"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Adventures are so generally repulsive to people of meditative minds? It is for the same reason that any other want of law, that any other anarchy is repulsive. Floating passively from action to action, as helplessly as a withered leaf surrendered to the breath of winds, the human spirit ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... point on you, since you are too clever to raise the fool's cry of paradox whenever I take hold of a stick by the right instead of the wrong end. Why are our occasional attempts to deal with the sex problem on the stage so repulsive and dreary that even those who are most determined that sex questions shall be held open and their discussion kept free, cannot pretend to relish these joyless attempts at social sanitation? Is ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... I reached Mate Lane, and the huge gray house that awaited me. This time, as I mounted the stone steps, the old house seemed even more repulsive and horrible. I dreaded to see that door open, but I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Adah was no longer repulsive to me. The events of that memorable night of storm and danger, and the experiences that followed, had apparently awakened her better nature, which, although having a narrow compass, was gentle and womanly. Her old flippancy was gone. My undisguised preference for Miss Warren after I had actually ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... of revenge. She bestirred herself at last and ran over the house from one end to the other, her dark face disquieting to look at. A spark flashed from her eyes like that from the pupil of a serpent trapped and about to be crushed. It was cold, luminous, penetrating; it was viscous, cruel, repulsive. The smallest error on the part of a servant, the least noise, drew forth words injurious enough to smirch the soul; but nobody replied; to offer excuse would have been to commit ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... dissimulation. I candidly confessed to my husband, that my love was extinguished. I proved to him, alas! too clearly, that we were not born for each other. The attractive moment of illusion was past—never more to return; the repulsive reality remained. The living was chained to the dead, and, by the inexorable tyranny of English laws, that chain, eternally galling to innocence, can be severed only by the desperation of vice. Divorce, according to our barbarous institutions, cannot ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... angry moods. All will agree that violence and coarse speech must not be countenanced in Christians, least of all in teachers of Christianity. In the writings of Luther there occur terms, phrases, passages that sound repulsive. The strongest admirer of Luther will have moments when he wishes certain things could have been said differently. Luther's language cannot be repeated in our times. Some who have tried to do that in all sincerity have found to their dismay that they were wholly misunderstood. ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... of ante-room, a door was opened into a tolerably spacious apartment, evidently in the old keep; for the two windows on opposite sides were in an immensely massive wall, and the floor above and vaulting below were of stone; but otherwise there was nothing repulsive in the appearance of the room. There was a wood fire on the hearth; the sun, setting far to the north, peeped in aslant at one window; a mat was on the floor, tapestry on the lower part of the walls; a table and chairs, and a walnut chest, with a chess-board and a few books on it, were ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... custom that the Emperor should give with his own hand a rose of gold to the fortunate candidate. This scholar, whose name was Chung K'uei, presented himself according to custom to receive the reward which by right was due to him. At the sight of his repulsive face the Emperor refused the golden rose. In despair the miserable rejected one went and threw himself into the sea. At the moment when he was being choked by the waters a mysterious fish or monster called ao raised him on its back and brought him to the surface. K'uei ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... itself uninvited into the great political family-party of heaven-anointed sovereigns and long-descended nobles, seemed a somewhat repulsive phenomenon. It became odious and dangerous when by the blows it could deal in battle, the logic it could chop in council, it indicated a remote future for the world, in which right divine and regal paraphernalia might cease to be as effective ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... imitation, or rather copy, be so close as to trench on deception, the effect will be far different; for, the condition of relation being thus virtually lost, the copy becomes as the original,—circumscribed by its own qualities, repulsive or attractive, as the case may be. I remember a striking instance of this in a celebrated actress, whose copies of actual suffering were so painfully accurate, that I was forced to turn away from the scene, unable to endure it; her scream of agony in Belvidera seemed to ring in my ears ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... only He to Whom the offering is made can know the cost at which ladies, with the refinements of their class, give themselves to the Christlike work of rescuing the opium sots who find their way to the Refuge. Women of the lowest moral type at times appear, dirty, coarse, and repulsive, and yet gladly and graciously they are received. The lady in charge will sleep with them in order to comfort and pray with them during the night watches, and no service is too menial for these saintly women ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... greatest traitor to the cause of liberty which England had ever known. His picture, as painted by Vandyke, and hung up in the princely hall of his descendant, Earl Fitzwilliam, is a faithful portrait of what history represents him—a cold, dark, repulsive, unscrupulous tyrant, with an eye capable of reading the secrets of the soul, a brow lowering with care and thought, and a lip compressed with determination, and twisted into contempt of mankind. If Wentworth did ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher; red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon hawks passing with their falcon dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards, stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the game in countless numbers; all the smaller animals and tiny birds in species too numerous to catalogue, all these drew their full sustenance of life from ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... to groan and shut the book. I have met her so often in the weary ways of fiction! I know every variety of her so well! She consists of nothing but superlatives, and is as conventional as the torso of an Egyptian statue, with her everlasting physical perfection. I think her as repulsive as a barber's block. I confess that a woman who has golden hair and manages to look like a lady, or to be like one even in a book, is a wonder, considering all that is associated with golden hair in our day; but I should avoid the abnormal as much as the conventional. I would not write plotty-plotty ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and had a look there and shrank back, it seemed so repulsive and dark; but as I did so I saw one of the men smiling, and this made ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... who volunteered for the purpose at the risk of life, the Medical Authorities in desperation were enabled to try every possible method of infection with the alleged Influenza Germs, our boys submitting to inoculation and even to the repulsive ordeal of introduction into the nose and throat of diseased mucous from and close contact with coughing and spitting bed patients in the severest forms of the disease. The experiments were made simultaneously at San Francisco and Boston under the direction of Surgeons McCoy and Goldberger ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the making of his strong and self-reliant character. He never said, "My mother's religion is good enough for me." He despised her religion, and that of the Friars Gray who punished boys to make them good. His mind turned inward—he became silent, secretive, self-centered, and his repulsive exterior served him well as a tough husk to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... indignation. But it is with human institutions, as it is with men themselves; we are tender with the dead when their power to hurt us has passed away; and as Paganism can never more be dangerous, we have been able to command a calmer attitude towards it, and to detect under its most repulsive features sufficient latent elements of genuine thought to satisfy us that even in their darkest aberrations men are never wholly given over to falsehood and absurdity. When philosophy has done for mediaeval mythology what it has done for Hesiod and for the Edda, we shall find in it ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... sitting on the edge of the meal-ark and dangling her large feet, went into a number of plaintive details, that were mostly unintelligible, sometimes repulsive, in Laura's ears. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... others deviate so entirely from the form of the original as to be no longer translations in the proper sense of the term. I have sought to pursue a middle course between a mere literal translation, which would be repulsive, and a loose paraphrase, which would be in the case of such a work peculiarly unsatisfactory. Those who are most conversant with the difficulties of such a task will probably be the most willing to show forbearance towards the shortcomings of my performance, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... cherishing the bond of union with fraternal affection. Experience has already shewn that the difference of climate and of industry, proceeding from that cause, inseparable from such vast domains, and which under other systems might have a repulsive tendency, can not fail to produce with us under wise regulations the opposite effect. What one portion wants the other may supply; and this will be most sensibly felt by the parts most distant from each other, forming thereby a domestic market and an active intercourse between ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... power, was most repugnant to the white-haired woman. Not that there was, in fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted correspondence between James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two psyches, an immediacy of understanding which preceded all ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... nose out of mere mechanical habit, to look at her more closely, she drew over her head and shoulders, the soft folds about her exquisite face completing a classic picture of such radiant beauty as is seldom seen nowadays among the increasingly imperfect and repulsive specimens of female humanity which 'progress' combined with sensuality, produce for the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the evening service that has been described acted as a rude disenchantment, and the beautiful church, to which Mrs. Arnot had returned every Sabbath morning with increasing pleasure, became as repulsive as it had been sacred and attractive. To her sincere and earnest spirit anything in the nature of a sham was peculiarly offensive; and what, she often asked herself, could be more un-Christlike than this service which had been held in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the tails of comets into three principal classes — viz.: (1) Those which appear as long, straight rays; (2) Those which have the form of curved plumes or scimitars; (3) Those which are short, brushy, and curved sharply backward along the comet's path. In the first type he calculates the repulsive force at from twelve to fifteen times the force of gravity; in the second at from two to four times; and in the third at about one and a half times. The straight tails he ascribes to hydrogen because ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... to notice that, according to the early and popular view, this Hades, the "dark dwelling of the joyless images of deceased mortals," is the destination of universal humanity. In opposition to its dolorous gloom and repulsive inanity are vividly pictured the glad light of day, the glory and happiness of life. "Not worth so much to me as my life," says the incomparable son of Peleus, "are all the treasures which populous Troy possessed, nor all which the stony threshold of Phoebus Apollo ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... detriment in laying the foundation for a sound business career in after life. After having fulfilled his engagement with his employer, he spent some three years of mercantile life at the South, but the customs of the country, and the barbarous system of slavery were so repulsive to his feelings that he abandoned that field for the more congenial and prospectively profitable activities of the West, and in December, 1842, landed at Medina, in this State. In the Spring of 1845, a mercantile copartnership was formed with Mr. Augustus ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... wealth forced upon me, were the lavish attentions of match-making mothers. The black spectacles which I always wore, were not repulsive to these diplomatic dames—on the contrary, some of them assured me they were most becoming, so anxious were they to secure me as a son-in-law. Fair girls in their teens, blushing and ingenuous, were artfully introduced to me—or, I SHOULD say, thrust forward like slaves in a market for ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... three deputies at the foot of the steps to keep back the mob, for if the excited men once rushed into the jail nothing could check their course. The deputies, tall broad-shouldered fellows, pushed back the threatening tide, always with good-natured protests,—words half bantering, half appealing, repulsive thrusts of the arms, rough but inflicting no hurt. So peaceful a minute before had been the Square, it was difficult to comprehend the sudden ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the former republic had given their adherence to the Stuarts. For this they deserve praise. They naturally calumniated him a little. The obstinate are repulsive to the compliant. Men of sense, in favour and good places at Court, weary of his disagreeable attitude, took pleasure in saying, "If he has not rallied to the throne, it is because he has not been sufficiently paid," etc. "He wanted the chancellorship which the king has given to Hyde." ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of temptation is furnished by the episode of one of the Sirens who appears first repulsive and then seems to the poet sweet and alluring. Only when Virgil discloses her hideous nature does Dante see how easily he might have fallen a victim to her wiles. He tells us that in his sleep there appeared to him a woman with stammering utterance, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... disagreeable kind of article, called common sense, which is of all things most repulsive and antipathetical to all petted creatures whose life has consisted in flattery. It is the kind of talk which sisters are very apt to hear from brothers, and daughters from fathers and mothers, when fathers ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it, gazing now at one and now at another with beseeching eyes, that they might leave him in peace. But the others mocked him worse than ever, and he began to tremble and to turn crimson with rage. All at once, Franti, the boy with the repulsive face, sprang upon a bench, and pretending that he was carrying a basket on each arm, he aped the mother of Crossi, when she used to come to wait for her son at the door; for she is ill now. Many began ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... of dust had been dispersed, he observed, under the place where the iron box had stood, a number of skeletons of rats, as dry as mummies. He selected one of these,* [footnote... I was so much impressed with the events of the day, and also with the fact of the young artist having taken with him so repulsive a memento as a rat's skeleton, that I never forgot it. More than half century later, when I was at a private view of the Royal Academy, I saw sitting on one of the sofas a remarkable and venerable-looking old gentleman. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... A repulsive smile crossed Drayton's face. He fumbled the torn lapel with restless fingers. His eyes wandered to the door. There was a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was repulsive to you. Cobblestones? 'Ordinario, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float for ever thus!' You bathed your spirit in sunshine and colour; I can hear you murmur now, 'O Venezia ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... turning fair into foul, and foul into fair; for it is not two days since thou sawest with thine own eyes the beauty and elegance of the peerless Dulcinea in all its perfection and natural harmony, while I saw her in the repulsive and mean form of a coarse country wench, with cataracts in her eyes and a foul smell in her mouth; and when the perverse enchanter ventured to effect so wicked a transformation, it is no wonder if he effected that of Samson Carrasco and thy gossip in order to snatch the glory ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the above mentioned articles was that which first turned Alfred against Palmer. The sneaking, wheedling methods he employed, the subterfuges, the lies in disposing of books and pictures, were the things which made the man most repulsive to Alfred. He therefore felt insulted when Palmer offered him the opportunity to make money from this source. Alfred plainly informed Palmer that he would not have anything to do with the sale of ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... fact, the idea of hating a woman was new to him. At that moment he hated Madame de S—. But it was not exactly hate. It was more like the abhorrence that may be caused by a wooden or plaster figure of a repulsive kind. She moved no more than if she were such a figure; even her eyes, whose unwinking stare plunged into his own, though shining, were lifeless, as though they were as artificial as her teeth. For the first time Razumov became ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... not a cruel woman, far from it, but she was strangely weak and worldly. The idea of a hired nurse associating familiarly with her adopted daughter was repulsive to her aristocratic pride, and therefore she hushed the tones of true womanly sympathy, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... The Maia's Tragedy, Philaster, A King and No King—all written jointly—and Valentinian and Thierry and Theodoret, written by Fletcher alone, but perhaps, in part, sketched out by Beaumont. The tragic masterpiece of Beaumont and Fletcher is The Maid's Tragedy, a powerful but repulsive play, which sheds a singular light not only upon its authors' dramatic methods, but also upon the attitude toward royalty favored by the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which grew up under the Stuarts. The heroine, Evadne, has been in secret a mistress of the king, who marries her to Amintor, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... fall, and move from one place to another. For, with respect to that part of the earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive. Upon placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too: for in ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... are old-fashioned enough to seem fantastic; his sentiment belongs to ancient history; to a generation bred upon Ouida's romances and the plays of Mr. W. S. Gilbert his morality appears not merely questionable but coarse and improper and repulsive. While he lived he was adored: he moved and spoke and dwelt in an eternal mist of 'good, thick, strong, stupefying incense smoke'; he was the idol of female England, a master of virtue, a king of art, the wisest and best of mankind. Johnson revered him—Johnson and Colley Gibber; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... embarrassments, of a particular kind, which it required no ordinary authority and self-denial to controul. In one instance, however, it is said, the presence of an Otaheitan Venus, in any thing else than a repulsive attitude, had the effect of expediting the necessary work. Both sailors and soldiers, it seems, pressed towards the hatch-way, where she had planted herself in all the revealed attraction of native beauty; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... stood out from the level of his face, whilst the little blood-shot eyes seemed to protrude, giving to his general appearance, even with the mouth (his worst feature) hidden by the respirator, an unusually repulsive look. He was leaning on the arm of Lady Bellamy, who greeted Angela with a smile which the latter fancied had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... building of the temple already cast long shadows. Determined to force herself to look out, she walked quickly to the eastern window and gazed below. But it was some moments before she had the fortitude to distinguish one form from another; they melted before her reluctant eyes into one repulsive mass. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the war, Naaman was attacked with a disease so dreadful and repulsive that I cannot describe it to you. Let us be thankful that leprosy is unknown here. It is not only incurable, but as it goes on it becomes so terrible that one cannot stay at home with his family, but must go out and live ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... again, till one would think the brain must weary itself beyond endurance. It can go on for many hours consecutively, and not only remain a sufficient and pleasurable employment, but render every other business repulsive, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... eccentricities of the Chancellor had on several occasions given much uneasiness to Ministers. He seemed to move in an orbit of his own, independently of his colleagues; while the influence he exercised over the King's mind, and his repulsive bearing, made all approaches to him difficult and hazardous. The first consideration, when an unexpected question sprung up, was to ascertain what view Thurlow was likely to take of it; and it was sometimes as necessary to conciliate him and to wait upon his ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... always be sympathetic, kindly, calm, and noble, even when the most repulsive things are expressed. A tearful voice is a grave defect, and must be avoided. The same may be said of the tremulous voice of the aged, who emphasize and prolong their syllables. Tears are out of place in great situations; we should weep only at home. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... in her freedom from all affectation and conventionality,—in her spontaneity, her free, sparkling, and vivacious manners. She was the most daring and dazzling of women, without ever appearing immodest or repulsive. She walked with such proud, secure steps over the commonly accepted barriers of social intercourse, that even those who blamed her and pretended to be shocked were compelled to admire. She was the belle, the Juno, of the saloon, the supreme ornament of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... her sake than there is in a tornado of man's irritability or anger. You see, a woman's demanding spirit is covered with the mush of her emotions. A man's demanding spirit stands out in all its naked ugliness. One is just as bad as the other. One is just as repulsive as the other. ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... weather-stained features, indicated his having seen some fifty summers. But, if he was brusque of figure and coarse of deportment, he had a good soft heart in the right place; nor did he fail to exercise its virtues while pursuing the duties of a repulsive profession; albeit, he was keeper of the establishment, and superintended all punishments. Leisurely he smoked of a black pipe; and with shirt sleeves rolled up, a grey felt hat almost covering his dark, flashing eyes, and his arms easily folded, did he seem contemplating the calm ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Capes. Captain Girard now rented a small store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his dealings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the rough clothing and general appearance of a sailor. Though but twenty-six years of age, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... and their long white scattered whiskers. These white stiff hairs on their faces and their dim blinking eyes gave them a certain resemblance to very old ugly men with black blood in them, and made them all the more repulsive. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... formed by the collision of misguided orbs; and we are even asked—or, at least we were asked—to believe that this process must go on until all systems are agglomerated in one orb, to be ultimately congealed into stone. What, then, is the office of the Creator according to this scheme, as repulsive as it is absurd? It would appear that, at some moment in a vacuous eternity, He calls matter out of nothing, whirls it into fiery vortices, and then lets it cool down to the absolute zero wherein ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... voraciousness of the most luxurious dishes; he has, in Cockburn's opinion, a very mean assemblage of features with something fearfully black and vicious about the brows and eyes. His manners are coarse and repulsive. Did you ever in a litter yard come suddenly on a lady in the straw that starts up on her fore legs and, dropping fourteen infant pigs from her teats, salutes you with a fierce jumble of barking, grunting, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... back. At this instant the sleeping figure began to move, and to talk, still without waking. The child thought of the woman in the wine-shop, and feared that this creature was she, or some other equally repulsive. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... completely overpowered his judgment; and hence he deals so largely in exaggeration, that, as to many matters of fact, we cannot safely depend upon his testimony. His tone is dictatorial and dogmatic; and, though we cannot doubt his piety, we must feel that his spirit is somewhat repulsive and ungenial. Whilst he was sadly deficient in sagacity, he was very much the creature of impulse; and thus it was that he was so superstitious, so bigoted, and so choleric. But he was, beyond question, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... pleased him to see this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his mind a new interest. He had come to that age when the mind is surprised to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things once hated are less acutely repulsive. He saw her embarrassment. He did not know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of marriage since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of thinking much on a man, had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thim an' this toime succeeded in holdin' thim in be a nate trick. Instid av turnin' partly on his side an' showin' his dorsal fin afther he had swallowed he kept bottom up and swam slowly away waggin' av his tail with a gratified air while a huge grin spread over his repulsive countenance." ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... demeanour was at once timid and impudent. He saw him as he went and came, then saw him suddenly turn, lift the end of his caftan and wipe his cheek on it. What had happened? An insolvent debtor had spit in his face; he bore it smilingly. This smile was more repulsive to Count Abel than the great stain that resembled ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... degenerates and criminals, that they may not contaminate the race with descendants. However, my office is to save life and I cannot do otherwise. But I am a surgeon, and every day I do things in the effort to save and prolong life that to a layman are repulsive and awful, more revolting to him than the sight of bloodless death itself. From the taking of human life I draw back. But no repugnance, no horror, unsteadies my hand elsewhere. The end of the crimes of your devilish confederacy has come. The law has not restrained ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... misery, or the increase of human happiness, found in her an earnest ally. On the subject of temperance she was terribly in earnest. Every fiber of her heart responded to its onward movement. There was no hut or den where human beings congregated that she felt was too vile or too repulsive to enter, if by so doing she could help lift some fallen soul out of the depths of sin and degradation. While some doubted the soundness of her religious opinions, none doubted the orthodoxy of her life. Little children in darkened homes smiled as ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... compelled to eat bits of skin, the bones of ptarmigan up to the beak and down to the toe-nails, I felt no painful craving; but I have seen men who suffered so much that I believe they would have eaten any kind of food, however repulsive." ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... one of the favourite theatres for the romantic school of Polish poets. Zaleski, Gosczynski, Grabowski, all of them poets of more than ordinary talents, give us pictures of this country, alternately sweet and rough, wild and romantic. There must necessarily be some mixture of attractive and repulsive elements here even for native poets; for the common people are Russians, and hate the Polish nobility as their oppressors. Nevertheless Thomas Padura, another of the young Polish school, chose even the dialect of the Ruthenian peasantry for his songs. Another Polish poet, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... leaning against the mantle-piece, beating the devil's tatoo upon the wall, and, from time to time, whistling snatches of a popular air. His strongly marked features, though handsome, were bold and repulsive, the upper lip curling with half a sneer—but it was merely the soul imaged in the countenance, for, lad as he was, the spirit had quaffed many a deep draught of sinfulness, while mildew and iciness had crept down ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... however, in their appearance and manners, something repulsive which prevented familiarity. Each one of them caused to vibrate four gauze wings, two large and two small ones. In their rapid and measured motions, these wings produced sound, and the air, issuing from little breathing places situated, as in the common fly, on each side of the corselet, produced ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... report of the French Court to cause her to shrink instinctively, as from a repulsive insect, at the name of the mistress of Louis XV. She trembled at the thought of Angelique's infatuation, or perversity, in suffering herself to be attracted by the glitter of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of his personal unpopularity. His whole power would at once devolve on his widow; and the nation would probably rally round her with enthusiasm. If her political abilities were not equal to his, she had not his repulsive manners, his foreign pronunciation, his partiality for every thing Dutch and for every thing Calvinistic. Many, who had thought her culpably wanting in filial piety, would be of opinion that now at least she was absolved from all duty to a father stained with the blood of her ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... noble needs in friendship, love, and marriage must, in any case, be the main roots of healthy direction and ideal restraint of the sex-instinct. Or they fear enlightenment as a possible stimulus to undesirable imagination and experimentation. Or they dislike, even abhor, it as esthetically repulsive—shocking to an unreasoned but cherished craving for silence about these things—a craving which the customs of our land and time have made ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... with eyes still holding Cameron, he whistled shrilly on his fingers. Almost immediately, it seemed to Cameron, there came into the light another man who proved to be an Indian, short, heavily built, with a face hideously ugly and rendered more repulsive by the small, red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes that seemed to Cameron to peer like gimlets into ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Valdes, is one of the charming, purely Spanish novels which has made a name for its author beyond the confines of his own country; but since that was produced he has gone for his inspiration to the French naturalistic school, and, like some English writers, he thinks that repulsive and indecent incidents, powerfully drawn, add to the artistic value of his work. Padre Luis Coloma, a Jesuit, obtained a good deal of attention at one time by his Pequeneces, studies, written in gall, of Madrid society. His stories are too narrowly bigoted in tone to have any lasting ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... some poet of wildest imagination could only place himself in the position of those poor tired travelers to whom water in thick muddy pools had been a blessing, who had eagerly drank the fluid even when so salt and bitter us to be repulsive, and now to see the clear, pure liquid, distilled from the crystal snow, abundant, free, filled with life and health—and write it in words—the song of that joyous brook and set it to the music that it made ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... of taking care that we have goodness to show, and that we do not make our goodness repulsive by our additions to it. There are good people who comfort themselves when men dislike them, or scoff at them, by thinking that their religion is the cause, when it is only their own roughness and harshness of character. It is not enough ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... enviable notoriety. That Mark Hurdlestone was an object of curiosity, fear, and hatred, to his humble dependents, created no feeling of surprise in those who were acquainted with him, and had studied the repulsive features of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... was the art of the ugly. His countenances are so repulsive that they attract. The psychology of the looks, and leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women is a puzzle that we can not lay aside—we want to solve the riddle of this paradox of existence—the woman whose ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... He looked at us, in the first place, with keen and somewhat guarded eyes, as if it were not his practice to vouchsafe any great warmth of greeting, except upon sure ground of observation. Soon, however, his look grew kindly and genial (not that it had ever been in the least degree repulsive, but only reserved), and Leutze allowed us to gaze at the cartoon of his great fresco, and talked about it unaffectedly, as only a man of true genius can speak of his own works. Meanwhile the noble design spoke for itself upon ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forward just as Harry saw the repulsive form of a huge snake which had wound itself around him. Harry was absolutely helpless in the folds of the serpent. John's quick eye took in the situation at once, and by the time he reached Harry the bolo was in his hand and poised. With a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... wrong without delay. One great authority told us the other day that the sole object of legislation on this subject should be to get together the best possible 658 members of Parliament. That to me would be a most repulsive idea if it were not that by its very vagueness it becomes inoperative. Who shall say what is best; or what characteristic constitutes excellence in a member of Parliament? If the gentleman means excellence in general wisdom, or in statecraft, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... soul! Shall I confess it, Johns?—the little glimpse of your lost Rachel gave me an idea of the tenderness and depth of devotion and charming womanliness of many of those whom I had counted stiff and utterly repulsive, which I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the largest. The men, who were heathens, were quite naked, but the women wore small aprons of seaweed. They didn't tattoo themselves, but many of them had their skins rough and hanging in flakes, which gave them a most repulsive appearance. This was in consequence of their spending much of their ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... dances in New York. One heard of fashion-albums and autograph-fans and talking crows and rare orchids and reindeer meat; of bracelets for men and ankle rings for women; of "vanity-boxes" at ten and twenty thousand dollars each; of weird and repulsive pets, chameleons and lizards and king-snakes—there was one young woman who wore a cat-snake as a necklace. One would take to slumming and another to sniffing brandy through the nose; one had a table-cover made of woven roses, and another was wearing perfumed flannel at sixteen ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... with the love of Christ, I used to say, "Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest;" for I felt that there could be no rest for me in the midst of such outrages and pollutions. And yet I saw nothing of slavery in its most vulgar and repulsive forms. I saw it in the city, among the fashionable and the honorable, where it was garnished by refinement, and decked out for show. A few facts will unfold the state of society in the circle with which ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... market was another line of vendors, dressed in costumes like those from the Cabanal, but more miserable in appearance, if anything, and with more repulsive faces still. They were the women of Albufera, a strange concentration of poverty and degradation, housing in wretched shanties a people that lives among the reeds and mud of the lake marshes, fishing in the murky, shallow waters from black, bluff-bowed boats that look like coffins. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Changeling[156] and Women Beware Women. In poetry and diction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare's plays; otherwise, in their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader. Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the Old One, his best comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express Middleton's own idea of the drama ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... where was she to begin? She had a little bundle of tracts in her hand; should she begin at once with these? Of all things which she once would have shrunk from, nothing would have then been more repulsive than the office of a distributer of tracts. Some years before, when once asked by a pious friend of her aunt if she would like a few tracts to give away as she might have opportunity, her reply had been, "She had rather not, for she believed that tracts were vulgar, canting ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... has been accustomed to these things from her youth upwards. She has no sympathies with the past, that even yet is loth to quit its hold of the soil and of those who are bred upon it. The ancient simplicity and plainness of country life are positively repulsive to her; she associates them with poverty. Her sympathies are with warm, well-lighted rooms, full of comfort, shadowless because of the glare of much gas. She is not vulgar, just the reverse—she is a thorough lady, but she is not of the country and ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the most prosperous of centuries. In all created nature there is not, perhaps, anything so completely ugly as a pillar-box. Its shape is the most unmeaning of shapes, its height and thickness just neutralising each other; its colour is the most repulsive of colours—a fat and soulless red, a red without a touch of blood or fire, like the scarlet of dead men's sins. Yet there is no reason whatever why such hideousness should possess an object full of civic dignity, the treasure-house of a thousand secrets, the fortress of a thousand souls. ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... remarkable but seemingly little-known treatise,[12] Kant expounds a complete cosmogony, in the shape of a theory of the causes which have led to the development of the universe from diffused atoms of matter endowed with simple attractive and repulsive forces. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Jawkins recalled the incident of the morning, which, in the bitterness of her mood, she had forgotten. Somehow or other the idea of quitting the country in his company seemed less repulsive to her than at first. He was rich, and she would no longer be obliged to support herself by a degrading occupation. After the first buzz of scandal and excitement at her elopement the world would cease to prattle, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... cripple, or an old man, she would have been capable of rebellion, of choosing the convent, of running away alone into the world, of almost anything. But if he had turned out to be an average individual, neither uglier, nor older, nor more repulsive than many others, she would probably have accepted her fate with indifference, or at least with the necessary resignation, especially if she had never met Malipieri. Instead of that, it was probably Malipieri ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... window opening on the court, and a hard, narrow pallet against the wall. There was also a little table, with books, sacred pictures, and a bunch of lilacs in water. The walls were whitewashed, and the floor cleanly swept. The chamber was austere, certainly, but in no wise repulsive. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... it dwindled almost to nothing, but anything that was bad and ugly stood out very clearly and looked much worse. The most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best people looked repulsive or seemed to stand on their heads with no bodies; their faces were so changed that they could not be recognised, and if anyone had a freckle you might be sure it would be spread over ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... inclined to be preposterously suspicious. She determined with her next admirer to pursue a system diametrically opposite to that which she had followed with the marquis; she had shown him attractive complaisance; she was now prepared to display the repulsive haughtiness becoming the representative of two hundred thousand pounds: she had completely adopted Lady Pierrepoint's maxim. That a lady should marry to increase her consequence and strengthen her connexions. Her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... great spiritual truths which have been apparent to all races from the most ancient limits of history. Of the scientific class the majority are averse to the religion of the times, partly from their own sceptical nature, and partly because religion has been presented in the repulsive forms of an ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... entered her husband's room, where he was lying on the couch. He signed to her to close the door. The Marquis was the living image of his mother, except that her beautiful regular features became in his face bony and repulsive. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... they speak. But that makes it still worse. The justification for cattle is that, they are without speech. But when the cattle become articulate, begin to speak, defend themselves and express ideas then the situation becomes intolerable, unmitigatedly repulsive. Their dwelling-places are different too—yes—but that's a small thing. I was in a city inhabited by a hundred thousand people. The windows in the house of that city are all small. Those living in them are all fond of light, but it never occurs ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... man, and there is little about his primitiveness that is repulsive. He is of a kindly disposition, is not servile, and is generally trustworthy. He has a strong sense of humor. He is decidedly friendly to the American, whose superiority he recognizes and whose methods he desires to learn. The boys ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... a light, tender touch a thorn which is still piercing the cold brow. The whole picture is in the same spirit, and I never could look at it with dry eyes. Yet in Rubens's hands this and all kindred subjects are generally repulsive. The very early masters are prone to fix the attention upon some revolting detail of torture or too material and agonizing exhibition of physical suffering, but their stiff, hard outlines, absence of perspective and childishness of composition, with the element of the grotesque which is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... nothing to look for but the most repulsive work under the most repulsive conditions? I said there must be surely some change, that wheeling mud forever was not the doom of any man and ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... thoughts should have addressed herself to such an assembly. Why did she not leave it to him or her father! If it was not degrading enough to appear before such a canaille, surely to sing to them was! How could a woman of refinement, justifiable as was her desire for appreciation, seek it from such a repulsive assemblage! But Vavasor would have been better able to understand Hester, and would have met the distastes of the evening with far less discomposure, if he had never been in worse company. One main test of our dealings in the world is whether the men and women we associate with are the better ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the grave with an air of loathing. The faces of the dead with their staring eyes and open mouths and long, lank hair, cloyed with the sand and mud thrown up by the beating rain, looked indescribably repulsive. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to refer to condescendingly as life. People sitting in a room like this had been furniture that amused him. Now they were alive, repulsive, with a meaning to them that sickened him. Streets had once been stone and gesture. Now they, too, were meanings that sickened. A sanity in which he alone was insane, surrounded him; a completion in which he alone seemed ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... despair. By this time their scanty stores were exhausted, and not a drop of water remained: then their tongues were loosened, and they railed at the Almighty. Some wept like children, some cursed their fate: one man alone was speechless—a Spaniard with a wicked light in his eye, and a repulsive manner that had made trouble in the forecastle more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... attitude is still appreciative. The evil is apprehended as part of a dramatic whole having positive moral or aesthetic value. Moral ideas may appear in both poetry and life as the inspiration and justification of struggle. Where there is no conception of its moral significance, the repulsive possesses for the poet's consciousness the aesthetic value of diversity and contrast. Even where the evil and ugly is isolated, as in certain of Browning's dramatic monologues, it forms, both for the poet and the reader, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Tabitha's faith; for, by this time she began to look upon Lismahago as a prodigy of learning and sagacity. — In short, he could be no longer insensible to the advances she made towards his affection; and although there was something repulsive in his nature, he overcame it so far as to make some return to her civilities. — Perhaps, he thought it would be no bad scheme, in a superannuated lieutenant on half-pay, to effect a conjunction with an old maid, who, in all probability, had fortune enough to keep him easy and comfortable in the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... disgusting in manners, and destitute of natural affection; the parent selling his child with no more remorse or repugnance than he would his chicken, yet at the same time, by way of contrast, artless and good humoured. Their appearance is extremely barbarous and repulsive. They rub red clay softened with oil over their heads and bodies, and invariably wear a large semicircular piece of blue glass in the upper and lower lip, with ear-pendants of red wood. They make fetishes like ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... paces to her neighbour's door, unless she had this blanket upon her. The hateful looking garment is the chief relic of her barbaric origin, and despite the desire which she always manifests to exhibit her personal charms at their best, she has no qualms in converting herself into a hideous, repulsive squaw, with this covering. If she be of a shy nature, she will cover her head with this garment when a stranger enters her abode; and many a curious visitor who has heard of the bright eyes and olive cheeks of the half-breed woman is sorely ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... appear to us very crude, and even repulsive. The adornment of person with bright though rudely colored garments, the free use of paint on the person, and the promiscuous use of jewelry, as {38} practised by the primitive peoples, present a great contrast to modern usage. Yet it is easy to trace the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... arms, intoning the De Profundis. Jean-Christophe made no effort to break loose; he was frozen with horror. Stifled against his father's bosom, feeling his breath hiccoughing and smelling of wine upon his face, wet with his kisses and repulsive tears, he was in an agony of fear and disgust. He would have screamed, but no sound would come from his lips. He remained in this horrible condition for an age, as it seemed to him, until the door opened, and Louisa ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... said Mr Delvile, scornfully waving his hand with a repulsive motion, "to suffer myself to be irritated so unworthily; and I am sorry, in my own house, to be compelled to hint that the sooner I have it to myself, the better I shall be contented ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... godliness. Without cleanliness the human body is more or less defiled and repulsive. A hint to the wise is sufficient. The vagina should be cleansed with the same faithfulness as any ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... actually to make its appearance at Rome was that of Epicurus[756]; but it speedily disappeared for the time, and only became popular in the last century B.C., and then in its most repulsive form. It was indeed destined to inspire the noblest mind among all Roman thinkers with some of the greatest poetry ever written; but I need say little of it, for it was never really a part of Roman religious experience. Though capable ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... a repulsive looking woman, with the beauty of her youth corrupted into a hateful mask of vice. She had thrown her arms above her head and seemed to be ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of frontier civilization. Horse-thieves, murderers, escaped bond-servants, runaway debtors—all, in fleeing from the law, sought to find a secure asylum in the wilderness. The brutal and lawless wickedness of these men, whose uncouth and raw savagery was almost more repulsive than that of city criminals, made it imperative upon the decent members of the community to unite for self-protection. The desperadoes were often mere human beasts of prey; they plundered whites and Indians impartially. They not only by their thefts and murders exasperated the Indians into retaliating ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... still, waiting for the taxi to pull up at the curb. Standing thus, with the street light limning every unnatural angle of his twisted body and every queer abnormality of his huge features, he looked almost repulsive. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... to mind it, since I should not like them the less on that account. This wish of mine never came to utterance; but not the less they were aware, by my manner of salutation, that one person at least, amongst those who might be considered strangers, did not find any thing repulsive about them; and the pleasure they felt was expressed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... from the old, yet full of tranquil joys, new hopes and interests. He had not rent the new from the old, but had bridged with generous acts the existing chasm. He was doing all within his power, not jealously to withdraw her thoughts from that terrible past, but to veil its more cruel and repulsive features with flowers, laurel wreaths, and sculptured marble; and in her heart, which had been dead, but into which his love had breathed a new life, she daily blessed ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... false view of the state of facts to present this as the relation which generally exists between agreeable and disagreeable employments. The really exhausting and the really repulsive labors, instead of being better paid than others, are almost invariably paid the worst of all, because performed by those who have no choice. If the laborers in the aggregate, instead of exceeding, fell short of the amount of employment, work which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... indicating continual exposure to the elements, and designating him as one who dwelt far from the habitations of men, and mingled not in the courtesies of civilized life. His countenance was bold and ferocious, and exceedingly repulsive, from its strongly marked expression of villainy. His face, which was larger than ordinary, exhibited the lines of ungovernable passion, and the complexion announced that the ordinary feelings of the human breast were in him extinguished. Instead of the healthy hue which indicates the ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... besides to explain the phenomena of comets' tails so much more satisfactorily than that of Arrhenius, that astronomers are inclined to accept it the more readily of the two. According to Bredikhine's theory the electrical repulsive force, which he assumes for the purposes of his argument, will drive the minutest particles of the comet in a direction away from the sun much more readily than the gravitative action of that body will pull them towards it. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage |
