"Abominable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there had been before his; and elder dynasties before that, of whom only rumours and suspicions survived. Even this taint, however, this direct access of mortality, was less shocking to my mind in after-years than the abominable fact of its reflex or indirect access in the shape of grief for others who had died. I need not multiply instances; they are without end. The reader has but to throw his memory back upon the anguish of Jupiter, in the 'Iliad,' for the approaching death of his son Sarpedon, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... men, men without noses, with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous breath, bald, trembling, covered with parasites—pot-bellied, hemorrhoidal apes. They come freely and simply, as to a restaurant or a depot; they sit, smoke, drink, convulsively pretend to be merry; they dance, executing abominable movements of the body imitative of the act of sexual love. At times attentively and long, at times with gross haste, they choose any woman they like and know beforehand that they will never meet refusal. Impatiently they pay their money in advance, and on ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... seen, or known, or had, the acute articular form of rheumatism, and when once seen there is no difficulty in recognizing it again. It is one of the most striking and most abominable of disease-pictures, beginning with high fever and headache, then tenderness, quickly increasing to extreme sensitiveness in one or more of the larger joints, followed by drenching sweats of penetrating acid odor. The ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... place there was a hut made of calico stretched on a frame of wood, in which were sold brandy and other strong liquors of the most abominable kind, at a charge of about two shillings for a small glass! Cards were also to be found there by those who wished to gamble away their hard-earned gains or double them. Places of iniquity these, which abounded everywhere throughout the diggings, and were the nightly resort ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... are from thenceforward treated as slaves and forced to continue, whether they will or no, in a repeated course of the like villainies until they are arrested by the hand of Justice. Then, none so ready to become evidences against them as those abominable wretches by whom ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... "and know that thou speakest not to one of those blinded heathens, of whose abominable doctrines you are detailing the result. Know, that if an erring, I am nevertheless a sincere daughter of the Church, and this cross displayed on my shoulder, is a sufficient emblem of the vows I have undertaken in its cause. Bo therefore wary, as thou art ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to Aimee and call in his black! To have been thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous mismanagement, abominable, maddening.... ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... I know all about her. She's a poor, weak thing," said Hetty, with no shade of tenderness in her voice; "but Jim was the most to blame, and it's abominable the way people have treated her. I always wished I could do something for them both, and now I've got the chance: that is if you think they'd ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... the highest order, the voices pure and full without this abominable tremolo which is unknown to a person who knows how to sing correctly and naturally. Occasionally we had the assistance of some of the singers and players from San Francisco, who came for the summer outing, and they thought it great ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... of the censorship. The leaders, recognizing his hereditary right to a parliamentary canter of some sort as a prelude to his public career, and finding that all the clever people seemed to be agreed that the censorship was an anti- Liberal institution and an abominable nuisance to boot, indulged him by appointing a Select Committee of both Houses to investigate the subject. The then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Mr Herbert Samuel (now Postmaster-General), who had made his way into the Cabinet twenty years ahead ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... you been drinking? Your language to me is abominable. Why I permit myself to remain here ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. "Take off those abominable spectacles, and you cannot ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the misfortunes of men?... I tell you again that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the queen of France in 1774, and the contrast between that brilliancy, splendour and beauty, with the prostrate homage of a nation to her, and the abominable scene of 1780 which I was describing, did draw tears from me and wetted my paper. These tears came again into my eyes almost as often as I looked at the description,—they may again. You do not believe ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Anstice, this abominable thing reached me this morning. Now of course I don't need you to tell me that the proper place for it is the fire, and if it had not been for one circumstance connected with it, it would have been in the flames by now. But as things are"—he broke off suddenly and held the thin sheet ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... tunnels and even the stations is oftentimes simply abominable, and although the roads are heavily patronized there is a great amount of grumbling and disfavor on this account. The platforms of the stations are flush with those of the cars, so that the delay of getting in or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... very well. He is good-natured all day long. Mamma is so ill-tempered till dinner, and then they won't let me dine with her; and then, as soon as mamma has begun to be good-tempered upstairs in the drawing-room, my bedtime comes directly; it's abominable!!" The last word rose into a squeak ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... promised to keep the Rabouilleuse three months in her bed. By degrees the girl will get accustomed to living under the same roof with me. I have bought over the cook. That abominable old woman tells her mistress Max would have led her a hard life; and declares she overheard him say that if, after the old man's death, he was obliged to marry Flore, he didn't mean to have his ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... lightness of his speech upon so grave a matter was, in itself, an offence against good manners, and a temptation to the men with whom he dealt. Fettes, for instance, had often remarked to himself upon the singular freshness of the bodies. He had been struck again and again by the hang-dog, abominable looks of the ruffians who came to him before the dawn; and putting things together clearly in his private thoughts, he perhaps attributed a meaning too immoral and too categorical to the unguarded counsels of his master. He understood his duty, in short, to have three branches: ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the stage doubled his fists like the Capuzzi below, and shouted in exactly the same furious way, and in the same high-pitched voice, "May all the spirits of hell sit at your heart, you abominable nonsensical Pasquale, you atrocious skinflint—you love-sick old fool—you gaudy tricked-out ass with the cap and bells dangling about your ears. Take care lest I snuff out the candle of your life, and so at length put an end to the infamous tricks which you try to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... art to execute her horrible contrivance, the wretch carried my son to a desolate place, where, by her enchantments, she changed my son into a calf, and gave him to my farmer to fatten, pretending she had bought him. Her fury did not stop at this abominable action, but she likewise changed the slave into a cow, and gave her also to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... he deserved. He had called him, Tom, an "old fool," a "dam' old fool," to be precise. The epithet in itself meant nothing—it was in fact a fatuous and feeble term of abuse as compared to the opprobrious titles which he and Jerry were in the habit of exchanging—it was that abominable adjective which hurt. Jerry and he had called each other many names at times, they had exchanged numerous gibes and insults, but nothing like that hateful word "old" had ever passed between them until this fatal morning. Jerry Quirk himself was old, the oldest man in the world, perhaps, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... AND XXX.—I give the following narrative in the words of an intimate friend of one of the cases in question: "My attention was first drawn to the study of inversion—though I then regarded all forms of it as depraving and abominable—at a public school, where in our dormitory a boy of 15 initiated his select friends into the secrets of mutual masturbation, which he had learned from his brother, a midshipman. I gave no heed to this at the time, though I remembered it in after-years when immersed in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 'that's that abominable rat that steals my food,' and he darted out, and in his tremendous hurry his chain caught the handle of the bowl, just as the rat had hoped it would. Over went the bowl, and all the water was spilt, but the rat, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... an excellent beginning, took care to underline the four significant words referring to the enemy's killed and wounded—all with the bayonet. This was done in no mere vulgar spirit of bravado, still less in abominable bloody-mindedness. It was the soldierly recognition of a particularly gallant feat of arms, carried out with such conspicuously good discipline that its memory is cherished, even to the present day, by the 100th, afterwards raised ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had,—to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... boy!" She turned on the electric light. The philosophers were revealed with unpleasing suddenness. "My goodness, a tea-party! Oh really, Rickie, you are too bad! I say again: wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I'll have you horsewhipped. If you please"—she turned to the symposium, which had now risen to its feet "If you please, he asks me and my brother for the week-end. We accept. At the station, no Rickie. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... there was a change for the worse, and the road from bad became abominable, rising by an easy ascent between great sterile fields in which the only signs of vegetation were the everlasting pine woods with their dark verdure, forming a dismal contrast with the gray-white soil. It was ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... not do now," he said peremptorily; "there are bundles of abominable clothes here, Tony. Will you all don them as quickly as you can? We must all look as filthy a band of sansculottes to-night as ever walked the streets ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for religion, and was therefore exceedingly desirous to see the body of the prophet. To this the priest answered in apparent anger, "Darest thou, with those eyes with which thou hast committed so many abominable sins, presume to look on him by whom God created heaven and earth?" The captain replied that he spoke true, yet prayed him that he might be permitted to see the prophet, when he would instantly have his eyes thrust out. Then answered the Side or chief priest, "Prince! I will freely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Julia Dallow's deciding she couldn't after all put up with him. This was wholly new to Lady Agnes, she had had no clue to it, and he could instantly see how it made the event worse for her, adding a hideous positive to an abominable negative. He noted now that, distressed and distracted as she had been by his rupture with Julia, she had still held to the faith that their engagement would come on again; believing evidently that he ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... good without qualification, although they have been so unconditionally praised by the ancients. For without the principles of a good will, they may become extremely bad, and the coolness of a villain not only makes him far more dangerous, but also directly makes him more abominable in our eyes than he would have been ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... along certain nerves, without inflammation of the affected part, often a consequence of malaria, or of some other low and exhausting causes. To enumerate the cases in which champagne is of service would be to give a whole nosology. Who does not know the misery, the helplessness of that abominable ailment, influenza, whether a severe cold or the genuine epidemic? Let the faculty dispute about the best remedy if they please; but a sensible man with a bottle of champagne will beat them all. Moreover, whenever there ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... the sun shines. Three is an abominable number, especially when you happen to be the third," said Mollie, sighing. "Mr Druce admires you very much, Ruth. I often see him staring at you when you are not looking; but when I appear upon the scene his eyelids droop, and he does not deign even to glance in my direction. He ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... comfortable in this monastery with my daughter, than in this place of abominable wickedness. You can inherit from your wench. Ha, ha! The fine lady of Cande! Look ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... "How abominable in you, then, to let me engross her horse as I did all last week! I am ashamed of you and of myself, but it shall ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... delivered to the saints was lost, sin and iniquity abounded and their love waxed cold. The preachers divined for money, and sought places of affluence, and thus the day was dark over them. Sectism to-day is a mass of worldliness. Infidelity abounds and every abominable work. If you desire a perfect description of sectism as it appears upon the scene to-day, read that given by ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... there would be, not a few men struggling to the death in one of the quarters of the town, but two armies in presence, each with chiefs, fortifications and cannon? That Paris, in a word, would be besieged anew? How abominable a ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... at the end of your resources, you tried to profit by the passion with which you inspired M. d'Ormeval in order to make him marry you, in spite of all the obstacles, and to lay your hands upon his fortune. I have proofs of this greed for money and these abominable calculations and can supply them if need be. A few minutes after I had felt in the pocket of that jacket, you did the same. I had removed the sixth letter, but had left a slip of paper which you looked for eagerly and which also ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... astonishing that the results of such abominable deviation of the sexual appetite are not worse. No doubt excesses disturb the ties of marriage and of the family, and often provoke impotence and other disorders of the sexual functions. It must, however, be admitted that their satellites, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... quite well, citizeness," growled the turnkey, "for I had already thought of silencing forever the abominable lapdog if he ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... Mesty, if I can help it. Oh, dear, how abominable a midshipman's berth is after a long run on shore! I positively must go on deck and look at the shore, if I can ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and wearing them as necklaces; his warriors stuck spikes in their base ball bats and made war clubs of them. He could not but feel, too, that the gentle Mushymush, although devoted to her pale-faced brother, was deficient in culinary education. Her mince pies were abominable; her jam far inferior to that made by his Aunt Sally of Doemville. Only an unexpected incident kept him equally from the extreme of listless Sybaritic indulgence, or of morbid cynicism. Indeed, at the age of twelve, he already had become ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... it on the steamers of the Crescent City. Sometimes the Diddler learns bad habits in the South, from being a mere Diddler, which is morally bad enough; he comes in contact with professional gamblers, plunges into the most pernicious and abominable of vices—gambles, cheats, swindles, and finally, as a grand tableau to his utter damnation here and hereafter, opens a store or a bank ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... mother, and horrid Hecate, Cerberus curst with incessant hunger, ye Destinies, and Charon endlessly murmuring at the task I impose of bringing back the dead again to the land of the living, hear me!—if I call on you with a voice sufficiently impious and abominable, if I have never sung this chaunt, unsated with human gore, if I have frequently laid on your altars the fruit of the pregnant mother, bathing its contents with the reeking brain, if I have placed on ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Come, come, Mistress Pert, I have known as much danger hid under a Petticoat, as a pair of Breeches. I have heard of two Women that married each other—oh abominable, as if there were so prodigious a scarcity of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. 'Take off those abominable spectacles, and you cannot ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... province of ours is, in plain truth, a little more decried than the other parts of the kingdom; and yet we have several times seen, in our times, men of good families of other provinces, in the hands of justice, convicted of abominable thefts. I fear this vice is, in some sort, to be attributed to the fore-mentioned vice of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... youth! Perverters of innocence! but for your being there, Denys, who have been taught no better, oh, would God the church had fallen on the whole gang. Impious, abominable hypocrites!" ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... daughter by the shoulder, "you little minx! if your sister had not picked up these abominable verses you chose to write on the absence of this beggarly fellow, I suppose you would have finished the business by running off with him! But you shall go down to Scotland, and be locked up ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... both of which can result only from the activity and the influence of generations of craftsmen; since in these Lucchese churches the architectural forms proclaim one thing and the sculptural details another. The first speak only of logic and serenity; the second only of the most abominable nightmare. The truth is, that these churches of Lucca, and their more complex and perfect prototypes, like Sant' Ambrogio of Milan, and San Miniato of Florence, are not the real outcome of the century which built them. It is quite natural that, with their stately ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... quivering entrails or to conjure up ghosts. All the satanic refinement that a perverted imagination in a state of insanity could conceive[79] pleased the malicious evil spirits; the more odious the monstrosity, the more assured was its efficacy. These abominable practices were sternly suppressed by the Roman government. Whereas, in the case of an astrologer who had committed an open transgression, the law was satisfied with expelling him from Rome—whither he generally soon returned,—the magician was put in the same class with murderers and poisoners, and ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... who sings in the truest taste, gave me a detail of the whole affair. "Egli ha fatto veramente un fanatismo a Padua," was her expression. I assured her we were not without idolatry in England, upon his account; but that in this, as well as in other articles of belief, there were many abominable heretics. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... philosophy, which teacheth "occidentes esse:" but, no doubt, by skill in history; for that, indeed, can afford you Cypselus, Periander, Phalaris, Dionysius, and I know not how many more of the same kennel, that speed well enough in their abominable injustice of usurpation. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... pardon all the rest. For if the number of those who are chastised is as a thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take revenge were more responsible for his ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... through an abominable rookery, and were walking down a narrow alley, seemingly deserted. Yet I was sensible that eyes were furtively watching us from behind barred windows, and I fancied that I heard whispers—mere guttural sounds, that conveyed nothing to the ear, save, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... some atrocious monuments of the Assyrian cruelty in the treatment of military captives. In one of the plates of Chap xx., at page 456, is exhibited some unknown torture applied to the head, and in another, at page 458, is exhibited the abominable process, applied to two captives, of flaying them alive. One such case had been previously recorded in human literature, and illustrated by a plate. It occurs in a Dutch voyage to the islands of the East. The subject of the torment in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Schmucke," he said at last, "you must do as I tell you, and obey like a soldier. Listen! go downstairs into the lodge and tell that abominable woman that I should like to see the person sent to me by my cousin the President; and that unless he comes, I shall leave my collection to the Musee. Say that a will is ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... quite sick and faint in her long battling with her hair. She had so little time for "doing" it that it had become very difficult to "do" and when it was "done" she said to herself that it looked abominable. Her fingers shook as they strained at the hooks of the shabby gown that was her "best." She had found somewhere a muslin scarf that, knotted and twined with desperate ingenuity, produced something of the effect ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... millions of hands that would be industrious, idle and starving through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility. Sleep at the "Lion d'Or," at Montauban, an abominable hole. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... me a visit. I very soon begged him to go away for fear the prefect should be awake, for in such a case we should have found ourselves in a very unpleasant dilemma, and most likely would have been accused of some abominable offence. As I was giving him that good advice we heard someone moving, and my friend made his escape; but immediately after he had left me I heard the fall of some person, and at the same time the hoarse voice of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Paranoya? Have you ever been there? Have you the remotest idea what sort of life a King of Paranoya leads? I have tried it, and I can assure you that a coal-heaver is happy by comparison. In the first place, the climate of the country is abominable. I always had a cold in the head. Secondly, there is a small but energetic section of the populace whose sole recreation it seems to be to use their monarch as a target for bombs. They are not very good bombs, it is true, but one in, say, ten explodes, and even ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... tendency to rapid putrefaction. In a more advanced stage of such disease, serous, and sometimes purulent matter, is formed in the cellular tissues between the muscles of the flesh; and when such is the case, nothing can be more poisonous than such abominable carrion. In the flesh of animals killed whilst under the influence of any disease of an emaciating effect, the lyer adheres but slightly to the bones, with its fibres contracted and dry; and the little fat that there ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... furious with her, notwithstanding his love for her, and indeed because of it. It was outrageous that a woman whom he adored should seek to ferret out facts which might send him to State's Prison. It was abominable that she would not cease to care for that stupid officer after he had been so carefully put out of her way. Coronado felt ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... somewhat as follows: "Russia to lay hold of the essential bit of Polish Territory for provisioning itself against the Turk, and allow to Austria and Prussia certain other bits; which would content everybody, and enable Russia and Christendom to extrude and suppress AD LIBITUM that abominable mass of Mahometan Sensualism, Darkness and Fanaticism from the fairest part of God's Creation." An excellent Project, though not successful! "To which Petersburg, intoxicated with its own outlooks on Turkey, paid not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... storm had been a supernatural visitation upon the city, robbing it of every intimate, homely aspect, leaving it inhumanly distorted in an obsession of abominable enchantment. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... lamenting, as if he had been really and sorely afflicted. Mercury appeared as before, and, diving, brought him up a golden hatchet, asking if that was the one he had lost. Transported at the precious metal, he answered "Yes," and went to snatch it greedily. But the god, detesting his abominable impudence, not only refused to give him that, but would not so much as let him ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... author of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and terrible scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and hardness, of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and corrupting, and then reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of this generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that your Highness would one day resolve to disarm this usurping maitre ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... "I want to go out in the boat, and I don't want anybody to row me. But that chain is fastened with an abominable padlock, and I cannot launch ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... and abominable charges mean? What was this lie they had invented to ruin her father? That he had enemies she well knew. What strong man had not? Indeed, his proverbial honesty had made him feared by all evil-doers and on one occasion they had gone so far ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... paradise. As you entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and common, whistled wild melodies (caught up in abominable playhouse galleries), and joked with a hundred cook-maids, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants' entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peacocks walked demurely on the terraces; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prepares the mind for Young's famous description of those "gaunt emblems of famine." In Burgundy the Doctor says, "I saw a peasant ploughing the ground with a jackass, a lean cow, and a he-goat yoked together." His vignette of the fantastic petit-maitre at Sens, and his own abominable rudeness, is worthy of the master hand that drew the poor debtor Jackson in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... sacrifices, forgot her own callousness, forgot the burden which she had fastened upon her sister's shoulders. She was fiercely and bitterly jealous. Anna was singing as she used to sing. She was chic, distinguished, unusual. What right had she to call herself "Alcide"? It was abominable, an imposture. Ennison listened, and he forgot where he was. He forgot Annabel's idle attempts at love-making, all the cul-de-sac gallantry of the moment. The cultivated indifference, which was part of the armour of his little world fell away from him. He ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Perregaud, by an infamous use of their professional knowledge, restored their clients to an outward appearance of honour, and enabled them to maintain their reputation for virtue. The first and second floors contained a dozen rooms in which these abominable mysteries were practised. The large apartment, which served as waiting and consultation room, was oddly furnished, being crowded with objects of strange and unfamiliar form. It resembled at once the operating-room of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "O father, remember that it fared no better with the blessed Saviour!" Howbeit, when my dear gossip, who stood behind her, saw that her little hands, and more especially her nails, had turned black and blue, he spoke for her to the worshipful court, whereupon the abominable sheriff only said, "Oh, let her be; let her feel what it is to fall off from the living God." But Dom. Consul was more merciful, inasmuch as, after feeling the cords, he bade the constable bind her hands less cruelly and slacken ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... I thought it had been you. Come, you must come down, whether you eat anything or not. I like somebody to talk to me while I am eating, and I had an idea just now—it is gone—but perhaps it will come back to me: it was about this abominable gown. O! how I wish there was not such a thing as dress ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... from his shoulders. Rabshakeh was killed by the fall, but Manasseh escaped unhurt. (94) Better had it been if Manasseh had shared his brother's untimely fate. He was spared for naught but murder, idolatry, and other abominable ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... to that abominable race of graziers, who, upon expiration of the farmer's leases were ready to engross great quantities of land; and the gentlemen having been before often ill paid, and their land worn out of heart, were too easily tempted, when a rich grazier ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... me he denounced," Elspeth insisted, "but young lassies that leads men astray wi' their abominable wheedling ways." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... either deterrent or vindictive, or both. But the true inference from the premises would be that although duress or banishment from the kingdom might be essential, yet punishment, so-called, ought not to be visited upon the offender. For he or she could not be nostri juris, and that which were abominable to us might well be reasonable to him or her, and indeed a fulfilment of the law of his being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, since the person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the junks to the shore, in quick succession, laden with booty, and the men besmeared with blood! Two hundred and fifty women and several children, were made prisoners, and sent on board different vessels. They were unable to escape with the men, owing to that abominable practice of cramping their feet; several of them were not able to move without assistance. In fact, they might all be said to totter, rather than walk. Twenty of these poor women were sent on board the vessel I was in; they were hauled on board by the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... and felt him, and had his hand once in the hair of Ulysses, yet knew it not, and he chid the ram for being last, and spoke to it as if it understood him, and asked it whether it did not wish that its master had his eye again, which that abominable Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they had got him down with wine; and he willed the ram to tell him whereabouts in the cave his enemy lurked, that he might dash his brains and strew them about, to ease his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... to the verge of deformity, and wearing invariably the abominable smirk that disgusted others but amused Berkley, went ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... killed his mother because she wearied him, and who caused Rome to be burned in order to have a representation of the pillage of Troy! What an artist's soul was that of Heliogabalus, who organized prostitution! What a potent character was Tiberius! But what an abominable society was that which perverted those divine souls, and produced, moreover, Tacitus and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... To the contrary, she clings to the conventional theory that the human female of today is no more than the plaything of the concupiscent male, and that she must wait for the feminist millenium to set her free from his abominable pawings. But she can reach this notion only by standing her whole structure of reasoning on its head—in fact, by knocking it over and repudiating it. On the one hand, she argues that splendour of attire is merely a bait to overcome ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... retained some valuable relics. But the whole system of their religion, the tendency of their public feasts and ceremonies, the essence of the Pagan theology, of which the poets were the only teachers and professors, the very example of the gods, whose violent passions, scandalous adventures, and abominable crimes, were celebrated in their hymns or odes, and proposed in some measure to the imitation, as well as adoration, of the people; these were certainly very unfit means to enlighten the minds of men, and to form them ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... one of the Pope's principal ministers of state, wrote a letter on behalf of the college of cardinals, or great council at Rome, to the missionaries in Congo, complaining that the pernicious and abominable abuse of selling slaves was yet continued, requiring them to remedy the same, if possible; but this the missionaries saw little hopes of accomplishing, by reason that the trade of the country lay ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... king's carriage to go nearer to the ironmongers' shops which are on the St. Innocent side, and even to proceed somewhat more slowly, without stopping, however, though somebody, who was in a hurry to get the gossip printed, has written to that effect. Here it was that an abominable assassin, who had posted himself against the nearest shop, which is that with the Coeur couronng perce d'une fleche, darted upon the king, and dealt him, one after the other, two blows with a knife in the left side; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula, "No annexations, ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... I were about to commit murder. And now, after hearing your wonderful words, my conscience is crying out within me to stop, and so, in the presence of these witnesses, I not only renounce all further connection with this abominable act, but I most solemnly swear that I believe in Natural Law, and that I shall henceforth devote my life to teaching its principles to my own children, and also to those of my fellow beings. My eyes have suddenly been opened. For ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... had been put to death in Judea during the reign of Tiberius. This province was small and despised, and Tacitus could account for the influence of the sect which sprang thence only by the fact that all that was infamous and abominable flowed into Rome. The Roman's scornful judgment failed to grasp the nature and power of the movement whose unpopularity invited Nero's lying accusation, yet it emphasizes the significance of him who did "not strive, nor cry, nor cause his ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... you, Smilk, when I had the chance," said Mr. Yollop sadly. "This is abominable, atrocious. Getting a man out of bed at ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... wealth-worshiping century more keenly than the suggestion that they did not know how to make money. Nevertheless, that is just the verdict history has passed on them. Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... killing here. A very great killing: of all those who advised that fool of a Firkked to start this business; of those who gave shelter to the false prophet, Rakkeed, when he was here; of the faithless priests who gave ear to his abominable heresies and allowed him to spew out his blasphemies in the temples; of those who sent spies to Krink, to corrupt and pervert my soldiers ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... General, if I can have been much charmed with the description you give of the abominable object of my desires! For the love of God, disabuse the King in regard to her [show him that she is a fool, then]; and let him remember well that fools commonly are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... as we can for her. Lastly, dear, we need not be anxious; because we trust that God will provide for her should we not be enabled to do so. But even were I sure that we should both be taken together, I would rather leave her in His hands than accept money wrongfully obtained and condone an abominable action. There is, too, another point from which the matter should be looked at. You see this curious condition that they propose, that the annuity shall be forfeited unless she marry with their sanction. Why should ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... you have been told that abominable rubbish, Anne, it is not necessary to repeat it. It's not so pleasant a theme that you need make ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... rapine, cruelty, and discord the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies—by columns, or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Karizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Bursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... became still wilder, and there was no road. The oats also ceased, and the walls. But he could hear the melancholy moan of the waves, which he had once thought to be musical and had often sworn that he loved. Now the place with all its attributes was hideous to him, distasteful, and abominable. At last the cottage was in view, and his heart sank very low. Poor Kate! He loved her dearly through it all. He endeavoured to take comfort by assuring himself that his heart was true to her. Not for worlds would he injure her;—that is, not for worlds, ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... says, whom, next to the late Czar, her Muscovite Majesty loves above all the world. Asia, I suppose, would not enter into your ladyship's system Of conquest; for, though it contains a sight of queens and sultanas, the poor ladies are locked up in abominable places, into which I am sure your ladyship's amity would never carry you—I think they call them seraglios. Africa has nothing but empresses stark-naked; and of complexions directly the reverse of your alabaster They do not reign in their own right; and what is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Jones, re-dressed by Kellerman in a morning coat rather the worse for wear—a coat that had been left behind at the bungalow by one of Kellerman's friends—and a dark cloth cap, took his departure from the bungalow. His appearance was frankly abominable, but quite distinct from the appearance of a man dressed in a grey flannel tennis coat and wearing a Panama—and that ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... intelligent people who regard Birth Control as something essentially sweet, sane, clean, desirable and necessary, and others equally honest and with as good a claim to intelligence who regard it as not merely unreasonable and unwholesome, but as intolerable and abominable. We are living not in a simple and complete civilization, but in a conflict of at least two civilizations, based on entirely different fundamental ideas, pursuing different methods and with ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... that calmness which was the first essential in such an interview. Besides, he was broken down by anxiety and want of sleep. His sorrow for Beatrice had disturbed all his thoughts. Food and sleep were alike abominable to him. His fine-strung nerves and delicate organization, in which every feeling had been rendered more acute by his mode of life, were of that kind which could feel intensely wherever the affections ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... was being discussed throughout Scotland, menacing what were really abuses, but what Scott, with his intense conservatism, believed to be sacred and inviolable institutions. The dying man roused himself to make a stand against the abominable bill. In a speech which he made at Jedburgh, he was hissed and hooted by the crowd, and he left the town with the dastardly cry of "Burk Sir Walter!" ringing in ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... she has gone, to whom she has promised money, whose integrity she has endeavored to corrupt with her bribes. Nay, more: we have heard all about the things which she supposes to be a secret, her nightly sacrifice, her wicked prayers, her abominable vows." ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... establishment. There seemed to be a succession of misfortunes which all Derues' zeal and care as shopman could neither prevent nor repair. He by no means contented himself with parading an idle and fruitless hypocrisy, and his most abominable deceptions were not those displayed in the light of day. He watched by night: his singular organisation, outside the ordinary laws of nature, appeared able to dispense with sleep. Gliding about on tiptoe, opening doors noiselessly, with all the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... slander. And on this very subject I have not up to this hour given one word of explanation to any human being. All the explanation that can be given amounts to no more than this—That the thing is an absolute and abominable lie. I feel that the present detail is useless and trifling; but you have asked with good-nature, and I could not, with the appearance of good-nature, refuse. I pardon you the labour I have had in writing, and for that which you will have ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... working like men for the sake of independence, of avoiding marriage, of "doing something," that is another matter. To my mind it is abominable that society is so constituted that women are forced to work (in times of peace) for their bread at tasks that are far too hard for them, that extract the sweetness from youth, and unfit them physically for what the vast majority of women want more than anything else in life—children. If they deliberately ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... monsters in the religious world. Do we not read in Scripture, that in consequence of the alliance of the sons of God with the daughters of men, giants were born, who so filled the earth with wickedness, they drew down a deluge of wrath upon the world? It is from this abominable alliance of the flesh with the spirit, that all those who appear in the world, as "mighty men, men of renown," are produced and sustained. One may be full of the natural life, while apparently dead to the external things of the world. Thus they are dead ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... rises to go in). Ah, Miss PRENDERGAST, don't lose your faith in human nature! Trust me, it is—er—full of surprises! (Alone.) Now am I an abominable humbug, or what? I swear I felt every word I said, at the time. Curious psychological state to be in. But I'm out of what might have been a very unpleasant mess at ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... my good cousin, very right," exclaimed Sir Reginald; "stick to our good English books, for at the present day, what with their republicanism, their infidelity, and their abominable notions, we can expect nothing but what is bad ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... than I do for the rest. All is divided into ennui, comedy and misery. I am indifferent to everything. I pass two-thirds of my time in being terribly bored. I pass the third portion in writing sentences which I sell as dear as I can, regretting that I have to ply this abominable trade." ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... believing: she was young, she was frightened, she was desperate—what more natural than that she should be grateful to her rescuer? The pity was that her gratitude put her, in the law's eyes and the world's, on a par with her abominable husband. Archer had made her understand this, as he was bound to do; he had also made her understand that simplehearted kindly New York, on whose larger charity she had apparently counted, was precisely the place where she could least ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... pardon for the injustice I have done you, and to make you the reparation I ought. I have punished your cruel sisters who put the abominable cheat upon me; and I hope soon to present to you two accomplished princes and a lovely princess, our children. Come and resume your former rank, with all the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... all remember your Surgeon, and may your thoracic duck ever continue to sail peacefully down the common carrotted arteries, under the keystone of the arch of the aorta, and not rush madly into the abominable cavity and eclipse the semi-lunar dandelions, nor, still worse, play the dickens with the pneumogastric nerve and auxiliary artery, reverse the doododen, upset the flamingo, irritate the high-old-glossus, and be for ever lost ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... other day. Please forgive us; we all like you so much, and we would feel as mean as anything to take your present without begging pardon. George, Peter, and I feel truly ashamed of ourselves every time we think of that abominable court martial." ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... a while speechless—struck with horror. The tidings which she heard were so unexpected, so strange, and so abominable, that they seemed at first to crush her. Nina was her niece—her sister's child; and though she might be repudiated, reviled, persecuted, and perhaps punished, still she must retain her relationship to her injured relatives. And it seemed to Madame Zamenoy as though the marriage of ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... soon to find a village; for I had spent much time in the gorge and made very little progress, while the sun had moved nearly up to the centre of his arc. The rays fell fiercely, and there was no shade upon the plateau. There was a road, but it was abominable. Only tramps understand the luxury ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... your elder associates defame the sex, you can hardly be mistaken when you suspect them of having vitiated their taste for what is excellent in human character by improper intimacies, or still more abominable vices. The man who says he has never found a virtuous female character, you may rely upon it, cannot himself ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Bring the soda. And—just a moment, Mrs. Pitman: Mr. Holcombe is a total abstainer, and has always been so. It is Ladley, not Holcombe, who takes this abominable stuff." ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... In this respect alone this publication of the work of the distinguished foreign cartoonist is a thing for our attention and enlightenment. It is the whole point of the awful experience which has to-day swallowed up all our smaller experiences, that we are in any case confronted with the abominable; and the most beautiful thing we can hope to show is only an abomination of it. Nevertheless, there is horror and horror. The distinction between brute exaggeration and artistic emphasis could hardly be better studied than in Mr. Raemaekers' cartoon, and the use he makes of the very ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers |
