick upon him, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... and measure the stars in space, shall he not be able to compel some magic mirror to reveal to him his future? As it is, we all tread on quicksands of mystery, that may open and engulf us at any instant. It is simply appalling when one stops to think of it,—to realize the degree to which all one's achievements, and possibilities, and success, and happiness depend on causes apparently outside his own control. One awakens to begin the day without the remotest idea of what that day holds for him. All his powers of accomplishment, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... as the waves stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling solemnity, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... had fallen upon Virginia with the unexpectedness and appalling swiftness of a bolt from the blue. From a tranquil state of contentment and comparative happiness she suddenly awoke to the fact that she had made a terrible mistake, and when she realized the full significance of her misfortune, she sank nerveless ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on an annual present from Sir Leicester and whence she makes occasional resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She has an extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that dreary city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of an indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an obsolete ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... certainty was that the hatred had grown until even in this land of vendetta its levy of violent deaths had been appalling beyond ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... did not, however, make any advances until the night of August 12, when the most appalling and most ghastly murder that has ever been witnessed took place about two hundred yards from the camp. The moon had disappeared temporarily behind a dark cloud, the men had all retired for the night, and everything seemed tranquil, when suddenly ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... an immense, an appalling impertinence—this great drama? Was it a mere mockery of the impotence and darkness of man's life? Would the priest say all this at the death-bed of the drunken beggar, of the voluptuous tyrant, of the woman who had been too hard or too weak in the bonds of the flesh? Was it a last great ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... really very fond of the Commissioner when he wasn't being irritating. But in some obscure way she found the plasmoids themselves and the idea of unlimited plastic life which they embodied rather appalling. However, she was in a minority there. Practically everybody else seemed to feel that plasmoids were the biggest improvement since the ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... likely star was Wolf 359—eight light-years away. I thought for a minute about traveling that vast distance. It was almost appalling, considered in terms of man's life span. Of course, dwellers on other planets might live ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... Historically, then, shall I view him; and limiting this view to his civil administration, I demand, where is there a Chief Magistrate of whom so much evil has been predicted, and from whom so much good has come? Never has any man entered upon the Chief Magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton
... field of Sociology an appalling work lies before us. First, we must unflinchingly and bravely face the truth, not with apologies, but with solemn earnestness. The Negro Academy ought to sound a note of warning that would echo in every black cabin in the land: Unless we conquer ...
— The Conservation of Races - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 2 • W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
... went on Omega grew more restless. Only by taking many voyages around the world was he able to endure the appalling silence. He was the last traveler to visit the ancient marts of man, he was the last hope and despair of life. Sometimes he talked aloud to himself, but his words sounded hollow and ghostly in that deep silence, which ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... overboard. Several hundreds were in the last stages of emaciation and exhaustion; scarcely one of the whole fifteen hundred who landed was fit for a day's work. This brought fresh misery and trouble, and the deaths were of appalling frequency. ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... me is appalling! I ought to see the Princess as soon as possible. If what she says is true, it must be the Englishman who has brought about ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... She needed the touch of his hand, his shoulder against hers, the communion of his spirit and his strength. Life was an appalling thing to face alone! There was no joy now in the punishing cold and the wastes of forest; only sadness and fear and despair. Sitting in the snow, his head and shoulders in her arms, she knew a fear and a loneliness undreamed ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... account in a very important way. For a long time the English public had every now and then been horrified by the terrible explosions which took place in the coal mines. These explosions resulted often in an appalling loss of human life. Their cause was the filling of the mine by a deadly gas, called "fire-damp," which, when ignited by a lighted candle or lamp, exploded with fearful violence. One day an explosion of fire-damp occurred which killed over one hundred miners ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... communication-trenches was appalling, and the continuous roar of the French seventy-fives over our heads did not alleviate it. In the other trenches, however, was much humanity, some of it sleeping in deep, obscure retreats, but most of it acutely alive and interested in everything. A Captain ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... into the streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had been to hope. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... disease, retained a singular steadiness. A superior spirit was fighting there with death. It seemed as if Bartholomeo sought to kill with his dying look some enemy seated at the foot of his bed. This gaze, fixed and cold, was made the more appalling by the immobility of the head, which was like a skull standing on a doctor's table. The body, clearly outlined by the coverlet, showed that the dying man's limbs preserved the same rigidity. All was dead, except the eyes. There was something mechanical in the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... all; the arranging of the yearly calendar, with its complicated intercalation of days to bring into harmony the solar and the lunar years, was still in the hands of the priests, and here the results of their growing ignorance were most appalling. The calendar became terribly disordered; and this again had its reaction on religion, for the calendar month occasionally fell so out of gear with the natural seasons that it was impossible to celebrate some of the old Roman festivals, which had a distinct bearing ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... were in a hopeless state. With credit gone, taxation exhausted, and a continually increasing floating debt, the situation was truly appalling to any statesman. It was at this juncture that Talleyrand, a priest of noble birth, as able as he was unscrupulous, brought forth his famous measure for the spoliation of the Church, to which body he belonged, and to which he was a disgrace. Talleyrand, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... child's play of the sort, monsieur,' he cried, turning suddenly to that cold rage of his which was so appalling. 'Do you imagine that I place veteran soldiers in these positions that you may practise quarte and tierce upon them? How am I to face Europe if my soldiers turn their points upon each other? Another word of your duelling, and I break you ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have a good share of Tapleyism in me and come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say that no man ever saw me out of heart or ever heard a complaining word from me even when our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly crippled by cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack. However, it was done,—and after it was ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... the most appalling scandals of modern times is the disgraceful suppression by the Ginger-beer Press of news relating to the state of affairs in the Isle of Wight. For some weeks we have not flinched from filling our columns with picturesque accounts of the epoch-making events ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... the dead could quicken, We then might turn to that life again. But on lonely nights we would hear them calling, We should hear their steps on the pathways falling, We should loathe the life with a hate appalling In our lonely rides ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... long measured strides, carrying the still insensible Russian in his arms. In all, some half-dozen carriages had come over the embankment. The shrieks and cries of the wounded passengers were something appalling. Already the passengers in the fore part of the train, who had escaped unhurt, together with the officials and a few villagers who happened to be on the spot, were doing their best to rescue these unfortunates from the terrible wreckage ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... waters of the Koomati at its juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight! ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... to a point in this chronicle where I am faced by an appalling difficulty. Hitherto I have striven to tell you no more about myself and my motives and feelings than was demanded by my purpose of unfolding to you the lives of others. Primarily I wanted to explain Leonard Boyce. I could only do it by showing you how he reacted ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the most eloquent impatience. "I have to be," she said. "You can't understand it, but I'm treated just as if I were a little girl in short frocks. It's simply appalling. Everything I say and do and look is criticized from the point of view of 1850. Can't you imagine what will be thought of my sneaking out every afternoon to talk to a dangerous young man who has only just left Yale and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... character of vague mystery to simple details of prosaic events and objects, to be found in no other works of fiction. The terrible conception of the Doppelgaenger, which exists in a modified form as the wraith of Scottish legendary superstition, is rendered infinitely more appalling by being taken out of its misty highland half-light of visionary indefiniteness, and produced in frock-coat and trousers, in all the shocking distinctness of commonplace, everyday, contemporary life. The Germans are the only people whose imaginative ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... calculations are based upon official statistics which are grossly exaggerated in favour of the Germans and Magyars. The picture would be still more appalling if we took into consideration the actual number of the Slavs. The Austrian census is not based upon the declaration of nationality or of the native language, but upon the statement of the "language of communication" ("Umgangsprache"). ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... said Peters, wiping his face surreptitiously with the backs of his hands. When his visitor had left he turned over and sank into a half-delirious doze that lasted until the sun sank with appalling suddenness, and night rushed over the land. Tossing upon his bed, all through the velvet darkness he was dimly conscious, through his delirious dreams, of tom-toms beaten in the bush. His throat was parched, and in his dreams he drank greedily from his canteen; but each time that he awoke he saw ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... inexplicably, as if by a bodiless hand stretched out of a cloud,—when the red slayer vanishes like a mist and leaves no faintest trace of his identity,—the mystery shrouding the deed presently becomes more appalling than the deed itself. There is something paralyzing in the thought of an invisible hand somewhere ready to strike at your life, or at some life dearer than your own. Whose hand, and where is it? Perhaps it passes you your coffee at breakfast; perhaps you have hired ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... were hardly less terrifying than their brothers. They had their father's fierce, hawklike profile, softened by youth, and the appalling height and robustness due to the freedom and fresh air of a nomadic existence. Their costumes might, Mary thought, have been fashioned out of gunny-sacks by the simple expedient of cutting holes for the head and arms. The description of the dress worn by the charcoal-burner's ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... I knew of ancient history, it was not difficult for me to guess the nationality of those she described simply as "the men from over there." But what utter and appalling devastation the Great War must have wrought to have erased not only every sign of civilization from the face of this great land, but even the name of the enemy from the knowledge and language of ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... before, was now appalling. Two entirely correct young gentlemen, in evening dress, with light overcoats and opera hats, struggling with a refractory car that in its obstinacy was far more dignified than themselves—and the car obstructing traffic at the very centre of the world in the very ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... I seem. It happens that I am in close personal contact with men whose specialty is the study of morbid psychology, and I know the quality of those who act as mediums for the return of the dead." The intensity of the interest on the part of the little group before him was astonishing, not to say appalling. "It is evident that the mother and her pastor are both of the new dispensation or worse," was his thought, but his natural courtesy led him to say, placably: "There are mysteries in the world, I admit—in ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... a number of songs and counts in different languages, but it is not supposable that he understands every word he utters. If, however, his understanding develops as it promises to do, he will become a decided polyglot. He has mastered an appalling array of statistics, such as the areas in square miles of hundreds of countries, the population of the world's principal cities, the birthdays of all the Presidents, the names of all the cities of the United States of over 10,000 inhabitants, and a lot of mathematical ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... fourth and the chief matter that worried Mr. Prohack. He regarded it sardonically as rather a lark; but he was worried to think of the girl making a fool of herself with her mother. Her mother was demonstrably in the right. To yield to the chit's appalling heartlessness would be bad tactics and it would be humiliating. Nevertheless Mr. Prohack had directed the taxi-driver to the dance-studio at Putney. On the way it suddenly occurred to him, almost with a shock, that he was a rich man, secure from material anxieties, and that ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... raised her head. She was lying on a heap of blankets on a stone ledge. Above her was the boundless sapphire of the sky. Close beside her a little spring bubbled from the blank wall of the mountain. Rhoda lay in helpless silence, looking about her, while the appalling nature of her predicament sank into ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... forecast of more rain, the gravest anxiety was visible on the face of every soul of that vast multitude. This anxiety was intensified when it was announced that the latest measurement was twenty-four feet nine inches; and what was simply appalling, that the register marked six inches rise in less than an hour. It was clear to every one that the critical moment had arrived. There was little to hope, and much to fear. Darkness fell upon as dismal a scene as imagination could well conceive. If the water once overlapped the embankment at the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... of the bright torch he carried illumined his face, on which love had written what she could not fail to read,—but she trembled as with cold, and there was a kind of appalling winder in her troubled eyes. He whispered, "come, Queen Thelma!" As in a dream, she allowed him to lead her to the stalactite chair, and when she was seated therein, she endeavored to control the rapid beating of her heart, and to smile unconcernedly on the little group that surrounded her with ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... large or small, I have a prejudice against having my jugular vein breathed, at midnight, by small animals of the weasel tribe,—an act of which Mungo, probably, would have been incapable. His relations will do such things, however, and newspapers recording appalling instances of it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Homer, Eschylus, Plato, Juvenal, etc. Precious minims! I think if we were forced to choose, rather than have you, and the likes of you, and what belongs to and has grown of you, blotted out and gone, we could better afford, appalling as that would be, to lose all actual ships, this day fastened by wharf, or floating on wave, and see them, with all their cargoes, scuttled and sent to ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... I thought I'd screw up my courage to go through the bills just to see where I was. My dear, I was paralysed! I had the most appalling time! Well, Mr. Pilcher's sermon came just in the nick of time. I thought "what an idiot I must be to endure all this misery just for want of ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... allowed to exist for one moment upon the face of the globe? But no doubt they had some hidden motive in arresting him, for it was quite incredible that they really imagined he had committed this appalling crime. She could not understand their motive, to be sure, but without doubt there must have been some reason which was not clear ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... grandmother, who told every incident as dramatically as though she had participated in it herself, related appalling stories about witches, death, apparitions, and the Inquisition. These stories made such a powerful impression on me that it is no wonder that I remember them after sixty years. Though my terror of my grandmother in this guise was excessive, I do not think I should have liked ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Caesar in expressing his contempt of anything but popular sway, he never came into the presence of the quiet and well-bred without a feeling of distrust and uneasiness, that had its rise in the simple circumstance of his not being used to their company. Indeed, there is nothing more appalling, in general, to the vulgar and pretending, than the simplicity and natural ease of the refined. Their own notions of elegance lie so much on the surface, that they seem at first to suspect an ambush, and it is ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... no sooner done so than they were warned to take to their heels by the hissing of a large serpent, which they observed revolving itself towards them with great velocity. Terrified at the sight, Michael's two companions fled, while he, on the contrary, resolved to encounter the reptile. The appalling monster approached Michael Scott with distended mouth and forked tongue; and, throwing itself into a coil at his feet, was raising its head to inflict a mortal sting, when Michael, with one stroke of his stick, severed its body into three pieces. Having rejoined his affrighted ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, 'If I go into a cheesemonger's shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... us all," Madame de S— continued, with ghastly vivacity. "After coming to the very door! What a peculiar proceeding! Well, I have been a shy little provincial girl at one time. Yes, Razumov" (she fell into this familiarity intentionally, with an appalling grimace of graciousness. Razumov gave a perceptible start), "yes, that's my origin. A ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... overcome, and was obliged to call for brandy. Oh heavens! he would say it was weak, and I should be lost! I held tight to the leg of the table and awaited my fate. The brandy was poured out and Uncle Pumblechook drank it off. Instantly he sprang to his feet, turned round several times in an appalling, spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushed out at the door to the great consternation of the company. Mrs. Joe and Joe ran out and brought him back, and as he sank into his chair he gasped the one word, "Tar!" I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... by the appalling crime wave that has beset the world—not only by murders, robberies and hold-ups, but by the ghastly increase in marital unfaithfulness which clogs the divorce courts; and the attacks against women and girls which have become a daily ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... brain were so frequent and appalling, and the near approach of death so dreadful to the guilty and despairing wretch, that they produced at last a strong desire to see his brother, that he might ask his forgiveness, and make some restitution of his property ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... army, which he was made to believe was "five times ready," "ready to the last gaiter button," he marshalled against the thoroughly prepared military power of Germany an army ill-organized, ill-supplied, without proper reserves, and led by commanders of appalling incapacity. Maps and plans were bad; strategy was an unknown quantity; no study had been made of the use of the railway in war; almost everything except courage was lacking, and courage without leadership was hopeless against the thoroughly drilled and supplied German ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This Society keeps five hundred workers incessantly busy, day and night, preventing cruelty to little English children. Go in, and listen to some of the stories that the inspectors can tell you. They can tell you of appalling sufferings inflicted on children, of bruised bodies and lacerated limbs and poisoned minds, not only in the submerged quarters but in comfortable houses by English people of education and position. Buy a few numbers of the Society's official organ, The Child's Guardian, and read of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... sentiment of Kentucky we believe to be, that slavery is an evil which must be borne with patience, simply because there is no known plan for its rapid extinction which would not produce incalculable sacrifices and appalling risks. At the same time we think the people of Kentucky are not inclined to increase the evil, but are inclined to favor its gradual emancipation and remote termination, by prohibiting the further introduction of slaves and by some provision tending to encourage ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... represent to us that inevitable destiny which often involves all the parties of an action in one common ruin. And yet the beauty of proportion, the agreeable flow of the outline, are not lost in this violent struggle; and a representation, the most appalling to the senses, is yet managed with forbearance, while a mild breath of gracefulness is diffused over ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... his best to investigate, but the only result was to discover that no one interrogated had any notion of truth, except John Taylor, and he knew nothing of the matter. The mass of falsehood, spite, violence, and dishonesty, that became evident, was perfectly appalling, and not a clue was to be found to the truth—scarcely a hope that minds so lost to honourable feeling were open to receive good impressions. It was a great distress to Ethel—it haunted her night and day—she lay awake ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... object of which was to search out Christians in every quarter and drive them to a renunciation of their faith. Both the foreign priests who had remained in the country in spite of the edict and the native converts were hunted down and punished with the most appalling tortures. Rewards were offered for information involving Christians of every position and rank, even of parents against their children and of children against their parents. At what time this practice began it is difficult to say, ...
— Japan • David Murray
... this civilization... simply appalling in its vastness. The countless millions of your people, the wealth you have piled up... it seems like a huge bubble that may burst any minute. And the one device by which it is ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... admiration, it seems to me to describe the most intolerable performance that could ever have afflicted society. He talked like a racehorse approaching the winning-post. Could the wit of man devise a more appalling image? ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... face the front-door and take up half the passage-way, directly you get past the drawing and dining-room doom doors. The cottage is not high enough to strike the eye, but the squareness, or more properly the cubeness, of these two-storied houses is appalling. They look for all the world like houses built of cards, except that the cards are uncommonly solid. For my own part, I should never care to live in a two-storied house again, after experiencing the comfort of never having to go upstairs, and having all the rooms on the same floor. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Marr working and organising the protective flank bombers without the least regard for personal safety. At 4 o'clock the 2nd Manchesters reinforced them with two Companies. Just at this time the line wavered a little in face of the overwhelming bombardment and the appalling casualties, but control was immediately gained. At 5 the shattered unit was ordered to consolidate the ground taken. This was done and two strong enemy counter attacks repulsed. At 9.30 the Battalion ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... door slamming had ceased, and there seemed, probably because of the contrast, to be an appalling silence in the house. However, I led the way, holding my candle high, and keeping the sword bayonet very handy. Downstairs we found all the doors wide open; although the outer doors and the windows were closed all right. I began to wonder whether the noises had been made by the doors ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... Mediterranean where our trade routes are vital to our interests? We have not kept a fleet in the Mediterranean which is equal to dealing alone with a combination of other fleets in the Mediterranean. We would have exposed this country from our negative attitude at the present moment to the most appalling risk. We feel strongly that France was entitled to know—and to know at once—whether or not in the event of attack upon her unprotected northern and western coasts she could depend upon British support. In these compelling circumstances, yesterday afternoon I gave to the French Ambassador ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... be denied as mere exceptions to a rule. Without alleging that at the moment we have a Shakespeare, a Garrick or a Siddons, I assert confidently that we own dramatists and players able, if rightly used, to make our theatre worthy of our country and also that the misuse of them is appalling. For very many years the history of the English stage has been chiefly a record of waste, of gross commercialism and of honest efforts ruined by adherence to mischievous traditions: the Scottish and Irish stage have been mere ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... and the vast polar ice fields and the monstrous excrescences that we call "mountains" have the same effect. But the supreme example of the kind of material ghastliness which I am trying to indicate, is, as may easily be surmised, nothing less than the appalling thought of the unfathomable spatial gulfs through which our whole stellar system moves. Here also, in this supreme insistence of objective "deadness," the situation is relieved when we realize that this ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... mere idea of the empty sitting-room—empty with the ghost in it—filled me with a new and stranger fear. Horrible happenings might occur in that room, and I must be there to see them! Moreover, the ghost's gaze must not fall on nothing; that would be too appalling (without doubt I was mad); its gaze must meet something, otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether: the notion of such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze; my eyes desired those eyes; if ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... multiplied, and with a constant increase from year to year; and if those partially unable to earn their support should be admitted to the privileges of this bill, the probable increase of expense would be almost appalling. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... forth on their tramp up the slopes, peering right and left as they went for any indication of the absent woman. Wingate's old grief was knocking at his heart once more. A woman lost in the appalling vastness of this great Western land was entering into his life again. It took them a full hour to go that mile, although both were experts on the shoes, but as they reached the rim of the canyon they were rewarded by seeing a thin blue streak of smoke curling up from her lodge "chimney." ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... and aided the two men as they toiled to cover the more perishable goods with bolts of cotton cloth, while the appalling wind tore at the eaves and lashed the roof with broadsides of rain and hail, which fell in constantly increasing force, raising the roar of the storm in key, till it crackled viciously. The tempest had the voice of a ravenous beast, cheated and angry. Outside ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... to praise the Lord for his goodness, than to spend time and strength in murmurings and disputings with their fellow-mortals. The destruction, not only of property, but of life; in some recent contests, is quite appalling, and we certainly live in very eventful times; the tendency, however, both of the good and evil, is so obviously towards an increase of light and knowledge, that it seems warrantable to expect all will be overruled to better views and practices becoming ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Scottish left, or the highland chiefs on their right. After fierce fighting, the Scottish wings were broken, and the Scottish centre was completely enveloped. There, headed by the King, fought the pick of the Scottish chivalry. The stand made was magnificent, the slaughter appalling. The English victory this time was one not of the bow—as so often before—but of the bill or axe against the spears in which the northern nation trusted. By hewing away the spear-heads, the English disabled their opponents; yet they fought on, till man ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the squall, the crowd that filled all the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish a Royal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as the wheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry which had been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose and filled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through the valley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rang ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... days and nights half naked upon the roofs, till these gave way; nor from F/hr nor the mainland could help be sent to them. The church-yard is half washed away; coffins and corpses were frequently exposed to view by the breakers: it is an appalling sight. And yet the inhabitants of the Halligs are attached to their little home. They cannot remain on the mainland, but are driven thence ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... I cannot describe to you our first impression. Its vastness, dreariness, and loneliness is appalling. Very little is under cultivation between this and St. Paul, so that only a house here and there breaks the line of horizon. There are a few cotton and aspen trees along the Red River Valley, but with that exception the landscape for the last fifteen hours' travelling has been like the sea on a very ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... unfortunate Frances must have been rolled and bumped at speed; for there was a pursuit. In his already quoted letter to Carleton, Chamberlain says that Sir Edward Coke's "lady was at his heels, and, if her coach had not held"—i.e., stuck in the mud of the appalling roads of the period—"in the pursuit after him, there was like to be strange tragedies." Miss Coke must have been long in forgetting that enforced ride of at least a dozen long miles, on a pillion behind a brother, and as a prisoner ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... screaming down upon us, with such a medley of sound as might be expected from a legion of unchained furies, our port quarter was turned towards it, with the schooner in motion and paying off before it. Yet, even so, it swooped down upon us with such appalling violence that the little vessel careened until her lee sheer-poles were buried and the water was up to the coaming of the main hatch. But with way on her, her helm hard up, no after canvas set, and the hurricane dragging at her stout foresail, she could not help paying ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... spring there came to Douglas a startling and most appalling piece of news—-Ross Christian was constantly seen at "The Manx Fairy." On the evening of that day Philip reappeared at Sulby. He had come down in high wrath, inventing righteous speeches by the way on plighted troths and broken pledges. Ross ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... "I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation—you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de Fronsac: 'Between your sally and the present moment lie ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... might profit by good criticism, for they are intelligent and fair-minded. Alas! English criticism is more woefully out of it than painting even. The ignorance of our critics is appalling.[22] Seven years ago there was brought over to London a collection of pictures by Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Every man and woman on the Continent who claimed acquaintance with modern art had already come to some conclusion about these painters whose works were in the public collections of ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... like the rushing of many waters, growled amongst the ranks and the surrounding spectators, while a short sharp exclamation of horror every now and then gushed out shrill and clear, and fearfully distinct above the appalling monotony. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Yes, my dear John, so now you know the sort of spirit of the age that has cast its shadow both over my home life and my official work. Ought I not to oppose this appalling, destructive, disorganising tendency with all the weapons I can lay my hands upon? Of course it is certainly my duty—and that both with my ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... be done abound around you. Think you there has been no struggle on the part of those tens of thousands who have given up comforts, home, prospects, harmless pleasures, in exchange for the ghastly miseries of the trenches, the appalling risks by land, on or beneath the sea, in the air, all at the call of a stern, compelling duty, which told them that the life really worth living was the one spent, laid down if need be, for King ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... unpleasant reminder.—(Scene, Thanksgiving dinner, everybody commenting on the immense size of the turkey.) An appalling silence fell upon the crowd when Tommy cried out, "Mamma, is that the old ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... in the use of tobacco by women," declares the Methodist Board, "is appalling." Is it not? But so many things are appalling that it would be a relief to everybody if a board, or commission, or other volunteer organization were to act as a shock-absorber. Whenever an appalling situation arose, this group could be appalled for the rest of us. And we, knowing that ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... is not able to row? Of course that is as the Signore wishes. Another gondolier can be had to-morrow for the asking; but to-night, the prices are appalling. They have ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... remaining so. It is difficult for me to be appalling for any length of time, yet the emotion of fear must be cultivated in ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... dragging a youth to the altar. Sisily saw him distinctly. He was naked, with a beautiful face, haggard and white, and was bound with cords. Suddenly he freed himself, and dashed down the slope into the darkness. He was pursued and brought back, and the cries of his pursuers mingled with an appalling scream for help which seemed to float down the mountain side to where she lay, filling the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... heard outside in the porch. "Christian!" said Sweyn and his mother simultaneously, he confidently, she authoritatively, to set the checked wheels going again. But Tyr flung up his head with an appalling howl. ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... were drawing near. The officer in command of Fort Shaw had supplied fast teams to hurry on a few loads to the agency, but the roads were so bad that the wagon trains moved with appalling slowness. At length, however, they had advanced so far that it was possible to send out light teams, to meet the heavily laden ones, and bring in a few sacks of flour and bacon; and every little helped. Gradually ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... youthful period of my life. No fear of bullets or bayonets could ever equal mine. It was the fear of ghosts. As a child, I think that at times when shut up for punishment, in a dark cellar for instance, I must have nearly gone out of my mind with this appalling terror. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... sure of one thing: this was some millionaire's home. What if he should see in the drawing-room a party of his intimate friends, ready to plague and jest? He shuddered. He never had entertained such an appalling probability. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... for a tikkie a pint, and for which Bough charged at the price of champagne, kept him alive. Broth or eggs he sickened at and turned from, and, indeed, the one was greasy and salt, the others of appalling mustiness. He would regularly swallow the tabloids of quinine or lithia, and fall back on the hard, coarse pillow, exhausted by the mere effort of unscrewing the nickel-cap of the little phial, and tell himself that he was getting stronger. Sometimes he really was so, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... something magnificent about going up these mountains, appalling as it seems to one's nerves, at particular turns and angles of the road, where the mule stops you on the very "brink of forever," as one of the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... constantly attend human life, I perceive that I have never before been so free from vexations and calamities, or possessed of so great a share of content and health as at this period. Looking back on some delightful and happy events of my life, and on many misfortunes so truly overwhelming that the appalling retrospect makes me wonder how I have reached this age in vigor and prosperity, through God's goodness I have resolved to publish an account of my life; and ... I must, in commencing my narrative, satisfy the public ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... experience; but he had never before seen flogging by lawful authority. Flogging in the workshop was different, a private if sanguinary affair between free human beings. This ritualistic and cold-blooded torture was infinitely more appalling in its humiliation. The screaming grew feebler, then ceased; then the blows ceased, and the unconscious infant (cured of being a tiger) was carried away leaving a trail of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... had colds before, and she had always got well. Why should'nt she now? It is a strange vagary of old people to consider themselves just as young as they used to be, notwithstanding their advanced years. To the majority of the old people, the idea of death is not so appalling as the inability to work and the incapacity to enjoy the customary pleasures ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... it as he did; indeed, he was a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life - "Here! tak' it awa', and bring me a piece bread and kebbuck!" he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering without disguise; and his lordship ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bridal stood Perseus in stern tranquillity of wrath, Half stood, half floated on his ankle-plumes Out-swelling, while the bright face on his shield Looked into stone the raging fray; so rose, But with no magic arms, wearing alone Th' appalling and control of his firm look, The Briton Samor; at his rising awe Went abroad, and the riotous hall ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... comes a penetrating cold from the first glance. It's like an icy lance to the centre of consciousness. Then I felt the man's presence beside me. My confidence was that which only a child can give. What the mind knows and fears has too much dominion afterward. . . . The appalling power and beauty of the cobra fascinated me. I have never quite forgotten. There was a lolling trailing grace about the lifted length, the head slightly inclined to us, the hood but partly spread—something ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... her fate from infancy has been pitiable. A purer or milder spirit than hers, one that more sensitively shrinks from rude collision, does not exist, and yet, on whichever side she turns her eyes, she meets with appalling prejudices or opinions to drive a gentle nature like hers to madness It may be a misfortune, Adelheid, to want instruction, and to be fated to pass a life in the depths of ignorance, and in the indulgence of brutal passions, but it is scarcely a blessing to have ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper |
